Jazz lovers woke up to something special Friday morning: a new Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers album.
"Just Coolin'," a never-before-released album by the legendary Pittsburgh-born drummer and his band, is out now on Blue Note Records. It's $20.99 for vinyl, $9.99 digital at store.bluenote.com.
Recorded on March 8, 1959, in the Hackensack, New Jersey, living room studio of recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, it was the band's first session since October 1958, when it cut the classic "Moanin'" featuring saxophonist Benny Golson.
In July 1959, the Jazz Messengers would recruit Wayne Shorter, but in the interim, "Just Coolin'" was recorded with Hank Mobley, a member of The Jazz Messengers when the band formed in 1954. The tenor saxophonist brought three songs to the session: "Hipsippy Blues," "M&M" and the title track. The record's lineup also included trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt.
Five weeks after the session, on April 15, 1959, Blue Note founder and producer Alfred Lion recorded the band live at Birdland in New York City, where the Jazz Messengers performed four of the six tracks from "Just Coolin'." The two-volume live album "Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers At the Jazz Corner of the World" was released later that year in place of the studio session.
Bob Blumenthal writes in the "Just Coolin'" liner notes: "In 2020, it's great to find more Morgan, Mobley and Timmons in their prime. The music had clearly settled in during the month that separated studio and live versions, but the fire of these six tracks has an appeal of its own."
Downbeat says, "More than 60 years later, this studio album arrives like a long-unopened gift, attaining rarefied heights on its own via the quintet's elegant sense of control and nuanced blues."
Born in Pittsburgh in 1919, Blakey started as a pianist and switched to drums in the early '30s. Between 1939 and 1944, he toured with fellow Pittsburgh native Mary Lou Williams as well as the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. From 1944 to 1947, he played in the big band of another fellow Pittsburgher, Billy Eckstine, with a cast that included Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan.
He did his first Blue Note session in 1947 on Monk's debut " Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1" and rolled out the Art Blakey Quintet in 1954 with "A Night at Birdland," considered to be "an early hard bop manifesto."
He co-founded The Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver and then took over the name when the pianist left, leading Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers for the rest of his career, up until his death in 1990 at 71. He was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
