“Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life…”
–– Art Blakey
In 1955, a young Jazz drummer named Art Blakey put together a quintet of hard-living, all-nite driving, hell-raising and immensely talented musicians and called them the “Jazz Messengers.”
In the Forties, Blakey had been a studio musician and was playing the piano full-time. He traveled to West Africa in the late Forties to study African rhythms and adopted Islam before changing his name to Abdullah Ibn Buhaina. “But,” Blakey said, “Jazz doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa. It’s an African American thing…” He picked up the drums as his instrument of choice and embarked on a life-long trip of Jazz that would long outlast his own.
In the mid-Fifties, the much more mellow ‘West Coast sound’ and Rhythm & Blues had crept into the Jazz lexicon and Art wanted to bring Gospel, Blues and more swing back to the scene. Dubbed “Hard Bop,” the Jazz Messengers’ style swept across the nightclubs and jukeboxes from coast to coast.
In those days, being a Jazz musician also typically meant that life was lived in America’s urban centers. It also meant a life lived late at night, in small clubs and in apartments rented by the week. It was a hard, wild, drug and liquor-fueled existence and Blakey was not immune to Jazz’s nefarious pull. But he was also a no-shit-taker and was absolutely fearless. In Ken Burns’ “Jazz” series, Wynton Marsalis talks about a typical Blakey move:
“Some gangsters in Brooklyn took (Art Taylor’s) drums because he owed them some money. So, around three or four in the morning after a gig one night, Art Blakey said, ‘Well, let’s go to they house and git your drums.’ He goes to the gangster’s place and the guy answers the door with a gun in hand. And Art Blakey goes, ‘This man is a musician. You’ve taken his drums. Now, he owes you some money, but there’s no way for him to make that money if you deprive him of a means of making a living…he’s a musician, not a criminal.’ When Art Blakey got through with him, he gave him his drums back –– that’s just the way Art was. He could do things other people could not do because he believed in it all so much…”
For 45 years, the Jazz Messengers were not only a groundbreaking musical force, but was also a farm team for Jazz: Jackie McLean, Benny Golson, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Woody Shaw, Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis and others came from the Messengers roster. Blakey made it his mission to foster future star musicians within the Messengers and then send them on their way when they were ready to leave the roost. In that way, Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ influence is still felt to this day.
Art Blakey died in 1990, but his music and influence is still heard every time horns like Wynton Marsalis are heard.
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