MOANIN/VINYLE COULEUR AUDIOPHILE

Description

With: Art Blakey (drums), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Benny Golson (tenor sax), Bobby Timmons (piano), Jymie Merritt (bass).
A figure of hard bop, a leader with a unique playing style and innovator at the heart of one of the most fruitful periods in music history, Art Blakey is not just a giant of jazz drumming. He is also a mentor who, by forming the Jazz Messengers collective with Horace Silver in the early 1950s, would pave the way for essential musicians: trumpeters Clifford Brown and Donald Byrd, pianist Chick Corea, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Of all the records from this essential group, "Moanin'" is undoubtedly the most emblematic of a sound that has become the matrix of modern jazz. For in the unison themes of Benny Golson and Lee Morgan, the churchy piano of Bobby Timmons, the feline bass lines of Jymie Merritt, and the drumming as huge as an orchestra of percussion or the swing of Art Blakey's cymbal playing, there is more than the mark of a great group; it is the very essence of the golden age of jazz.