Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Caravan (Original Jazz Classics series) [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

This Original Jazz Classics series pressing is on 180g vinyl in a tip-on jacket with an obi strip. It catches the great sextet edition of the Messengers, and All Music Guide's Michael G. Nastos named it Blakey's best work.

This edition

• Original Jazz Classics series
• 180g vinyl
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip
• Pressed in the USA
• Stereo mix

About the album

Art Blakey ran the Jazz Messengers as a training ground for young stars, and by late 1962 the lineup was remarkable: Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Wayne Shorter on tenor, Cedar Walton on piano and Reggie Workman on bass. Caravan, recorded at Plaza Sound Studios in New York on October 23 and 24, 1962, was their first album for Riverside.

The title track takes Juan Tizol's Ellington standard at a gallop, with Blakey's drums thundering under three horns for nearly ten minutes. Shorter brings two originals, "Sweet 'n' Sour" and "This Is for Albert," and Hubbard's "Thermo" closes things at a sprint. In between, "Skylark" slows things to a ballad and the band gives "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" a warm, unhurried reading. Fuller's trombone fills the front line out into a rich three-horn sound, a hallmark of this edition of the band. Orrin Keepnews produced.

The BBC called it a slick, fluid, professional set of hard bop at its finest. Blakey was the band's leader, drummer and timekeeper, and from the sound of it he was also responsible for the building's structural integrity.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Riverside / Craft (cat# CR00717), a reissue of the 1963 album.