The
Art Blakey volume in Verve's
Compact Jazz reissue series covers the years 1954-1966, skimming through six different episodes in
Blakey's involvement with the Mercury/Emarcy/Limelight record labels. Tracks 1-4 were drawn from the Emarcy album Blakey, a stash of recordings dating from 1954 that featured trumpeter
Joe Gordon. "Blues March" and "A Night in Tunisia" trace back to two Parisian sessions that took place in 1958 and 1959; the rest of the material reproduced here comes from the Limelight catalog of the early to mid-'60s. "'S Make It" was the title track of an LP recorded in 1964; tracks 8-11 originally appeared in 1965 on the album Soul Finger while tracks 12 and 13 trace back to Limelight's 1966 release
Buttercorn Lady. The collective personnel on this compilation is an awe-inspiring glimpse of
Blakey's ever-changing roster of brilliant improvisers. This sampling includes trumpeters
Lee Morgan,
Freddie Hubbard, and
Chuck Mangione; trombonist
Curtis Fuller; saxophonists
Wayne Shorter,
Lucky Thompson,
John Gilmore,
Benny Golson,
Gigi Gryce, and
Gary Bartz; and pianists
Bobby Timmons,
Walter Bishop, Jr.,
John Hicks, and
Keith Jarrett. What you get here is authentic hard bop, played by the very individuals who helped to define and refine it. ~ arwulf arwulf