{"id":805485,"date":"2020-03-20T06:31:40","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=968550"},"modified":"2020-03-20T06:31:40","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:31:40","slug":"hear-art-blakey-and-the-jazz-messengers-hard-swinging-previously-unreleased-quick-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/hear-art-blakey-and-the-jazz-messengers-hard-swinging-previously-unreleased-quick-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Hear Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers\u2019 Hard-Swinging, Previously Unreleased \u2018Quick Trick\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Back in 2018, when jazz<\/a> fans heard that a previously unreleased John Coltrane album<\/a> was set to come out, they immediately zeroed in on the date.<\/p>\n

The fact that the tapes dated from 1963, right in the middle of the saxophonist\u2019s most celebrated period<\/a>, signaled that this was a major find. The same applies to Just Coolin\u2019<\/em>, a never-before-released album from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that\u2019s due out in April from Blue Note: Its recording date of March 1959, just a couple of months after the release of the group\u2019s hard-bop masterpiece Moanin\u2019<\/em><\/a>, tells us that this could be one of the year\u2019s standout archival releases.<\/p>\n

Not just a powerhouse drummer \u2014 known for his driving beat and commanding snare rolls \u2014 the late Blakey was also known as one of the top talent scouts in jazz. From the mid-Fifties through the early Nineties, his Jazz Messengers featured everyone from Lee Morgan and Keith Jarrett to Wynton and Branford Marsalis. The spring of 1959 found Blakey in between two classic lineups, including saxophonist-composers Benny Golson and Wayne Shorter, respectively. In between, the drummer recruited saxist Hank Mobley, a Blue Note mainstay who had played in an earlier version of the Messengers.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At the time, the \u201959 Messengers \u2014 with Blakey, Mobley, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Bobby Timmons on piano, and Jymie Merritt on bass \u2014 put out just one record: At the Jazz Corner of the World<\/em><\/a>, a two-volume live album recorded that April at New York\u2019s Birdland (not to be confused with Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World<\/em>, another live Jazz Messengers release recorded at Birdland in 1960). That album included three Mobley originals \u2014 \u201cHipsippy Blues,\u201d \u201cM & M,\u201d and \u201cJust Coolin’\u201d \u2014 as well as the Bernice Petkere standard \u201cClose Your Eyes.\u201d As it turns out, the group had recorded all four of those pieces, plus Timmons\u2019 \u201cQuick Trick\u201d and the uncredited tune \u201cJimerick,\u201d the prior month at the first location of engineer Rudy Van Gelder\u2019s famed studio, then located in his parents\u2019 living room in Hackensack, New Jersey. But at the time, Blue Note producer\/co-founder Alfred Lion chose to put out the Birdland sessions and keep the studio date on the shelf.<\/p>\n

At the Jazz Corner<\/em> is a stellar record, a great example of the Messengers\u2019 signature sound: classy, soulful, finger-snapping feel-good jazz. And Just Coolin\u2019<\/em> in no way replaces it. But any Jazz Messengers \u2014 especially material from this period, with this caliber of players on board, and expertly captured by Van Gelder, the engineer whose sound is synonymous with Blue Note \u2014 is worth hearing, and Just Coolin\u2019<\/em> is a handsome addition to the catalog.<\/p>\n

Timmons\u2019 \u201cQuick Trick,\u201d which is out today, is a charming midtempo tune that finds the band squarely in its hard-swinging element. Lee Morgan\u2019s expressive solo, introduced by one of Blakey\u2019s trademark rolls, is a standout, and Mobley\u2019s feature shows how well he meshed with the drummer\u2019s irresistible ride-cymbal groove.<\/p>\n

Just Coolin\u2019<\/em> is out on April 24th from Blue Note.<\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2018, when jazz fans heard that a previously unreleased John Coltrane album was set to come out, they immediately zeroed in on the date. The fact that the tapes dated from 1963, right in the middle of the saxophonist\u2019s most celebrated period, signaled that this was a major find. The same applies to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-18 20:43:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}