Free For All (1964) — Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers

Listening

This album can, once again, be found for free on the web! Listen to Free For All @ Myspace Music. If that doesn’t work for you (Myspace sometimes requires internet plugins), you can at least hear the title track on imeem.

Nitty Gritty (Reference Section)

Recorded February 10, 1964. Line-up: Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Cedar Walton (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), Art Blakey (drums and leader). Workman is credited on the album cover as Reginald Workman. I don’t know how common or uncommon that is, but it’s the only time I’ve seen his name given that way. What a strange change of character that name creates!

It should be noted that none of the compositions on this album are by Blakey (they rarely are). The first two tracks are written by Wayne Shorter. The third is by Freddie Hubbard. The fourth is a Hubbard arrangement of an existing song (by Clare Fischer).

Personal Connections

The primary reason for chosing this album this week was that I didn’t know it that well. There are, however, a few reasons that I was particularly interested in getting to know it. First off, Blakey is a musician I’ve always wished I knew better.

Wait! this point can be made clear with some visual aids!

and, because this shot of him cracks me up:

Okay, now do you see why I’ve always been eager to get to know this guy better?

Anyways, I’ve had a bunch of Blakey albums for a while and haven’t really given any of them their fair due. I’ve listened to them each once or twice, but none of them really stood out for me. Everybody talks about and loves Blakey, though, so I was curious to figure out what the story was!

Also, there aren’t all that many drummers who are also bandleaders in the jazz idiom. Blakey is definitely the most famous of them, although Gene Krupa and Chick Webb also come to mind. It sort of comes with the territory (as a bassist) to spend most of my time listening to the drums on a track. I feel like most people, though, need to spend more time getting familiar with the drum parts, as it is easy for them to fade into the background. So, the idea of a drummer who is the focus of the band (in some ways) is really exciting for me.

Finally, with regards to this specific album, I selected it (as usual, I suppose) based on recommendation from my friend and jazz guide, Caleb. In light of my thinking about Blakey this week, Caleb and I had a conversation about him a few days ago. Although I had had a different Blakey album in mind originally, Caleb pointed me towards this one. Listening to the title track confirmed that this was indeed the way for me to get into Blakey!

The Fire

From the mid-50s until the 80s, Art Blakey led a band called The Jazz Messengers. The band served as a jazz school or apprenticeship of sorts. Many rising jazz greats cut their teeth with the band: Keith Jarrett, Mulgrew Miller, Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson, Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Curtis Fuller, Robin Eubanks, Wilbur Ware, Reggie Workman, Wynton & Branford Marsalis, to name a handful.

Blakey’s playing is often described as intense and fiery. From the little of his work I knew, I never had understood what that all meant. An example of a track of his that I knew really well was Moanin’ (1958), which you can hear on YouTube. I always liked the song, but I didn’t really understand what was so special about Art Blakey. These aspects of his playing became clear to me, however, when listening to Free For All (the album, but the title track in particular). It is audible to me that Blakey is leading the band in a way that it had never been before. He is more than just the foundation—he is pulling the other musicians along (in intensity, not in speed), and generating a great deal of force in the process. When the heat is mounting during a solo by one of the lead players, Blakey says more than “I’ve got you” (which is what many good drummers sound like to me). Pulling harder than a simple “I’ve got you”, Blakey seems to be making an offering of energy to the player: “Hey, take this”.

Another element of Blakey’s playing that I think people have in mind when they describe him as fiery is the extreme precision with which he approaches his instrument. For me, this is one of the things that separates good players from mediocre ones, and I’ve found it to be true in my work in the theater as well. In the last month or so, I have been to two theater workshops thrown by well-established Philly-based ensembles (Quinn Bauriedel with Pig Iron and Whit McLaughlin with New Paradise Labs). Both of them used different vocabulary to describe this precision, but both of them certainly made it a focus of the work in some way. Whit used a useful image of the mind darting around the body, constantly checking in with and invigorating every square inch of the body. This is what I hear in Blakey’s playing. His mind and ear are whizzing rapidly around his instrument (both his drum kit and his band at large). This, for me, is what connects Blakey’s playing on Moanin (where I can’t hear his playing as “fiery”, per se) to Free For All. To borrow Quinn’s vocabulary, the two tracks are at different levels of tension, but each of them is performed with extreme precision.

Because the heat is so high on so much of this album, it was a really useful way for me to get a sense of what makes Blakey’s playing special. For me, I can totally enjoy myself listening only to the interplay between Blakey and Walton (piano) as they cook through some of these numbers (Free For All and The Core in particular). The way that they feed one other’s fire is simply exciting.

The Lead Players

The first thing that stands out to me about the lead players is that there are three of them: a trumpet, a tenor sax, and a trombone. Together, they form a choir of sorts. The sextet format in jazz isn’t all that common (the septet being the sort of default configuration, and quartets and trios both being more common than sextets). The written arrangements put this instrumentation to good use, switching from unisons to harmonies in the heads (the composed parts) of the tunes. Listen for example to the head of Free For All (which begins after a short introduction, at around 0:18 and finishes around 0:51). I love how at 0:35, the texture gets stripped down suddenly to a unison melody for a few measures. Then, with the chord at the end of that phrase (at about 0:41), the harmony leaps out, and continues through the second phrase of this section (which is, aside from the addition of the harmony, almost identical to the previous phrase). The moment that begins this (at 0:35) feels like that instant when that big chunk of gook the vacuum cleaner has been struggling with finally gets sucked up and shot into the body of the vacuum.

Another great use of the horn trio is during the head of Hammer Head. For me, the chord sounded at 0:09 (as well as future repetitions of this section) is comically ugly. It has such a clear character for me—snarky, saucy, and rude, like a young boy sticking his tongue out at you or something.

Now, there is something else worth mentioning about the horn players (and, I promise, this will lead us to your assignment for the week, and then we’ll be finished). The truth is, when the playing on this album gets fiery, Blakey isn’t the only one to blame. And I’ll admit that there’s even more to it than the play between Blakey on drums and Walton on piano.

(For those of you interested in Workman’s contribution, and why I seem to be leaving out the bassist… he does do a lot that is interesting on this album to help build the energy. In particular, he spends a lot of time “pedaling”, or just playing the same note over and over again in an insistent rhythm to build the tension. I wish his volume was a bit louder so that we could fully appreciate all of what he does on the album. Truthfully, I bet that his impact on the recording session was much bigger than we are able to discern from listening to the record. The bass just lacks power at this volume.)

Yes, it’s true, the horn soloists do some pretty incredible things in their playing as well! A favorite set of moments for me are back-to-back in Wayne Shorter’s solo on The Core: the first beginning at 2:00 and the second following immediately after (beginning at 2:10). Another favorite part is at 3:18 on the same track, when Shorter brings in the figure from the melody of the song (also used as a background figure by the other horns during the solos). I love it when jazz musicians bring in familiar figures to keep us from feeling lost at sea.

Another favorite moment for me is during Freddie Hubbard’s solo on Free For All, at 7:34. Okay, it’s true that it doesn’t take much to please me. I love the sound of a horn player hammering away at a note, pleading with it and screaming it. It is an easy technique to abuse, for sure, and it doesn’t work unless the energy has been merited—building up in the work of the rhythm section and the soloist leading up to the climax. But when it all comes together well, it feels so intense for me.

There is so much that I’ve left out this week, in particular with regards to this last section (i.e. the work of the horn players during moments of high intensity and energy). A million examples could be found. I encourage you to spend some time with the album, finding moments that stand out to you. Moments where the whole band is cooking together. Where they are kicking one another in the butt with their playing. Pushing themselves and each other to new extremes. There’s a ton here, and I hope you enjoy finding it.

Bonus

For those of you who listened to the Ella stuff last week, I thought I’d post this little tidbit. This is an example of her work that I had been familiar with before learning the Harold Arlen songbook last week. There is another recording of her singing How High The Moon more famous than this one, but I think this makes the point pretty clearly. Not much needs to be said about it. She is brilliant! (too bad the video is not synced with the audio). Hope you enjoy it! How High The Moon @ YouTube.

Thanks again for reading!

Dan