Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Mosaic (1960)

Adding a sixth musician to the Jazz Messengers proved to be one of the most momentous decisions of Art Blakey's career. It was not entirely unprecedented (Leonard Feather to the contrary notwithstanding), as the Messengers did field a team of six briefly in 1957. That edition, featured on the Vik album A Night in Tunisia, featured a front line of trumpet, alto sax, and tenor sax, a three-horn blend that Blakey favored in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after economic constraints had forced him to revert to a quintet setup for roughly a decade. During the final few years of his life, the drummer even found occasion to carry trumpet, trombone, and two saxophones in the Messengers. Yet the configuration that earned the right to be considered classic, thanks to the musicians heard on the present recording, featured trumpet, trombone, and tenor sax in the front line.

At the time these tracks were recorded in 1961, one could be forgiven for believing that this particular sextet blend would become the standart across the spectrum of modern jazz ensembles. The edition of JJ Johnson's band from which Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton emerged employed the same lineup, as did the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet that, at seperate points, included Walton and Curtis Fuller. When Johnson disbanded his own unit, he briefly joined Miles Davis and turned that group into a trumpet/trombone/tenor outfit. It could be that this particular instrumentation, with each of a big band's three horn sections represented, particular a natural environment for scaled-down jazz writing, but a more likely factor in the sudden emergence of sextets was the availability of Johnson and Fuller, two virtuosos who could blow toe-to-toe with their trumpet and sax-playing peers.

Blakey had first used trombone as a third horn in June 1961, when Lee Morgan and Bobby Timmons were still aboard, for his Impulse album Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In the notes to that set, Dick Katz states that Fuller "was engaged especially for this album", but the trombonist's strong soloing and his Messengers-friendly composition "Alamode" made an immediate impression upon Blakey, who brought the trombonist on as a permanent member two months later when Hubbard and Walton joined the group. The new sextet attempted to cut its first recording at the Village Gate on August the 17th, but the session was rejected (two tracks included "Arabia", did finally surface on the 1990 CD Three Blind Mice Vol 2). Less than two months later, when the band recorded Mosaic on its first visit to Rudy van Gelder's studio, the results were far superior, and the Messengers were immediately refashioned in the eyes of its fans as a six-piece band.

All five of the compositions included here became Jazz Messengers classics, yet it appears that at least three of them were not written with Blakey's band in mind. The title track, which seems custom-made for the leader's percussive fire, was actually part of the Jazztet's book when composer Walton was with that band, and had received its debut recording four months earlier on Clifford Jordan's Jazzland album, Starting Time. "Arabia", another of Fuller's modal efforts, was first heard on his August 1959 Savoy album The Curtis Fuller Jazztet with Benny Golson, which also featured a three-horn front line completed by then-Messenger Lee Morgan. Hubbard also employed a sextet, albeit with euphonium and tenor sax, when he cut a slower version of "Crisis" on 21 August 1961, date that produced his Blue Note album Ready for Freddie.

As to the other titles, Shorter has said that, "I was thinking about Bela Lugosi in Dracula when I wrote Children of the Night, but the children also became astronauts, going out into the unknown." And Hubbard's "Down Under" with its comfortable blues groove and break figures that recall Lee Morgan's "What Know", is most reminiscent of the already established Messengers tradition. It is also what may have been considered the album's soul track, at a point when something soulful was de rigueur on a jazz album. It is one measure of the expanded Messengers' success that they were able to thrive without relying on music calculated to meet some standart of ersatz sanctification. All of Blakey's music possessed soul, but this band and this album offered so much more.

Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue (1967)

To describe Kenny Burrell as an integral part of the Blue Note story is to sell this still-thriving guitarist short. Perhaps better than any of his contemporaries, Burrell represents the level of versatility and consistent quality that transcended individual record labels and created the fertile jazz recording scene of the 12-inch LP's first decade.

He was everywhere, as a sideman and a leader, after launching his East Coast career with two Blue Note albums in 1956. And one suspects that certain excellent sessions he cut for other companies with Coleman Hawkins in place of Turrentine; or A Night at the Vanguard -classic trio Burrell- might have more substantial reputations today if they had been issued under the Blue Note logo. Consider such gems as Bluesy Burrell, cut for Prestige/Moodsville four months before the present session with Holley and Barretto aboard, Tommy Flanagan's piano added and Coleman Hawkins in place of Turrentine, or A Night at the Vanguard with Richard Davis and Roy Haynes that Argo taped in 1959 less than a month after Blue Note had documented a Burrell quintet (with Tina Brooks and Art Blakey), On View at the Five Spot Cafe.

Yet if such masterpieces from other catalogues (and others like Kenny Burrell with John Coltrane and The Tender Gender) can be imagined as Blue Note releases, no rival label could possibly have provided as fitting a home for Midnight Blue. Leonard Feather's notes report what the music so clearly reveals; that Burrell had a clear overall vision for the album, involving a program of blues and related material that might shout (but only in context) yet would also explore the feelings to be uncovered at lower volumes and slower tempos. It was a concept that must have taken producer Alfred Lion back to his earliest ensemble project with the Port of Harlem Jazzmen.

Given the particular affinity of the guitar and the blues, space was needed to allow the instrument its full expressive potential. Lion was willing to give Burrell the necessary room where other producers of the time might have insisted upon a piano or, especially given the album's theme, an organ. Taking further advantage of the textural possibilities by adding Ray Barretto's conga drums to Bill English's trap set was also within the Blue Note tradition. Candido had teamed with Kenny Clarke on the label's Introducing Kenny Burrell, and Barretto had assumed the role of house conguero for both Blue Note and Prestige since important 1958 recordings with Lou Donaldson, Red Garland and Gene Ammons. Bassist Major Holley Jr and English were Burrell regulars who worked and recorded frequently with the guitarist in these years, while Stanley Turrentine, the only Blue Note leader among the supporting artists, had first shown a penchant for making indelible music with Burrell on the 1960 session that produced Jimmy Smith's Midnight Special and Back at the Chicken Shack.

In various combinations, Burrell, Turrentine, Holley, English, and Barretto brilliantly realize the original goal. While the album is filled with great moments, like the guitarist's naked emoting on "Soul Lament" and the propulsion he generates while locking into tempo on "Midnight Blue", the overall plan and pace create one of the most subtle cumulative moods ever conjured on two sides of vinyl. Hear how the waltz tempo of "Wavy Gravy" arrives like a seismic shift in terrain, and how affirmatively things are concluded on "Saturday Night Blues". The seven original tracks form a complete statement, a considered presentation that in no way contained the spontaneity at the music's heart. The bonus track "Kenny's Sound" is particularly enlightening in this regard. It was the first piece done at the session and clearly did not enhance the aura of the final album, yet it served as a perfect muscle-flexer that allowed the musicians to loosen up and prepare for the highly focused task ahead. The other added title "K Twist", was recorded again nearly two years later on a session designed to produce material for release on 45. The later personnel is quite similar, with everyone from this session save Holley returning, but the addition of Herbie Hancock's piano creates a less fluent if more commercial veneer.

Midnight Blue did not need "K Twist" in order to generate a hit, since in "Chitlins Con Carne" it had one of the most ingratiating blues lines of the periods. "Chitlins Con Carne" might seem rather basic to some players and listeners more impressed by complex scales and harmonic substitutions, yet it holds profound lessons about telling a story through music and functioning as a collective unit missing from most texts and exercise books. It also establishes a level of music discourse that is sustained over the remainder of this timeless album.