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Art Blakey
1919 - 1990
He was born Arthur
Blakey, 11 October 1919, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Blakey as a pianist first;
the move to drums has been variously attributed to Erroll Garner  appearing on the
scene, the regular drummer being off sick and (Blakey's favourite) a
gangster's unarguable directive. Whatever, Art Blakey drummed for Mary Lou
Williams on her New York debut in 1942, Fletcher Henderson's mighty swing
orchestra (1943-4) and the legendary Billy Eckstine band that included
Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davisand Thelonious
Monk (1944-7).
The classic bebop
sessions tended to have Max Roach or Kenny Clarke behind the drums, but
Blakey had the last laugh, becoming the pre-eminent leader of the hard bop
movement. In contrast to the baroque orchestrations of the West Coast
Jazz‘cool’ school, hard bop combined bebop's instrumental freedoms with a
surging backbeat out of gospel. Ideally suited to the new long-playing
record, tunes lengthened into rhythmic epics that featured contrasting solos.
The pressure of Blakey's
hi-hat and snare became legendary, as did the musicians who passed through
the ranks of the Jazz Messengers. Blakey never tired of telling his sidemen
(and side women—pianist Joanne Brackeen was one of his discoveries) to go off
and form their own bands: his band became an on-the-road college. An
understanding that without risk jazz is dead complemented his insistence on
complete musicianship. Impatient with timidity and safeness, his drumming
encouraged daring and brilliance. He would lean with his elbow on the surface
of the drum to change its intonation: such ‘press rolls’ became a musical
trademark. That his power was not from want of subtlety was illustrated by
his uncanny sympathy for Thelonious Monk's sense of rhythm: his contribution
to Monk's historic 1957 group that included both Coleman Hawkins and John
Coltrane was devastating, and the London trio recordings he made with Monk in
1971 (Something in Blue and ThE Man I Love) are perhaps his most impressive
achievements as a player.
"You all get into the studio and
you try to make everything so God damn clinical. Two months from now when you
hear this tune you won't recognize it yourself. You ain’t  going to
play it the same way every night, use your imagination, that's what JAZZ is
all about. If you ain't got no imagination you might as well quit. All he did
was put up a skeleton of the tune we are going to play, so go on and play and
if you make a mistake make it loud so you won't make it next time." – ART BLAKEY
Blakey was a beacon for the
creativity and drive of acoustic jazz through the electric '70s. Miles Davis
once remarked ‘If
Art Blakey's old-fashioned, I'm white’: this was borne out in the '80s when
hard bop became all the rage. Ex-Jazz Messengers Wynton Marsalis and Terence
Blanchard became the apostles of a return to jazz values. In England, a televised
encounter in 1986 with the young turks of black British jazz—including Courtney Pine and Steve
Williamson—showed
how Blakey's hipness transcended generations, as he taught the IDJ Dancers
(ex-break dancers who decided I Dance Jazz) the complexities of A Night In
Tunisia.
Until his
death in 1990, Art Blakey continually found new musicians and put them
through his special discipline of heat and precision. When he played, Blakey invariably
had his mouth open in a grimace of pleasure and concentration: his drumming
still makes the jaw drop today. For a period following his conversion to
Islam, Blakey changed his name to Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, which led to his
nickname Bu. His creativity, love of jazz, and philosophy still lives on in
his own Art Blakey University.
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