Art Blakey, for years an eager conveyor of the jazz message - verbal or musical - to anyone who would listen, in every country he has visited, is convinced that things are getting better. Not just better for the Jazz Messengers, but better for jazz, better on the social scene for musicians as a whole.
Recently the band that can be heard on these sides paid a visit to Hollywood, a town never regarded by Art or anyone else as the country’s foremost center of jazz appreciation. Opening an engagement at Ben Shapiro’s Renaissance on the Sunset Strip, Art had misgivings. His last visit to Los Angeles a year earlier, to play a now-defunct club, had been less encouraging; moreover the acclaim he had since enjoyed in Japan, and more recent in a jet-propelled 18-day hop through Europe, convinced him that the American prophets of modern music could never be comparably honored in their own country.
Walking in on opening night I was greeted by an admirable sight and a stimulating sound. The sight was a long line of customers outside the club, trying to get in; the sound was that of the sexter playing Curtis Fuller’s Arabia, one of the most impressive tracks in the group’s last LP, Mosaic.
What is most remarkable about the Messengers today is that their ensemble quality is in every way the equal of their individual talents. Too often you find (and one very famous case comes instantly to mind) that a jazz sextet may consist simply of a rhythm section and three brilliant hornmen who show no particular concern for each other, whose orchestral efforts are casual first-and-last-chorus throwaways, a mere shortcut to the blowing.
Art and his men, more than ever now that they are six strong, are mindful of the inescapable fact that a combo, no matter how large or small, is still an orchestra -- a group of men working toward a common end. This, of course, in no way inhibits the soloists; on the contrary, the prevailing enthusiasm in the group has spurred the members to performances that show more authority and zeal than ever.
The most important reason for this magnificent team spirit is the inexhaustible effervescence of Art himself, who has become a virtual one-man crusade for jazz. In an interview during the week he was about as optimistic as I have ever heard him (and there have been times in the past when his dismay was as disheartening as it was understandable).
“Things are really much better than they have ever been, Leonard. I’m quite surprised at Los Angeles, and the way the people have been coming out. I really didn’t look forward to playing this town. Of course, we make all the radio guest shots and do everything possible to promote the appearance; but I think the situation in general is improving and jazz is in a healthier state than in the past.
“Fifteen or twenty years ago, when I was part of the big band scene, you couldn’t find audiences like this. You had to play ballrooms, and what you played had to be considered dance music, or at least suitable for dancing. So when I was with the Billy Eckstine band, we were playing some real music -- some of the greatest big band jazz of the day -- and the poor people didn’t know what we were doing to them!
“You know, people can dance to our music, now, and the office is talking about booking us on some college dates, where we can play a concert followed by a dance. I’d dig that”
Though its danceability may seem an irrelevant factor those chiefly concerned with the strictly music values of the Messengers, it is not without significance that the rhythmic qualities of the group do offer this possibility. It is important that the sextet does not indulge in such devices as violent changes of mood, meter and tempo in the middle of a number, and that Art’s own contribution, supported by Jymie Merritt’s and Cedar Walton’s, never buries the essential basic beat for all its astonishing complexity.
The music on these sides reflects the jubilant spirit of the combo in both title and music. Buhaina, of course, is Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, alias Art Blakey. One of the first jazzmen to have been attracted to the tenets of Islam, he does not use the name professionally.
Wayne Shorter, whose Children of the Night was heard in the previous sextet LP, wrote all but two of the arrangements for this date. “It was something of a new departure for me too,” he says,” as I wrote all of them away from the piano. I found out that working without a piano you get a different approach, a broader outlook.”
Backstage Sally, says Wayne, was a little brainstorm he got to sketch a musical portrait of “the kind of girl you’re liable to meet backstage, no matter what band you’re with or what town you’re in.” Built on a 16-bar pattern, it features solos by Wayne, Curtis, Freddie and Cedar.
Contemplation is a slow, nostalgic ballad, the first composition of this kind ever attempted by Wayne. Its mood is achieved through the use of an unusual and most attractive chord pattern that starts deceptively in C and moves to A Flat, D Flat, and B Flat.
Bu’s Delight, written by Curtis Fuller a few months ago in Chicago, has a 64-bar theme, with Art’s breaks filling the gaps in the main thematic statement, and with a 16-bar release built on a C Minor chord. Though there are valuable contributions by the three horns and Cedar, this nine-minute track belongs essentially to the leader, who in the course of a three-and-a-half-minute solo builds from a simple hi-hat offbeat to a series of slow and magnificently executed crescendos. Nobody else in life can make a press-roll mean as much as Art can, and it is extremely doubtful that any other drummer can achieve a comparable blend of technical mastery and rhythmic excitement.
Reincarnation Blues, another Wayne Shorter original, is founded not on the regular 12-bar blues structure but on a 16-bar pattern. Freddie Hubbard’s solo is especially impressive here with its dramatic tension and sense of overall form.
Shaky Jake is the work of Cedar Walton, who wrote the title number of the sextet’s last LP, Mosaic. The first four measures are introductory; the chorus that follows runs 12-12-8-12. This is a delightfully blues-oriented work, mainly through the emphasis in the melody on the flat third (G Flar in the key of E Flat) throughout the opening 12-bar strain.
Hank Mancini’s Moon River was arranged by Wayne Shorter, who observes: “I heard this tune on the air, and later I saw the picture; although I’ve arranged very few standards, I felt this would make a good piece of material for the group.” Conceived as a slow waltz, the melody is transformed here into a briskly swinging 4/4.
It is easy to tell, on listening to these six performances by six brilliant artists, that the optimistic mood of Art Blakey has been communicated to his sidemen. As Wayne Shorter put it, “There’s a feeling in the band that everybody wants to contribute, wants to add new music to the book -- not just for the sake of the royalties, but out of genuine interest in what’s happening with the group.”
No wonder Art Blakey takes such pride and pleasure in “the youngsters,” as he affectionately calls his colleagues. It’s true that Art has been on the scene a while, but let’s not forget that he’s still a couple of years younger than our young President (JFK). The Messengers, by the way, have just completed their second term -- it was just eight years ago that the original memorable session by the old Blakey Quintet, with Clifford Brown, was recorded at Birdland -- and nobody is happier than I that in jazz is no anti-third-term legislation.
-- Leonard Feather
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