The Jazz Messengers

On December 17, 1947, Art Blakey led a group known as “Art Blakey’s Messengers” in his first recording session as a leader, for Blue Note Records. Around the same time – in 1947 or 1949 – Blakey led a big band called “Seventeen Messengers”. The orchestra proved to be financially unstable and broke up soon after. The use of the “Messengers” tag fi nally stuck with the group co-led at first by Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. The first stable formation of Art Blakey’s celebrated “Jazz Messengers” came to fruition in 1954, and consisted of Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Horace Silver and Doug Watkins. That exact group recorded the Blue Note LP The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia in November of 1955. That album would be followed by the Columbia LP presented here, on which Donald Byrd had replaced Dorham on trumpet (the rest of the group is the same). The band, as shown here, would only remain together for a year. The album is highlighted by the earliest recordings of two of Silver’s songs, “Nica’s Dream” and “Ecaroh,” and plenty of typically hard swinging from the band. Horace Silver’s original trio version of “Ecaroh”, with Blakey on drums, has been added here as a bonus