ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS | The Best of the Columbia & RCA/Vik Years (1956-1959)

Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were the greatest incubator of talent the jazz world has ever known, and the late-‘50s were arguably the outfit’s most fertile period, as Blakey led not one, not two, not three, but four aggregations that spawned the next generation of jazz superstars, and you will find them ALL on this 2-CD, 17-track collection of his Columbia and RCA/Vik sides, which rank with his Blue Note sides as the best of the era. 

The set begins with three tracks from the 1956 Columbia album The Jazz Messengers featuring the jaw-dropping line-up of Blakey, Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor, Horace Silver on piano, and Doug Watkins on bass. After that album, Silver split and took Byrd, Mobley, and Watkins with him, but Blakey turned around and hired soon-to-be-legendary alto saxman Jackie McLean along with trumpeter Bill Hardman, pianist Sam Dockery, and bassist Jimmy “Spanky” DeBrest to replace them. This unit recorded the next three tracks including the McLean composition “Little Melonae.” “The Sacrifice” and “Cubano Chant” hail from album sessions with The Art Blakey Percussion Ensemble featuring bassist Oscar Pettiford and pianist Ray Bryant, while the last two tracks on Disc One, “Almost Like Being in Love” and “Couldn’t It Be You,” add tenor titan Johnny Griffin to the Jazz Messenger mix.

Disc Two gets off to a showstopping start with Blakey’s first-ever recording of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia” (Blakey recorded it 11 times) with the Blakey/DeBrest/Dockery/Griffin/Hardman/McLean line-up…a historic track, to say the least! Then, we get a series of little-known live performances from France that introduce the third and fourth of the great Jazz Messenger rosters to appear on this collection. 

First, we get the one that appeared on the classic Blue Note album Moanin’ with saxophonist-composer Benny Golson, a young Lee Morgan on trumpet, Bobby Timmons on piano, and Jymie Merritt on bass. Then, the last two tracks usher in the fourth and final great Jazz Messenger line-up heard here, with Wayne Shorter replacing Benny Golson and Walter Davis, Jr. replacing Bobby Timmons on “Lester Left Town” and “A Night in Tunisia,” bringing the proceedings to a most satisfying (and intense!) conclusion. 

Compiled and annotated by Grammy Award-winning jazz record producer/executive/archivist/historian Richard Seidel, remastered at Maria Triana at Battery Studios, and featuring prime period photos, The Best of the Columbia & RCA/Vik Years (1956-1959) represents an essential addition to the Art Blakey discography.