Used-Bin Bargains: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - Miguel's Party (Polygram 1960)

Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – Les Liaisons Dangereuses / Polygram

Tweaking the idea of our weekly Essential Classics column, we have decided to keep the premise of concentrating on need-to-hear albums from yesteryear, but shrugging off the “classic” tag since it is so relative. Instead, we are going to keep our nose deeply buried in the used section of our local record stores and highlight our favorite bargain of the week. This first week was tough, because as at every record store that has a used section, you have that one guy who periodically brings in a box of brand new, still shrink-wrapped albums that you know he lifted from somewhere, but you don’t really care because: 1) it’s not your problem; 2) you get choice pick at drastically price-reduced CDs. From this last visit from our mystery deviant, I was able to score John Coltrane’s Kulu Sé Mama, Alice Coltrane’s Eternity, a Soul Jazz compilation called Studio One Selector and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers’ soundtrack to the 1959 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It was basically a toss up on which one I should write about, but I opted for the latter of the group because writing about John Coltrane intimidates the fuck out of me, I’ve already written about Alice Coltrane a lot as she is one of my favorite artists ever, and I’ve been itching to write about Art Blakey for a good while now; not to mention it’s a relatively obscure album in the sense that not many people seek it out. So, with the first installment of our newly dubbed column, Audiversity’s Weekly Used-Bin Bargains (Patrick had to talk me out of both Used-Bin Bonanza and Used-Bin Humdinger… damn his cool-headiness), we dive into the hard-boppin’ world of Art Blakey.

I have always liked Art Blakey, if only because you can just about blindly pull any album out of his 50+, 40-years long discography and be presented with a solid, if not extraordinary record of pure hard-bop. But while such longevity and consistency must be rightfully respected, it also means that Blakey purveyed only the single style for his entire career, leading the way in it’s original rise to popularity in the 50s and it’s resurgence in the 80s. Because of this hard-headiness and refusal to experiment or thoroughly explore an unfamiliar niche, Blakey is sometimes left out of the jazz geniuses conversation, which is a shame because he could certainly hold his own against such luminaries as Max Roach, Chick Webb or Gene Krupa. The band he adopted from Horace Silver, the Jazz Messengers, also acted as practically a breeding ground for young jazz talent; basically, once you could hang with Art, you were ready to venture out on your own. During the 30+ years the Messengers were under Blakey’s guidance, he unleashed a laundry list of prominent names in jazz including but no where near limited to: Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Donald Byrd, Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, Johnny Griffin, and Wynton and Branford Marsalis. Maybe he was simply a good mentor, maybe he was a one-of-a-kind motivator or maybe it just took a particularly high degree of talent to keep up with his unrelentingly driving drum style, but any way you want to define it, Blakey’s influence as a bandleader is near unparalleled. Personally, I lean towards the latter, because his percussive concentration was always on momentum and rhythm; he left all melody and tone in the hands of his accompaniment, further pushing them to be on top of their game. His drumming style was somewhat the antithesis of his contemporary, Max Roach. Where Roach would wholly concentrate on the precise tone and timbre of his drums, Blakey’s heartbeat was all rhythm. He’ll never be known as an innovator, but there will never be a name so synonymous and genuinely important to the genre of hard-bop jazz as Art Blakey.

The Pittsburgh native was born in 1919 and was somewhat of a child prodigy. Playing piano professionally and leading his own commercial band by the seventh grade, Blakey was usurped by the equally prolific Erroll Garner in the club they were both gigging at and was forced to switch to the drums. Heavily influenced by the unrelenting competitiveness and thundering energy of percussionist and bandleader Chick Webb, Blakey developed his own style in the late 30s and early 40s while playing with pianist Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson. During the mid-40s, he joined Billy Eckstine’s big band, which placed him in the heart of the burgeoning bebop scene and gigging with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and a young Miles Davis. Very curiously, Blakey claimed that in the late 40s he visited West Africa where he discovered both polyrhythmic drumming and Islam; even going to the point in taking the name Abudullah Ibn Buhaina, which led to his nickname “Bu.” No one truly knows if this trip actually took place because some dispute that he was never absent from America during the time period that he claimed to be visiting. Either way, this is the period that Blakey’s reputation as an acclaimed drummer was quickly spreading and the first rendition of the Jazz Messengers appeared as a 17-piece rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers; he as well was regularly backing the likes of Davis, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, who interestingly enough, utilized Blakey on both his very first recording session as a leader in 1947 and his very last in 1971. The official Jazz Messengers was established in a 1954 recording co-founded by both Blakey and Horace Silver, who was actually the first official leader of the group. That ensemble, which also featured Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, was essential in the development of the hard-bop movement in reaction to the West Coast cool jazz scene. Officially known as Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers by 1956, the collective heavily pushed a soulful gospel influence into bop, freeing up the rhythm section to explore much looser and more bluesy feelings. Highlights from this era include 1956’s Hard Bop and Hard Drive, 1957’s Reflections on Buhania and 1958’s Moanin’.

This brings us to the album at hand, 1960’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Polygram. The French cinematic New Wave scene, or la Nouvelle Vague, was in full bloom by 1959 with François Truffant, Jean-Luc Godard and Éric Rohmer cultivating the idea of the auteur director. Much like Roger Vadim’s modern rendition of the scandalous 1782 French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, these New Wave films would feature experimental soundtracks, many utilizing the American jazz music they heard in the clubs at night. The second of the Vadim films to feature such a soundtrack (the first being 1957’s Sait-on Jamais, which was scored by the Modern Jazz Quartet), it was supposed to be a project recorded by Thelonious Monk, whose only session was used in the film, but never released on it’s own. Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers were called in for the two-days following that initial session and those recordings is what you hear on this album. Featuring Blakey on drums, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Duke Jordan and Bobby Timmons on piano, Jimmy Merritt on double bass and Barney Wilson, who was only in the band very shortly between Benny Golson and Wayne Shorter, on soprano and tenor sax, the ensemble got to jam out a bit on rare material conjuring a boisterous, freewheeling and sophisticated soundtrack to the seductive film. Interestingly enough, the liner notes go on about how the French reedman Wilson had only moved over to soprano a few months prior, and that his unique style on the instrument predated both Coltrane’s same move to the higher-pitched sax a year later and Steve Lacy’s popular career. In the actual film, you see a quintet featuring Kenny Dorham, Duke Jordan and Barney Wilson onscreen, but Dorham wasn’t even a part of the recordings you hear. The album features multiple versions of “No Problem,” “No Hay Problema” and “Volmontana,” but my personal favorite is “Miguel’s Party” which highlight’s Morgan’s passionate trumpet at length.

As I went into earlier at length, Blakey’s career post-50s rarely abandoned his love for all things hard-bop. He recorded heavily in the 60s with a rotating cast of talented supporting players; exceptional albums include 1961’s The Freedom Rider, 1962’s Live Messengers and Caravan (a personal favorite), and 1964’s Indestructible. Along with touring heavily in Europe and Northern Africa, the Messengers also became the first American jazz band to play in Japan in 1960; they were received whole-heartily, even being greeted by hundreds of fans just in the airport. By the 70s, when jazz was being explored through the avant-garde and fusion, Blakey chugged right along with his hard-bop. Though recordings slimmed considerably throughout that decade, the late 70s and early 80s proved Blakey’s determination to be fruitful as the advent of neotraditionalist jazz took over the mainstream jazz audience. With trumpeter Wynton Marsalis acting as musical director, the band was once again selling out venues night after night. Blakey continued to incubate young careers throughout the 80s, and at the time of his death in 1990, the Jazz Messenger aesthetic dominated mainstream jazz. Art Blakey may never be grouped in with the great innovators of jazz, but he will forever be known for his skilled, fiery drum playing, confident band leading and rousing spiritual guidance.