Musicians - Art Blakey

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	Musicians - Art Blakey

Arthur (Art) Blakey, also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach he was one of the inventors of the modern, bebop style of drumming. He was known as a powerful musician and a ferocious groover. He is undoubtedly one of the most influential jazz musicians ever; his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was (and remains) profoundly influential on mainstream jazz. Over more than thirty years his band the Jazz Messengers included many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz, including Jackie McLean, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Curtis Fuller, Donald Byrd, Cedar Walton, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt, John Gilmore, Woody Shaw, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, Joanne Brackeen and Geoff Keezer. The band's legacy is thus not only the often exceptionally fine music it produced, but as a proving ground for several generations of jazz musicians; it is comparable only to Horace Silver's and Betty Carter's bands in this regard.

Early career

In the 1940s, Blakey was a member of bands led by Mary Lou Williams, Fletcher Henderson, and Billy Eckstine. He converted to Islam during a visit to West Africa in the late 1940s and took the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (which led to the nickname "Bu"). The African visit is the subject of some dispute as he was never absent from America for the length of time claimed. Some suspect the trip never took place. By the late forties and early fifties, Blakey was backing musicians such as Miles Davis, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk — he is often considered to be Monk's most sympathetic drummer, and played on both his first recording session as a leader (for Blue Note Records in 1947) and his final one (in London in 1971), as well as many in between.

The Jazz Messengers

The origins of the Messengers are in a series of groups led or co-led by Blakey and pianist Horace Silver, though the name was not used on the earliest of their recordings. The most celebrated of these early records (credited to "The Art Blakey Quintet"), is A Night at Birdland from February 1954, one of the earliest commercially released "live" jazz records, which featured the brilliant young trumpeter Clifford Brown, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson and bassist Curly Russell. The Jazz Messengers name was first used on a 1954 recording nominally led by Silver, featuring Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Doug Watkins — the same quintet would record The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia the following year, still as a collective rather than being led by Blakey. Blakey took over the group name when Silver left after the band's first year, and the band was known as "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers" from then on.

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