Art Blakey remains high on the list of the greatest drummer-bandleaders, a claim that’s given solid support by the star-studded Jazz Messengers album Caravan. Originally released by the Riverside label in 1962 and featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Cedar Walton, and bassist Reggie Workman, the album’s hard bop thrust is streamlined but sturdy with Blakey leading the charge. It’s out on 180 gram vinyl March 1 as part of Craft Recordings’ Original Jazz Classics reissue series.
By 1963, when Caravan was released, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were no longer on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz. Key to the development of hard bop, the band that Blakey led throughout its existence (until his death in 1990) didn’t waver stylistically. Instead, the Messengers existed as a platform where promising young talent matured into greatness.
The lineup for this album is particularly stacked, and was productive, cutting three LPs for Riverside (Caravan, Ugetsu, and Kyoto) and one for Blue Note (Free for All), plus one for Colpix (Golden Boy) with an expanded lineup that added James Spaulding on alto, Charles Davis on baritone, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Julius Watkins on French horn, and Bill Barber on tuba.
Blakey’s hard bop allegiance extended to his non-Jazz Messengers albums as leader and across his extensive work as a sideman, which extended back to the dawn of the ’50s in connection with the initial bebop wave, supporting saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt, trumpeters Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk.
Blakey’s unswerving progress on the straight-ahead route inspired some griping during the flourishing of the avant-garde, notably from Amiri Baraka (then writing as Leroi Jones), but this sort of verbal friction between innovators and traditionalists (and their partisans) wasn’t unusual. The reality in retrospect is that to expect Blakey to play any way other than how he preferred was an unreasonable demand (the critic’s job isn’t to tell people how to create art but to evaluate the results).
The success rate of the Messengers through a gradual progression of lineups from 1956–’65 remains one of the more striking achievements in Modern Jazz. In 1962 bassist Jymie Merritt left the band to be replaced by Workman, setting into motion the distinct sextet heard on Caravan, which was Blakey’s debut as a leader for Riverside.
Of all the variations of personnel (there was much overlap and some returning members), this grouping is amongst the most impressive, for the horn players alone. Of the three, Hubbard could be considered the highest of profile, Shorter the up and comer, and Fuller a behemoth on the trombone (at the point of this recording, he’d chalked up the largest discography as a leader of the bunch plus a massive number of sideman dates including Coltrane’s Blue Train). Like Shorter, Walton and Workman were both talents on the rise with long careers in store, but neither were green on the vine.
The band comes on strong throughout the set, but it’s initially Blakey himself alone out front on the opening title track (a distinctive reimagining of the Juan Tizol composition long associated with Duke Ellington), the drum master exhibiting a bit of the showmanship (okay, more than a bit) that links him to the pre-bop kit bangers of yore.
In short order, the band swings in, but Blakey’s never far from the spotlight, interjecting bursts of drum thunder (but expressive) throughout. The concise horn solos (in a nearly ten-minute piece), first Hubbard, clean and bright, then Shorter, tough and edgy, then Fuller, energetic but with clarity and poise, bring the necessary verve and depth to elevate the whole beyond a mere exercise in form. It’s much more than a platform for Blakey’s frontman skills (after the opener, he settles back considerably).
Heightening the hard bop execution amid the sheer professionalism was Blakey’s consistent trick, and he pulled it off in part by keeping his players engaged. Shorter brings two compositions here, “Sweet ‘n’ Sour” and “This Is for Albert,” both substantial vessels of straight-ahead expressiveness very much of the moment and not a nanosecond behind the times. Hubbard brings his tune “Thermo,” Caravan’s closer and a dynamic launching pad for the trumpeter as he blows like he’s first in line for Dizzy’s throne.
The set is completed with two standards in the ballad mode, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and “Skylark,” both astute choices as the former was introduced less than a decade before on Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours and the latter is a Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael number. Both are distinguished by the engaging warmth in Hubbard’s playing (especially “Skylark”) and a general avoidance of cliché from across the instrumental spectrum.
Caravan comes off so seamlessly that it can be mistakenly considered risk-averse. But no, these cats just make it sound like it’s easy (for them). While this LP doesn’t represent the apex of the Jazz Messengers’ output, it’s certainly one of the stronger album’s Art Blakey ever thumped the tubs on. Hard bop fans will not want to do without it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
