00:00Drummer Art Blakey and his band the Jazz Messengers are the pioneers of a jazz sub-genre called hard
00:13bop. Hard bop takes the fundamentals of bebop and adds elements of rhythm and blues. The idea behind
00:22hard bop was to make bebop music more danceable and perhaps more palatable to mainstream music
00:31fans. Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1919. By the 1950s his
00:42virtuosic and incessant drumming would put him at the forefront of the bebop genre along with
00:51Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. By 1954 Blakey formed the band the Jazz Messengers
01:03which became a training ground for up-and-coming young jazz musicians. New Orleans trumpet
01:10prodigy Wynton Marsalis got his professional start as a member of the band. Among the best
01:20of the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messenger albums are the following. A Night in Birdland volumes
01:28one to three from 1954. The Jazz Messengers from 1956. A Night in Tunisia from 1957. Drum Suite
01:42also from 1957. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk from 1958. Ritual from 1959. Monin
01:55also from 1959. The Big Beat from 1960. Mosaic from 1961. Free For All. A Night in Tunisia from 1961
02:11and Indestructible from 1965.
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