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Art Blakey was born Arthur Blakey on October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing the piano full-time, leading a commercial band. Shortly afterwards, he taught himself to play the drums in the aggressive swing style of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett and Ray Bauduc. He joined Mary Lou Williams in 1942, then toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, spent three years with Billy Eckstine’s big band and became associated with the bebop movement along with his fellow band members Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro and others.

He recorded on Thelonious Monk’s first and last sessions as a leader, organized a rehearsal band called the Seventeen Messengers in 1947, recorded with an octet call the Jazz Messengers co-led with Horace Silver, and the group recorded with Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson live at Birdland and formed a regular cooperative group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham in 1953.

Along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, Art was one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming. Known as a powerful musician and a vital groover, his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was and continues to be profoundly influential on mainstream jazz. For more than 30 years his band, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, included many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz.

Blakey’s Messengers would go on to enlist musicians like Doug Watkins, Donald Byrd, Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson, Jymie Merritt, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton and Wayne Shorter, all of whom made an indelible impression on Blakey’s repertoire with their original compositions such as Dat Dere, Moanin’ and Lester Left Town.

Art recorded dozens of albums both as a sideman and a leader with a constantly changing group of Jazz Messengers, toured with the Giants of Jazz in early Seventies, revitalized the band in the 80s with players like Wynton Marsalis, Johnny O’Neal, Philip Harper, Terence Blanchard, Joanne Brackeen, Donald Harrison, Kenny Garrett, Bobby Broom, Robin Eubanks, Ralph Peterson, Jr. and Mulgrew Miller.

Also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after converting to Islam and nicknamed “Bu”, was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982, won a Grammy for Best Group Jazz Instrumental Performance for New York Scene, was inducted in the Newport Jazz Festival and Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fames, and was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001 and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Drummer and bandleader Art Blakey died on October 16, 1990.

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