Free The Boy Who Cried Freebird by Mitch Myers

labels. Their relationship would come full circle in 1971, when Blakey played on Monk’s final recordings, The London Collection (Volumes 1, 2, and 3).
    Art’s debut as a bandleader on the New Sounds LP was less auspicious than Monk’s 1947 record. His group, “Art Blakey’s Messengers,” had been scaled down from a big band (“The 17 Messengers”) to an octet. The “Messengers” name endured—signifying the group’s preponderance of Islamic believers as well as their swinging musical message.
    Art soon became busy as house drummer for Blue Note Records, and the Messengers remained dormant until Blakey joined forces with pianist Horace Silver in 1954. Their group, the Jazz Messengers, signaled the advent of what came to be described as hard bop. The original band included tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, trumpeterKenny Dorham, and bassist Doug Watkins, and they remained a cooperative unit until Silver’s departure in 1956.
    From then on, the Jazz Messengers were fully under Art’s command.
    The Jazz Messengers showcased Blakey’s roaring percussion style. Playing hard and loud but never out of control, he’d establish several rhythms simultaneously, keeping time on the ride cymbal and accenting offbeats with the hi-hat. Inevitably, Art would unleash a thunderous press roll on the snare—and dropping these percussive punctuations became his most explosive trademark.
    Featuring a traditional bebop lineup—piano, bass, and drums with saxophone and trumpet—the Messengers dutifully followed the formula made popular by Bird and Dizzy. The sax and trumpet would present an introductory theme, harmonizing in unison with just the slightest dissonance. A string of individual solos would follow. After an instrumental round-robin, the front line would restate the opening theme, signaling the tune’s conclusion.
    There were other groups who played “soulful” jazz around this time, like Cannonball Adderley and the combo he led with his brother Nat. Still, the evolution from bebop to “hard bop” can be traced directly to Blakey’s invigorating work with Horace Silver.
    On their 1954 recording, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers , the band presents an upbeat yet simplified manifestation of bebop using Silver’s bluesy, gospel-tinged compositions, like “Doodlin’” and “The Preacher.”
    The funkier aspects of hard bop emphasized the beat, making it less cerebral and more physically expressive than the earliest bop experiments. This swinging, soulful style was well established on the first Jazz Messengers record, and subsequent editions of Blakey’s band simply refined their waggish, hard-bop strut.
    Besides the first Silver-led session, the original Jazz Messengers recorded a pair of live albums in 1955 called At the Café Bohemia . Then the band went through a striking series of personnel changes, making several albums for a variety of record labels in the space of two years. This almost brings us to the musicians who took part in the making of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk .
    But first: Ace trumpeter Kenny Dorham abandoned the group and was replaced by Donald Byrd, who in turn was replaced by Bill Hardman. Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley also left the fold, but rejoined temporarily (and not for the last time), with altoist Jackie McLean replacing him on both occasions. Before McLean departed, tenor man Johnny Griffin was enlisted to succeed him, and for a brief time the two saxophonists shared the bandstand. Jimmy “Spanky” De Brest supplanted bassist Doug Watkins, who was later killed in a car crash (1962).
    When pianist Horace Silver split in 1956, his substitute was Junior Mance, who was followed by Sam Dockery. Although Monk sat in for Dockery on this one recording session, Sam continued playing with the Messengers, only to be replaced by the returning Junior Mance and also