Museum Musica

USA, 1962, hard bop

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Mosaic: This one is me trying to branch out more into the other kinds of jazz that came before my best beloved jazz fusion. I’m warming up to hard bop, and I’m starting to recognize names and their attendant sounds, like Hubbard and Shorter. Whee! Blakey is a new name for me, though, so let’s dive in and give this one a good listen… what impresses my untrained ears most is the interplay among the trumpet, tenor sax, and trombone—and that’s clearly no mistake, since they are the three composers of this album. It’s like a conversation among old friends, one of mutual support, where one friend will finish another’s sentence, for they are so close they can almost read one another’s thoughts. I just feel like the horns are agreeing with one another.