Landmark Jazz Album 27: Art Blakey - Moanin' (Blue Note)

Blakey (d), Lee Morgan (t), Benny Golson (ts), Bobby Timmons (p) and Jymie Merritt (b). Rec. 1958

Blakey was in on the ground floor when it came to the evolution of hard bop into soul jazz, having co-led the first Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver back in 1956. By 1958 he’d gone through a number of versions of the band, with this becoming the blueprint version for the next half a decade. With Benny Golson and Bobby Timmons supplying hard bop anthems such as the title tune, ‘Along Came Betty’ and ‘Blues March’, and the front line soloists refining their long, elaborate post-bop lines into the shorter and more pithy soul-based hard bop lines of the late 1950s, this Blakey band, and this Blakey album, defined soul jazz. (KS)