Art Blakey: Indestructible (Blue Note 80 series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

Part of the Blue Note 80 series, this reissue comes on 180g vinyl pressed in the EU. Indestructible was Blakey's last recording for Blue Note, and it caught one of his greatest front lines in full flight.

This edition

• Blue Note 80 series
• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

The title is a fair description of the drummer and a slightly cheeky one for the band. By the spring of 1964 Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers had become a three-horn powerhouse, with Lee Morgan back on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, plus Cedar Walton on piano and Reggie Workman on bass. They recorded this set in April and May of that year, and Blue Note issued it in 1966.

Everybody brings a tune. Fuller wrote the two long workouts on side one, the brooding, Middle Eastern-tinged "The Egyptian" and the hard-charging "Sortie." Morgan contributes the bright "Calling Miss Khadija," Walton the gorgeous ballad "When Love Is New," and Shorter signs off with "Mr. Jin," a slinky piece with a sly, Eastern scale. Blakey pushes all of it along with the rolling press rolls and thunderclap accents that made him the most recognisable drummer in hard bop.

Shorter left soon after to join Miles Davis's quintet, and Walton and Workman moved on too, so this is a band signing off at its peak. Blakey spent his career training up young players and sending them out into the world, which makes him less a bandleader than the best-dressed finishing school in jazz.

Also at Kops: more Art Blakey on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 7764739), a reissue of the 1966 album.