BLP 4015

Art Blakey - At the Jazz Corner of the World - Volume 1 

Released - August 1959

Recording and Session Information

"Birdland", NYC, April 15, 1959
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums; Pee Wee Marquette, announcer.

Pee Wee Marquette's intro
Just Coolin'
The Theme (short version)
Close Your Eyes
Hipsippy Blues
Justice (aka Evidence)

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Hipsippy Blues	Hank Mobley	15/04/1959
Justice	Thelonious Monk	15/04/1959
The Theme	Traditional	15/04/1959
Side Two
Close Your Eyes"	Bernice Petkere	15/04/1959
Just Coolin'	Hank Mobley	15/04/1959

Liner Notes

ART BLAKEY and his various but unvaryingly persuasive quintets have brought their message to the millions, these past five years, through an impressive variety of channels: at jazz concerts and festivals, in night clubs from Birdland to the Club St. Germain in Paris, as well as through the media of motion pictures, theatres and records.

Much of their most effective and enduring work has combined two of these media by committing a night club presentation to tape. This is a policy that has brought success to both Blakey and Blue Note on several earlier occasions. It was just over five years ago, before the Jazz Messengers as such got under way, that Art and his group, then including the late Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson, were heard in A Night at Birdland (Blue Note 1521 and 1522). The Messengers at Cafe Bohemia (1507 and 1508) offered Blakey with Horace Silver and Kenny Dorham; thus the present pair of LPs marks the third series combining the attractions of a Blakey Quintet, a night club and a Blue Note release. (Blue Note has also carried its microphones to a variety of other clubs from the Baby Grand in Wilmington, with Jimmy Smith in the spotlight, to the Village Vanguard, Smalls and the Hickory House in New York.)

With this set, Blue Note returns to “the jazz corner of the world” for an extended inspection of the combustible and invigorating sounds disseminated by the latest Blakey fivesome.

Volume 1

The club’s emcee, Pee-Wee Marquette, long a fixture and a favorite with the public, inaugurates the session with a spirited announcement. The band kicks off Hank Mobley’s Hipsippy, a minor-mode blues using the intriguing staccato effects now common to many compositions by the hard bop groups. After Hank’s funky solo comes an engaging performance by Lee Morgan, who seems still to be improving with age (he is now a venerable 21). Lee, for all his formidable technique, has learned the uses of simplicity, as can be deduced from the opening of his solo here; and of continuity, as when an idea started out as the end of one chorus is carried over and extended into the next. Bobby Timmons, who comps so funkily under Lee, soon emerges for his own movingly brisk solo.

A brief percussion statement by Blakey leads into Justice, the Thelonious Monk tune. This is usually performed, as here, with the melody outlined by the horns while the rhythm is implied rather than stated. This was a big hit at one of Art’s Apollo Theatre appearances a few months ago. Here Lee is a little more technical than on Hipsippy; at times he will take an apparently simple group of notes, toy with them, change the rhythmic arrangement, then burst out of the fixation into a sudden flurry of eighth notes. What emerges is a solo that is both logical and intensely hot, a quality still desirable and inevitable in much of the best of modern jazz. Throughout the Timmons solo, Merritt’s nimble walking bass chorus and Blakey’s cooking with sticks and snare (with fascinating triplet effects toward the end), this is a muscular and unflaggingly passionate performance.

The Theme, as we have mentioned previously, is a tune of much-disputed origin that has had several titles and, like Monk’s old 52nd Street Theme, is a standard set-closer for many bop and hard bop combos. Pee-Wee Marquette comes in over the piano solo with his usual set-closing applause plea. The theme modulates up unexpectedly and Lee kids around by glissing notes that you expect to hear played straight.

After Art’s advice to the customers to forget their troubles and enjoy the music, the second side opens with the old ballad Close Your Eyes. The opening, at medium tempo, leads into the theme gently with the horns repeating a riff and Timmons filling. Notice how Lee blithely “puts on” the melody in the first release. On his solo here the timbre and phrasing are mature and the element of humor persists. Mobley is legato and sturdy in a style that is perhaps more fashionable and better accepted now than when he began to develop it almost a decade ago. Timmons has here what I believe is his finest solo on this LP - a performance that builds consciously and carefully in its impact and intensity.

Art introduces Just Coolin’, a Hank Mobley tune first heard on a 10-inch Mobley Blue Note LP. The medium-bright 32-bar tune is based on both rhythmic and harmonic suspensions. Worth noting here is the economic and resourceful use of both unison and two-part voicing in the short ensembles before solos by Lee and Hank. Dramatically effective, too, is the somewhat unexpected unison end on the tonic.

Volume 2

Art gives Ray Bryant verbal credit as a composer before taking off on Ray’s delightful Chicken an’ Dumplins. This is one of two compositions played by the Blakey group (the other being Hipsippy) now being worked on for choreographic interpretation by the Ruth Walton dancers, who made such striking use at the Apollo of the quintet’s Moanin’ (as played on Blue Note 4003). After the initial Jymie Merritt bass statement, the “home-cooking” mood is set with a minor riff tune that enable Hank to sink comfortably into the cushion of its funky chords. There is a churchy, Ray Charles-like mood here, even in Lee’s half valve effects (at times, too, Lee reminds us surprisingly of Clark Terry on this track) and in the Ray Bryantesque piano of Timmons. In a sense this tune is a modern counterpart of the old Savoy Ballroom favorite Christopher Columbus.

M & M (for Mobley and Morgan, and composed by the former) is a simple tune on basic changes. Mobley, then Lee, can be heard in stimulatingly assertive melodic lines. This is the kind of up tempo at which Art’s backing contributes most impressively behind the horn solos. Timmons, too, meets the challenge of the tempo with a technically remarkable and rhythmically aggressive solo line. The closing ensemble is preceded by a chorus of eights and a chorus of fours between Lee, Art and Hank.

Hi-Fly will be familiar to those who heard its composer, Randy Weston, introduce it at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, or on the Weston LP recorded there. Arranged by Melba Liston for the Blakey group, it has a deceptively simple melody based on fifths, with an inventive harmonic underline. Lee and Hank are both a little more restrained than usual; Bobby’s solo is somewhat Bud-like. In the ensuing ensemble, Art’s little fills are amusingly understated. A rubato interlude with Mobley and Morgan brings a return in true ballad mood to the brief reprise of the melody.

Pee-Wee Marquette brings on the band again, and now we are treated to a full-length treatment of The Theme, played a trifle slower than usual. During Lee’s long solo, note the superb rhythmic effects in the first eight measures of his fourth chorus; and on Hank’s passage, the second eight bars of the third chorus introduce some delightful harmonic variations. Timmons cooks persuasively on a lengthy workout, joined by the horns for one of his choruses.

Art’s Revelation is a composition by Gildo Mahones, best remembered as the pianist with the late Lester Young’s quintet. A minor theme, it has something of a Hebraic quality in the smooth quarter notes and appogiatura in the main phrase. Bucking a tempo that might be considered rough on most bassists, a strong and consistent pulse from Jymie Merritt can be heard throughout. (Even tapping your feet at this tempo is no cinch.) In Blakey’s solo, values to watch for include his cleverly graduated use of the foot pedal and top cymbal, the diabolical inventiveness of his ever-changing cross-rhythms, and the straight hi-hat beat that runs through it all.

Two afterthoughts: those who are able to do so will certainly wish to take advantage of the fact that both these albums are available in stereophonic sound (BST 84015 and 84016) . The recording quality, though excellent monophonically, brings out the liveliness and excitement of the in-person performance even more fully in stereo.

Second, I believe the cover photograph by Francis Wolff deserves a special honorable mention. Frank too often has been taken for granted, though his camerawork for many Blue Note albums has contributed much to the overall artistic value of the packages. The montage and double-exposure effects are combined on this cover to create a stirring impression of New York’s Broadway.

It would be asking a great deal of Art Blakey to expect of him that each group he forms be better than the last. Anyone with Art’s record for introducing sidemen of the caliber of Horace Silver and Clifford Brown can consider himself lucky even to maintain, with subsequent personnels, a steadily high level of performance. That his 1959 quintet combines all the essential hard-swinging qualities of his earlier groups is a remarkable achievement in itself, and it seems to me that this evidence gathered at “the jazz corner of the world” presents the case for his current line-up as convincingly as could possibly be desired.

- LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Alfred Lion of Blue Note extends special thanks to Oscar Goodstein, the club's manager, whose genial cooperation made this recording session possible.

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