Art Blakey demanded bravado from his bands, and this one was perhaps his most intense and adventurous.
Debuting here on Riverside, Caravan opens with Blakey's audacious drum solo - then moves quickly into an assertive and simply awe-inspiring take on a track once defined by Duke Ellington. A muscular trio of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bone player Curtis Fuller and saxophonist Wayne Shorter -- swelling the Jazz Messengers to sextet status for the first time ever — clear the way for a impish signature by pianist Cedar Walton, then encircle the tune in ways both inventive and familiar.
If this album ended at the 9:44 mark, when Caravan concludes, it would still be one for the ages. But they were just getting started, quite literally.
Shorter, by then the veteran of the group, completely inhabits that role, offering new compositions in "Sweet n' Sour" and the harmonically challenging "This is for Albert" that anchor both sides of this record. A surprise among two other cover tunes is "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," which softens the familiar, driving Blakey sound with a touch of welcome romanticism - courtesy of Fuller's warm and inviting work on the trombone.
Leave it to Hubbard to finish things on an appropriate note - burning down the house on the set closing, and appropriately named, "Thermo."
Blakey, who was all about thermo, helped shape the 1950s reaction to the languid and occasionally featureless West Coast jazz - something Miles Davis launched with Birth of the Cool, then almost immediately distanced himself from as it began to become both pervasive and then moribund.
Hard bop, with Blakey as its champion, helped steer the music back into its African root system - as did the subsequent, far more commercial soul jazz movement. Both had, at their center, a basis in the blues, best heard on the records of soul jazz stars like Jimmy Smith and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. Hard bop took the blues, though, and built a entirely different structure on top of it.
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