Art Blakey and Muscle Jazz

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Art Blakey was one of jazz's staunchest advocates throughout his long life in the music. The little speech he would deliver at the end of every set may have sounded mawkish to some, but there was no doubting the sincerity of his commitment to its sentiments. For Blakey, jazz really was the greatest art form ever developed in America, delivered from the Creator through the musician to the people, and he was always happy to repeat what seemed to him the self-evident facts of the matter, as in this extract from an interview with this writer in 1987.

‘Jazz is just music, that's all. This is what we like to do, this is what we like to play. Charlie Parker, and Dizzy, and Monk, guys like that, they took the music to a higher level of performance, to the highest level of performance on a musical instrument, and it's spiritual music, where the audience have a part to play as well, they're not excluded from the music. The music comes from the Creator to the musicians, and the musicians play to the audience, they don't play down to them. You have to present something to the people, you can't just do anything.’

What Blakey presented to the people for the best part of nearly fifty productive years in music was the quintessential hard bop band, The Jazz Messengers. He built the band on a solid foundation acquired in the decades when swing transmuted into bebop, and persevered with the music through some barren years before seeing a resurgent interest during the last years of his life in the form he did so much to define.”

• Kenny Mathieson, Cookin’: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz, 1954-1965

“Cette confidence est la clé de toute l'œuvre d'Art. La force de la communauté noire, c'est sa foi. Jouer de la musique constituera donc toujours pour Art l'occasion d'affirmer cette foi. Le batteur se forgera ainsi une force intérieure inébranlable grâce à une vie spirituelle riche. Et cette vision du monde, qui marie la musique et la religion habitera le musicien tout au long de sa vie. C'est pourquoi il se considérera toujours comme porteur d'un message divin -lui n'étant qu'un modeste intermédiaire, une simple « porte battante » entre le monde terrestre et l'univers céleste.”

“This confidence is the key to the whole work of Art. The strength of the black community is its faith. Playing music will therefore always be an opportunity for Art to affirm this faith. The drummer will forge a unshakable inner strength through a rich spiritual life. And this vision of the world, which combines music and religion, will inhabit the musician throughout his life. That is why he will always regard himself as the bearer of a divine message - a modest intermediary, a simple "swinging door" between the earthly world and the heavenly universe.”

• Georges Paczynski, Une Histoire de la Batterie de Jazz

The young drummer never "trained." He made a virtue of being self-taught, often saying that study might inhibit natural responses to music, not an unusual attitude among instinctive players. Blakey confidently relied totally on his instincts. Intense and always curious, he learned the craft by listening to musicians in Pittsburgh and, later, was particularly attentive on the road and after he got to New York. …

“What Art Blakey did with all he learned from others is central to his story. How he shaped music and made it sing and swing grew out of his focus on accompaniment and support of a band and individual players. He didn't aspire to be a transcendental soloist, as many others did when he was coming along.

What pleased him most, early and later on, was that musicians asked for him — in clubs, concerts, and on record dates — because of what he could do for them and the music. Though he was more ego-driven after becoming widely known, Blakey was essentially an unselfish player—one who even asked his colleagues, particularly if they were new to him, what and how they wanted him to play.”

• Burt Korall, Drummin Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz - The Bebop Years:

“I hear an element of Art Blakey in almost every drummer. He remains a great influence to this day.”

• Rudy van Gelder, iconic recording engineer