BLP 4156

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - The Freedom Rider

Released - February 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 18, 1961
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.12 Petty Larceny

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 27, 1961
Lee Morgan, trumpet #2-4; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax #2-4; Bobby Timmons, piano #2-4; Jymie Merritt, bass #2-4; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.6 The Freedom Rider
tk.7 Tell It Like It Is
tk.13 El Toro
tk.19 Blue Lace

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Tell It Like It Is	Wayne Shorter	May 27 1961
The Freedom Rider	Art Blakey	May 27 1961
Side Two
El Toro	Wayne Shorter	May 27 1961
Petty Larceny	Lee Morgan	May 27 1961
Blue Lace	Lee Morgan	May 27 1961

Liner Notes

If I were given Art Blakey’s name in a free association test, I expect the two qualities which would first come to mind - aside from his being a drummer - are youth and fire. Linking Blakey and youth is a two-fold equation. There is, first of all, the fact that Art himself remains so youthful in his enthusiasms, his stamina, and in his ceaseless exploration of new ways of speaking his message on the drums and through his combo. Secondly, Blakey has persistently and deliberately associated himself with youth. As he told a journalist in Japan a couple of years ago, “I pick young musicians and I never hold them back. If they want to play something or write something, although it may seem strange to me, I’ll go along with it. And we end up with good music.”

Fire, of course, is the very essence of Art’s playing. “The most important thing about a jazz drummer,” he has said, “is that he is put there as the stoker for the furnace. He’s got to be the fire, and it must swing.” I have never heard a Blakey performance that was either tepid in mood or unswinging. In listening to his records, furthermore, I often try to concentrate during repeated playings on what he’s doing behind the soloists. The experience is fascinating and always reveals new surprises.

It is the combination of youthfulness and fire which sets the tone for this bristling set by the Jazz Messengers and for the remarkable drum solo, The Freedom Rider. The latter illustrates how Blakey's intensity reaches out to absorb climactic present history; because The Freedom Rider, recorded, as was the rest of this date on May 27, 1961, represents Art’s immediate reaction to the explosive growth of the civil rights movement at that time and since.

The Messengers during this period were among Art’s most electric units. Lee Morgan, jaunty, irrepressible, and then only 22, had been with Blakey since September, 1958, after having achieved international recognition through his cracklingly powerful work with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. Wayne Shorter, 27 at the time of the recording, had been with Blakey since 1959 and was developing an impressive reputation as a composer as well as an improviser. Bobby Timmons, who had figured prominently in the “soul” movement, was 25 and had rejoined Blakey after a stay with Cannonball Adderley. James (Jymie) Merritt, was 35 and had joined the Messengers at the end of 1958.

This edition of the Jazz Messengers was not only musically well integrated, but had - in Shorter, Morgan and Timmons - three resident composers so that the repertory was also kept freshly in flux. On this date, Shorter and Morgan are represented as writers, and the prodigious drum solo is the conception of the leader himself.

Tell It Like It Is is by Shorter and is characterized by a loping line that is perfectly suited to relaxed improvising. Morgan’s solo demonstrates the unusual power and technical assurance the youngster already possessed. Also present are his feel for dynamics, his nimble imagination and his capacity to build steadily through a tier of emotional climaxes. Shorter’s authoritative opening and the subsequent orderliness and intensity of his solo recalls LeRoi Jones’ description of his work in the November, 1959, Jazz Review: “Everything that comes out of the horn seems... definite and assimilated, no matter how wild or unlikely it might sound at first.” By contrast with Morgan’s incisive drive and Shorter’s burning intentness, there follows the more amiably rollicking but no less pulsating statement of Bobby Timmons. Then, the ensemble, stoked by Blakey, brings back the theme to a definitive conclusion.

To set The Freedom Rider in historical and emotional context, the first wave of sit-ins by Southern Negro students had begun in February, 1960. They spread throughout the South, desegregating lunch counter facilities in 126 cities by the end of that year. In the spring of 1961, the Supreme Court declared that discrimination against interstate travelers in bus terminal restaurants was illegal. To test the decision, CORE initiated an integrated Freedom Ride through the South. On May 4, thirteen freedom riders - seven Negro and six white - set off on a bus for New Orleans. They experienced minor difficulties in Virginia, but in Alabama, where they had split into two buses, a mob near Anniston destroyed one of the buses with an incendiary bomb, almost killing the passengers. The other bus went onto Birmingham where its passengers were savagely beaten by another mob.

Hundreds more Freedom Riders poured into the South until the Inter-State Commission issued an order taking effect on November 1, 1961, which implemented the Supreme Court ruling with specific instructions and penalties.

At the time of this recording, however, the battle of the bus terminals had not been won, and there was a feeling of impregnable determination among civil rights actionists to send Freedom Riders into the South until all the jails were filled - if that were necessary to end segregation of interstate travelers. In his absorbing, deeply personal solo, Art Blakey conjures up the whirlpool of emotions at that time - the winds of change sweeping the country, the resistance to that change, and the pervasive conviction of the Freedom Riders that “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

Hearing this solo illuminated a comment Blakey had made in England some two weeks before his recording session. “A drum,” he had told Max Jones of the Melody Maker, “moves the soul, man. It’s not just an instrument to keep time with... A drummer should get inside his drums.” Here, obviously, Blakey is indeed inside the drums in an insistent commentary on the molten nature of and the implications of the Freedom Rides. He utilizes his formidable technical knowledge to make his emotional points multiply clear. The solo swarms with defiance of racism and pride in the persistence of “the movement” to end segregation through mass, direct action.

Wayne Shorter’s El Toro is tinged with Latin-American colors, but at base, it’s a full-strength set of jazz variations. The combined logic and daring of Shorter’s work here and elsewhere in the album reminded me of what pianist Jimmy Rowles once said: “If I put the needle on one of Wayne’s records around bedtime I’m lost. I just can’t stop listening. He swirls around the room like a kite.” Lee Morgan follows, and again, his playing is marked by a biting definiteness, a fusion of technique and conception which is unusually well developed for one so young. Listen, incidentally, to Blakey behind Timmons’ solo - to the way in which he keeps the beat alive so forcefully and yet without at all overwhelming the pianist. In the exchanges, moreover, between Morgan and Shorter, Blakey punctuates with deft and enlivening accuracy.

Lee Morgan's Petty Larceny has the cadence of Lee himself, as he was in those days - lean, hip, confident, mocking. His solo documents another element of his playing - his ability to dig in and “say something" immediately. He rarely had to warm up on rhetoric when he improvised. The ideas came out in clear, spiraling order as soon as he began to blow. Shorter also blends discipline with ardor while, as always, Blakey keeps the furnace aglow.

The final Blue Lace is also by Morgan. Somewhat more intricate in line than the other themes with horns, it too leads to a free flowing series of individualistically expressive solos which are organically interrelated into the emblems of youth and fire which have identified each edition of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. And for all the blistering drive and occasional ferocity in Art Blakey’s music, there is at its foundation a search for a broad fulness of feeling - lyrical as well as militant.

“To hear a cymbal ringing in rhythm,” Blakey has said, “to hear good snare drum playing - it’s a beautiful thing. If you listen, a big cymbal can sound like violins. To me, anyway.” I’m not sure I ever heard violins in Art Blakey’s drumming, but I do know I hear the emotions of a wholly alive musician, a man whose jazz is continually in ferment because he’s always discovering new things about music - and about himself.

- NAT HENTOFF

75th Anniversary Edition CD Notes

The great edition of the Jazz Messengers populated by art Blakey, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt recorded prolifically for Blue Note between March 1960 and May 1961. "The Freedom Rider" was the first of four albums of previously unissued material that came out later in the '60s.

Four of the five selections came from the quintet's final Blue Note date of May 27, 1961, while Lee Morgan's "Petty Larceny" comes from February 18. His "Uptight" from the May 27 session is added as a bonus track as are his "Pisces" and Kenny Dorham's "Blue Ching" both of which are from February 12.

The tour de force here is Art Blakey's dramatic, unaccompanied drum solo, titled for the Freedom Riders who began earlier that same month to take buses with integrated passengers into Southern states where segregation was the law.

This band was working consistently and getting stronger as a unit. Morgan and Shorter consistently were writing and bringing excellent new material to the band. Bobby Timmons was equally strong as a composer, his output was smaller and slow in coming. Much of this work is reflected in this album as well as later releases like "Like Someone in Love," "The Witch Doctor," and "Roots 'N Herbs."

Ironically, this album was issued in February 1964 when the Jazz Messengers came back to Blue Note and recorded "Free For All."

- MICHAEL CUSCUNA