Art Blakey(1919 — 1990)

As a child in Pittsburgh, Art Blakey first learned the piano and played in clubs from his teenage years. He liked to tell how, one evening, a nightclub owner supposedly forced him to hand the piano over to another musician (the future great Erroll Garner) and move behind the drums. True or embellished, the story nicely captures how this pianist became one of the greatest drummers in jazz.

Toward the end of the 1940s, Blakey grew interested in Islam and the cultures of Africa. He took the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, and his musicians would affectionately nickname him “Bu” throughout his career.

For more than thirty-five years, Blakey recruited very young musicians into his Jazz Messengers, gave them their first major stage, then let them spread their wings once they had matured. Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, and Wynton Marsalis all learned their craft there: the group was nicknamed “the university of hard bop.”

Blakey is famous for a spectacular drumming move, a long snare-drum roll that swells like a wave (the “press roll”) to spur the soloists on. His playing was so powerful that people said you could hear it all the way to the back of the clubs, even without a microphone.

In 1959, the French filmmaker Roger Vadim called on Blakey and the Jazz Messengers for part of the music for his film “Les Liaisons dangereuses.” American jazz thus met French cinema, and the Messengers would be welcomed triumphantly during their tours in France.