Art Blakey THE MESSENGER
“It was like sitting on an atom bomb,” said tenor sax player Johnny Griffin when jazz drummer Arthur Taylor asked him what it was like playing with Art Blakey for his book Notes And Tones. “That was a fantastic experience because Bu [Blakey’s nickname] is so strong with his thing. Oh, man, explosions!”
It’s hard to overstate Blakey’s importance to drumming and jazz. Leading the Jazz Messengers, he defined what became known as hard bop. “His drive and his sound, his command of the music, his innovation, the way that he played the time, the way he played with the time and juxtaposed the time, the way he pushed the soloists, the way he swung so incredibly and made the music have such an amazing feel, and yet at the same time he was completely bombastic and energetic, it just blew my mind,” says Cindy Blackman Santana. Blakey played with the greats – Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley – and the Jazz Messengers was a training ground for young musicians that provided a launch pad for a generation of bandleaders. But Blakey’s first professional gig was as a pianist. Born in Pittsburgh, 11th October 1919, he never knew his parents, was married for the first time with a child of his own at 15, and he was determined to do whatever it took to get out of the steel mill where he was working at the time. Self-taught, he could play a little piano, just enough to get hired in a local club until the owner decided he wanted to make a change on the bandstand. “The owner decided that he was going to have Art Blakey switch to drums, and have Erroll Garner play piano,” says Blackman Santana. “He told Art, ‘You’re going to be playing drums.’ He said, ‘But I’m not a drummer, I’m a piano player.’ The guy put a gun to Art’s head and said, ‘No, you’re playing drums.’ Art said, ‘Okay, I’m playing drums.’”
“…I’VE SEEN HIM MAKE A STAGE MOVE, AND I DON’T MEAN SOME LITTLE WIGGLE, I MEAN I’VE SEEN HIM MAKE A STAGE MOVE HE WAS SO POWERFUL.” CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA
Blakey’s conversion may have come at gunpoint, but it set him on the career path he would pursue for the rest of his life. He played in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine – the latter of which featured Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and was an incubator
