Free The Boy Who Cried Freebird by Mitch Myers Page A

by Walter Bishop Jr. Later, in the summer of 1958, Bobby Timmons would take a more lasting residence at the keys.
    So, Art Blakey took an archetypal bop aggregate of saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums into the recording studio on May 14 and 15, 1957.
    Trumpeter Bill Hardman came to Blakey after a stint with Charles Mingus’s Jazz Workshop, but he didn’t have the talent of Kenny Dorham or Donald Byrd. Still, the Cleveland-bred Hardman was a solid craftsman with a tempestuous sound. Ironically, his tenure with the Messengers was further overshadowed by his successors, Lee Morganand Freddie Hubbard. Hardman did, however, rejoin Blakey, and he recorded with the Messengers again in the 1970s.
    Chicagoan Johnny Griffin was a sizzling tenor saxophonist, and his urgent playing suited both Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk. Indeed, Griffin joined Monk’s own quartet after leaving the Messengers. Griffin’s furious tenor wail provided Thelonious with a transitional link between John Coltrane and his later, most dependable saxophone foil, tenor man Charlie Rouse.
    Spanky De Brest was the weakest link, and the bassist from Philadelphia sank into obscurity after leaving Blakey.
    Monk was going through his own changes when this record was made. Most importantly, he had finally regained his cabaret card, thanks to manager Harry Colomby and devoted jazz patron Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter. Monk’s residence at the Five Spot with Coltrane brought him a great deal of attention, and in the year before the Messengers album, he released Brilliant Corners , recorded the solo album Thelonious Himself , and appeared as a sideman on Sonny Rollins Volume 2 .
    This session highlights the kinetic interplay between Monk and Blakey. Their rapport was more than a decade in the making, and Monk’s uncommon sense of time is juxtaposed against Art’s forceful yet restrained punctuations. Mostly unhurried by Blakey’s vigorous timekeeping, Monk’s whimsical dissonance and illustrative solos were tempered by the Messengers’ visceral bop methodology.
    The Messengers were actually less boisterous than usual—but they still bopped hard enough to keep Monk from drifting too far into his own fractured eccentricities.
    Fortunately, Monk’s offbeat nature didn’t prevent him from responding in kind. Minding his role as guest pianist, he followed thegroup’s structure—comping shrewdly when the spirit moved him, and embellishing the melodies with strange, dramatic flair. Blakey returned the favor by selecting some of Monk’s most memorable compositions, as all the album’s tunes (save one) were taken from his celebrated songbook.
    A near-perfect example of what must be considered a manifesto in modern jazz, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk is an exercise in swinging eclecticism. The performances unveil sharp solo improvisations fixed within timeless small-group arrangements.
    Blakey sounds exuberant from the opening strains of “Evidence” right up to the closing moments of Johnny Griffin’s composition, “Purple Shades.” Contrapuntal conversations between Monk and Blakey abound as Hardman and Griffin breathe fire into Monk’s über-logical sound sketches. They flesh out Monk’s dangling chord structures and oblique harmonies, while the wide open spaces and contemplative silences of his piano work remain intact.
    The rendition of “Rhythm-A-Ning” is particularly unrestrained, and it allows Griffin and Blakey to showcase their fleet inventiveness. Tunes like “I Mean You” and “In Walked Bud” were already more than a decade old, but the band celebrates Monk’s timeless melodies with sparkling energy.
    A grooving synthesis of bluesy blowing and stylish structure, the album finds Blakey and Monk communing blissfully, and the end result is far greater than its composite parts.
    What would this group have sounded