Art Blakey was born on October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A driving hard bop drummer, Blakey is best known as the leader of The Jazz Messengers, a group through which many of the most important musicians of the second half of the twentieth century passed.

Blakey was raised by siblings and a family friend after his mother died when he was very young. He began learning piano at school and didn’t start playing drums until later. Although there are a number of differing accounts of his early years, one claims that Blakey was playing music professionally by the time he was in the seventh grade. Another says he was forced to switch from piano to drums at gunpoint by a club owner who wanted him to relinquish the piano chair to Erroll Garner.

However the change in instruments occurred, Blakey was playing drums for Mary Lou Williams by the time he was 20 and shortly thereafter secured the drum chair in the Fletcher Henderson band. After being beaten by a police officer in Georgia while on tour with Henderson, a steel plate was placed in Blakey’s head which exempted him from military service during World War II. He would later do a three-year stint with the Billy Eckstein Orchestra where he met bandmates Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan and became associated with the growing bebop movement.

After living in Africa from 1947 until 1949, Art Blakey returned to America and spent several years as a popular sideman on recordings by Davis, Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. In fact, Blakey was the drummer on Monk’s first record, and he also played on Monk’s very last recording session, too.

In 1954 Blakey co-founded The Jazz Messengers with pianist Horace Silver. The original lineup also included Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Kenny Dorham on trumpet and Doug Watkins playing the bass. Silver left the group less than two years later and Blakey took over leadership and continued to lead the band for the remainder of his life. Over the years The Jazz Messengers developed the reputation as “the greatest jazz university on earth” as young players would come into the group, grow as musicians, and then move on to lead their own ensembles. A list of these musicians includes (but is not limited to) Donald Byrd, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Chuck Mangione, Joanne Brackeen, Keith Jarrett, Terrence Blanchard, Donald Harrison and Wynton and Branford Marsalis.

Art Blakey passed away from lung cancer on October 16, 1990, just five days after his 71st birthday.

Here is a link to a live Jazz Messengers performance featuring a composition by the pianist on the gig, Bobby Timmons:

"MOANIN'"