BLP 4104

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - Buhaina's Delight

Released - June 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 28, 1961
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Cedar Walton, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.6 Moon River
tk.8 Contemplation

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 18, 1961
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Cedar Walton, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.1 Reincarnation Blues
tk.7 Backstage Sally
tk.10 Bu's Delight
tk.12 Shaky Jake

Session Photos

Curtis Fuller

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Backstage Sally	Wayne Shorter	18 December 1961
Contemplation	Wayne Shorter	28 November 1961
Bu's Delight	Curtis Fuller	18 December 1961
Side Two
Reincarnation Blues	Wayne Shorter	18 December 1961
Shaky Jake	Cedar Walton	18 December 1961
Moon River	Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer	28 November 1961

Liner Notes

ART BLAKEY, for years an eager conveyor of the jazz message verbal or musical - to anyone who would listen, in every country has visited, is convinced that things are getting better. Not just better for the Jazz Messengers, but better for jazz, better on the social scene for musicians as a whole.

Recently the band that can be heard on these sides paid a visit to ”dirt-road. a town never regarded by Art or anyone else as the country’s foremost center of jazz appreciation. Opening an engagement at Ben Shapiro’s Renaissance on the Sunset Strip, Art had misgivings. His last visit to Los Angeles a year earlier, to play o now-defunct club, had been less than encouraging; moreover, the acclaim he had since enjoyed in Japan, and more recent in a jet-propelled 18-day hop through Europe, convinced him that the American prophets of modern music could never be comparably honored in their own country.

Walking in an opening night l was greeted by an admirable sight and a stimulating sound. The sight was a long line of customers outside the club, trying to get in; the sound was that of the sextet playing Curtis Fuller’s Arabia, one at the most impressive tracks in the group's last LP, Mosaic (Blue Note [{BLP4090]]).

What is most remarkable about the Messengers today is that their ensemble quality is in every way the equal of their individual talents. Too often you find (and-one very famous case comes instantly to mind) that a jazz sextet may consist simply of a rhythm section and three brilliant hornmen who show no particular concern for each other, whose ancestral efforts are casual first-and-last-chorus throwaways, a mere short-cut to the blowing.

Art and his men, more than ever now that they are six strong, are mindful of the inescapable fact that a combo, no matter how large or small, is still an orchestra - a group of men working toward a common end. This, at course, in no way inhibits the soloists; on the contrary, the prevailing enthusiasm in the group has spurred the members to performances that show more authority and zeal than ever.

Billy Eckstine band, we were playing some real music - some of the greatest big band jazz of the day - and the poor people didn‘t know what we were doing to them!

You know, people can dance to our music, now, and the office is talking about booking us on some college dates, where we can play a concert followed by a dance. l'd dig that.“

Though its danceability may seem an irrelevant factor to those chiefly concerned with the strictly musical values of the Messengers, it is not without significance that the rhythmic qualities of the group do offer this possibility. lt is important that the sextet does not indulge in such devices as violent changes of mood, meter and tempo in the middle of a number. and that Art’s own contribution, supported by Jymie Merritt‘s and Cedar Walton's, never buries the essential basic beat for all its astonishing complexity.

The music on these sides reflects the jubilant spirit of the combo in both title and music. Buhaina, of course, is Abdulloh lbn Buhaina, alias Art Blakey. One of the first iazzmen to have been attracted to the tenets of Islam, he does not use the name professionally.

Wayne Shorter, whose Children of the Night was heard in the previous sextet LP, wrote all but two of the arrangements for this date. "It was something of a new departure for me, too," he says, "as I wrote all of them away from the piano. I found out that working without a piano you get a different approach, a broader outlook."

Backstage Sally, says Wayne, was a little brainstorm he got to sketch a musical portrait of "the kind of girl you're liable to meet backstage, no matter what band you're with or what town you're in." Built on a 16-bar pattern, it features solos by Wayne, Curtis, Freddie and Cedar.

Contemplation is a slow, nostalgic ballad. the first composition of this kind ever attempted by Wayne. Its mood is achieved through the use of an unusual and most attractive chord pattern that starts deceptively in C and moves to A Flat, D Flat and B Flat.

Bu‘s Delight, written by Curtis Fuller a few months ago in Chicago, has a 64-bar theme, with Art‘s breaks filling the gaps in the main thematic statement. and with a 16-bar release built on a C Minor chord. Though there are valuable contributions by the three horns and Cedar, this nine-minute track belongs essentially to the leader, who in the course of a three-and-a-half-minute solo builds from a simple hi-hat offbeot to a series of slow and magnificently executed crescendos. Nobody else in life can make a press-roll mean as much as Art can. and it is extremely doubtful that any other drummer can achieve a comparable blend of technical mastery and rhythmic excitement.

Reincarnation Blues, another Wayne Shorter original, is founded not on the regular 12-bar blues structure but on a 16-bar pattern. Freddie Hubbard's solo is especially impressive here with its dramatic tension and sense of overall form.

Shaky Jake is the work of Cedar Walton, who wrote the title number of the sextet’s last LP, Mosaic. The first four measures are introductory; the chorus that follows runs 12-12-8-12. This is a delightfully blues-oriented work, mainly through the emphasis in the melody on the flat third (G Flat in the key at E Flat) throughout the opening 12-bar strain.

Hank Mancini's Moon River was arranged by Wayne Shorter, who observes: "I heard this tune on the air, and later I saw the picture; although I've arranged very few standards, I felt this would make a good piece of material for the group." Conceived as a slow waltz, the melody is transformed here into a briskly swinging 4/4.

It is easy to tell, on listening to these six performances by six brilliant artists, that the optimistic mood of Art Blakey has been communicated to his sidemen. As Wayne Shorter put it, "There's a feeling in the band that everybody wants to contribute, wants to add new music to the book - not just for the sake of the royalties, but out of genuine interest in what's happening with the group."

No wonder Art Blakey takes such pride and pleasure in "the youngsters," as he affectionately calls his colleagues. It's true that Art has been on the scene a while, but let's not forget he's still a couple of years younger than our young President. The Messengers, by the way, have just completed their second - it was just eight years ago that the original memorable session by the old Blakey Quintet, with Clifford Brown, was recorded at Birdland - and nobody is happier than I that in jazz there is no anti-third-term legislation.

- LEONARD FEATHER

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

Wayne Shorter performs by courtesy of Vee Jay Records.
Curtis Fuller performs by courtesy of Ampar Records

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT BUHAINA'S DELIGHT

While something as commonplace as the need for cash may explain why the Jazz Messengers turned out two complete LPs for Blue Note in the space of ten weeks, Art Blakey had no aesthetic reasons to apologize for making such a swift return to Rudy Van Gelder's studios. This new sextet edition of the Messengers, which began to take shape when Curtis Fuller joined the ensemble in the late spring of 1961, had quickly revealed its potential, and Blakey was no doubt eager to document the wealth of new music the band had already produced.

Adding trombone to the front line, and thus initiating what might be called the Messengers' Fuller/Shorter period, produced a new sound with great creative potential, but also modified what had become a very identifiable and popular sound. In the previous three years, (the Morgan/Timmons period), the Messengers had been at the forefront of the soul movement that had brought a gospel tinge to modern jazz. Compositions such as Benny Golson's "Blues March" and Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'" and "Dat Dere" became hits over Blakey's hard-shuffling beat. with extended drum features in the mix to showcase the leader's prowess and charisma. As the present program indicates, Blakey and musical director Wayne Shorter were able to retain these aspects of the Messengers style quite effectively in the new format. On this occasion, "Backstage Sally" and "Shaky Jake" provide the funk, while "Moon River" and "Bu's Delight" put Blakey's drums front and center — not just in "Bu's" solo passage but also on the theme choruses.

As with Mosaic, which the sextet had recorded on October 2nd, Blakey arrived at Van Gelder's on November 28th with an albums worth of music at hand. This time, perhaps because the band had been learning so much new music so quickly, things did not proceed as smoothly, so a second session was held three weeks later to complete Buhaina's Delight. The results speak to the band's dedication to its craft, and to the growing bounty of material it had at its disposal.

The alternate and subsequent master takes of "Moon River," followed by Shorter's beautiful "Contemplation," got the first session off to a good start. Leonard Feather's original liner notes tell us that "Contemplation" was Shorter's first ballad, and it remains one of his best if not his most celebrated, with beautiful writing for each of the three horns. Cedar Walton's solo here, like the rest of his work on the album, reveals a more rhythmically emphatic pianist than we would come to know, but one whose touch — his ability to get a sound out of the instrument — was already unmistakable.

The November 28th session ultimately lasted through 37 takes, and produced the remaining three bonus tracks as well as rejected complete takes of each of the remaining four titles. While the playing on all four of the alternates is never less than good, there is a that the band is still working its way through the material, particularly in the piano interplay at the start of Blakey's drum solo on the alternate "Bu's Delight," and in the unchanging tenor/trumpet/trombone/piano solo order of the November 28th takes. The performances from December 18th are far superior, with effective supporting riffs on "Sally" and "Jake," eloquent commentary from Walton on the "Sally" theme statement, and variety in the solo sequence that may have inspired great lengthy spot on "Reincarnation" and Hubbard's declarative opening eloquence on "Jake." "Sally" and "Reincarnation" are 16-bar forms, a chorus length that Shorter favored in the period, and each finds him making ingenious use of compact thematic materials. It should also be noted that Walton's "Shaky Jake" has both a titular and melodic similarity to the pianist's "Jake's Milkshakes," a different piece recorded by the pianist for Prestige in 1968.

Leonard Feather could not know, as he celebrated the band's "second term" in the original notes, that this Messengers' administration would last for nearly 30 additional years; but he probably expected hip readers to recognize the famous jazz sextet he alludes to in his opening paragraphs as the Miles Davis band of late 1961, which was the quintet of Blackhawk/Carnegie Hall fame plus J. J. Johnson (and Philly Joe Jones often spelling Jimmy Cobb). Johnson joined Davis briefly after breaking up the sextet that had included Hubbard and Walton. The augmented Davis band, with Hank Mobley as the third horn soloist, operated in the loose blowing-session spirit that Davis and Johnson had employed so successfully on their classic 1954 recording "Walkin'." As Feather noted, this edition of the Messengers showed how to take greater advantage of the available ensemble possibilities, without sacrificing improvisational fire.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003

Udiscover Music Notes

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/art-blakey-jazz-messengers-buhainas-delight/

In late 1961, when Buhaina’s Delight was recorded for Blue Note Records, Art Blakey was leading one of the most potent and formidable line-ups of his long-running band, The Jazz Messengers.

The legendary jazz group was initially co-founded by Blakey with pianist Horace Silver, in 1954, but when the latter elected to pursue a career leading his own quintet, the Pittsburgh-born drummer was left holding the fort. From that period up until the recording of Buhaina’s Delight, a raft of talented young musicians passed through its ranks, among them high-caliber horn players such as Hank Mobley, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, and Bennie Golson. The Messengers proved a valuable training ground for some of the brightest young talents in jazz – so much so that it was dubbed the “Hard Bop Academy,” and those who graduated from it often went on to enjoy stellar careers of their own.

Impeccable training on the bandstand Trumpeter Lee Morgan – a precociously-talented prodigy who signed to Blue Note as a solo artist at the age of 17, in 1956 – had led Blakey’s front line since 1958, when he made his debut on the band’s famous Moanin’ album. In the late summer of 1961, however, he left to be replaced by an even more dazzling and flamboyant horn blower: Freddie Hubbard.

Like Morgan, the Indianapolis-born Hubbard enjoyed a parallel solo career at Blue Note while also playing with The Messengers. When he joined the band, Art Blakey had just expanded the group from a quintet (which had been its usual configuration) to a sextet, with the addition of Curtis Fuller, whose resonant slide trombone brought both richer textures and deeper sonorities to the group’s horn sound.

Enriched by Fuller’s musical presence, the band at this time also included rising tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Cedar Walton (Buhaina’s Delight was only his second studio outing with the band), and bassist Jymie Merritt, a stalwart from the Moanin’ days. They were all hand-picked by their leader, Blakey, who was an astute judge of young talent and provided them with impeccable training on the bandstand.

Ear-shattering percussion pyrotechnics Buhaina’s Delight was birthed from two separate sessions at Rudy Van Gelder’s famous Englewood Cliffs studio, on Tuesday, November 28, and Monday, December 18, 1961. Its opener, “Backstage Sally,” is regarded as a classic Messengers tune and was written by Wayne Shorter, who had joined the band in 1959 and made his debut on 1960’s The Big Beat album, where he immediately showed his qualities as a composer.

Another Shorter tune, “Contemplation,” reveals that, as a composer, the young New Jersey saxophonist was no one-trick pony. It begins as a deep, meditative ballad on which Blakey – normally known for his virile, high-energy drumming – shows both restraint and sensitivity during the song’s slow, haunting intro section. Eventually the tempo picks up, with Shorter providing a darting solo.

“Bu’s Delight” comes from the pen of the other talented tunesmith in The Jazz Messengers at that time: Curtis Fuller. “Bu” was Blakey’s nickname (short for Buhaina, one of the three names the drummer took when he converted to Islam while in Africa during 1948). It opens with a rousing, three-horn brass fanfare punctuated by several fiery drum breaks, before a pulsating swing rhythm develops. The piece is really a vehicle to showcase the drum prowess of Blakey, who takes center stage three and a half minutes into the tune. His solo builds slowly on a foundation consisting of a closed hi-hat, which keeps the rhythmic pulse beating throughout. A maelstrom of swirling tom-toms gives way to crescendoing press rolls, machine-gun-like snare drum salvos, and waves of crashing cymbals. The tune ends with a reprise of the opening horn fanfare before a final barrage of drums climaxes the song on an explosive high.

A pulsating piece of hard bop After the ear-shattering percussion pyrotechnics of “Bu’s Delight,” Wayne Shorter’s “Reincarnation” sounds positively mellow by comparison even though it swings with a brisk but subtle groove driven by Jymie Merritt’s walking bass. The solos are commendable, especially Hubbard’s, which is characterized by an exuberant athleticism.

There’s more of a blues feel to “Shaky Jake,” an infectious slice of soul jazz by pianist Cedar Walton, which opens with a smooth, interlocking horn theme answered by a churchy piano phrase that recalls the call-and-response figures of the group’s classic 1958 tune “Moanin’.”

Buhaina’s Delight closes with “Moon River,” originally a reflective romantic ballad penned by composer Henry Mancini with lyricist Johnny Mercer for the soundtrack to Breakfast At Tiffany’s. It was a hit for R&B singer Jerry Butler in late 1961, but is most associated with crooner Andy Williams. The Messengers, however, liven it up: accelerating the tempo and transforming it into a pulsating piece of hard bop punctuated with attention-grabbing solos.

Presented in a memorable Francis Wolff-photographed front cover that depicted Blakey immersed in a billowing cloud of his own cigarette smoke, Buhaina’s Delight was undoubtedly one of The Jazz Messengers’ strongest albums of the 60s. It stayed true to the group’s “all for one, one for all” belief in the value of musicians working as a team for a common goal. Six decades on from its original release, it still delights