Art Blakey happens to be one of the few older jazz musicians whom I sought out. Early on, my Pops exposed me to most of the jazz greats, but he kinda had this thing against Blakey. If there was a Mount Rushmore for jazz drumming, Blakey – along with Max Roach, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette and Elvin Jones – would be on it. You’d think Pops would have introduced me to Blakey’s music the same way he did these other legends. But during a recent discussion, Pops revealed that he always felt Blakey drummed “old”. By the time Pops was a teen, drummers like Williams, DeJohnette, Elvin, Billy Cobham and other kats had come through and reinvented jazz drumming. If you let Pops tell it, they left Blakey behind. I figured, however, that I’d see for myself; so when I began my personal jazz collection some years ago, I made it an immediate mission to kop the bulk of Blakey’s discography. My verdict was much different than Pops’.

It’s important to note that Blakey had almost as profound of an impact on jazz as any musician. He started The Jazz Messengers in the early 50s and continued touring until his death in 1990. Throughout those years, the Messengers roster was a revolving door of young musicians (still reaching their prime) who Blakey would hand pick every few years. During those 40 years, almost every great musician served a stint with the Jazz Messengers – literally. Wayne Shorter, Woody Shaw, Terrance Blanchard, Mulgrew Miller, Wynton Marsalis, Cedar Walton, Lonnie Plaxico – the list goes on. The band is often referred to as the real school of jazz (a veiled slap at Julliard). Musicians went to Julliard to get classically trained, but the true schooling came on the road, gigging with Poppa Art.

I spent countless train rides and evenings on the futon digesting the Blakey discography (A Night in Tunisia, Free for All, Moanin’, Ughetsu, Caravan) and it was crazy compelling to hear all these musicians basically growing up in Blakey’s bands.

My favorite Blakey album, though, is playing on your computer right now. Child’s Dance dropped in 1972 right as jazz fusion (a genre of jazz heavily fused with rock, funk and R&B) really started rolling. Fusion wasn’t Blakey’s thing, however. He was a straight ahead dude – bluesy, churchy and swinging as hard as he could. So to hear things like George Cables playing an electric piano or young Stanley Clark laying down a groove on “Kaku Aka” or Ramon Morris on flute blowing the melody to a Flora Purim tune, meant a clear departure from how Blakey historically got down. Yet, it worked. Art was well into his fifties, but stayed young through his apprentice musicians (late-great trumpeter Woody Shaw, just 28 years old on Dance, can be heard here already having mastered his distinct wide-open sound). When I played it for Pops not too long ago, he dug it hard, surprised that Blakey had made an album that sounded this contemporary. That’s the thing about Blakey. Perhaps his greatest quality was the freedom he gave to the young musicians he cycled through the Messengers. This particular set featured Blakey letting some of that particular generation’s great musicians (namely Shaw, Clarke and Cables) take the band’s music down a seldom-traveled path for a Messengers band. And it worked. Beautifully.