Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.

Blakey became well-known in the 1940s for playing in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He later worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey created The Jazz Messengers, a group that Blakey led for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a team of experienced musicians, but over time, it became known for helping young musicians grow and develop their skills. Some of the notable musicians who joined the group include Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz describes The Jazz Messengers as "the typical hard bop group of the late 1950s."

Blakey was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1981. After his death, he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and 2001. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Early life and education

Blakey was born on October 11, 1919, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He likely had a single mother who passed away shortly after his birth. Her name is often given as Marie Roddicker or Roddericker, though Blakey’s 1937 marriage license lists her maiden name as Jackson. His biological father was Bertram Thomas Blakey, originally from Ozark, Alabama. His family moved north to Pittsburgh between 1900 and 1910. Blakey’s uncle, Rubi Blakey, was a well-known Pittsburgh singer, choral leader, and teacher who studied at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Blakey was raised by a family friend who acted as a mother figure. According to Leslie Gourse’s biography, this friend was Annie Parran and her husband, Henry Parran Sr. Family and friends, as well as Blakey himself, share differing accounts of how long he lived with the Parran family. However, it is clear he spent some time with them during his childhood.

Blakey received piano lessons at school and also taught himself to play the piano.

Career

By the time he was in seventh grade, Blakey was playing music full-time and had started taking on adult responsibilities, like playing the piano to earn money and learning how to lead a band.

He switched from piano to drums at an uncertain time in the early 1930s. One story says a club owner forced him at gunpoint to move from piano to drums so that Erroll Garner could play piano. However, this story is questioned in a biography, as Blakey shared other accounts. The style he used on drums was similar to that of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett, and Ray Bauduc.

From 1939 to 1944, Blakey played with Mary Lou Williams, a fellow Pittsburgh native, and toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. Most sources agree he traveled to New York with Williams in 1942 before joining Henderson in 1943. Some accounts say he joined Henderson as early as 1939. While with Henderson, Blakey was attacked by a white Georgia police officer without cause, which required a steel plate to be placed in his head. These injuries made him unfit to serve in World War II. He later led his own band at the Tic Toc Club in Boston for a short time.

From 1944 to 1947, Blakey worked with Billy Eckstine’s big band. Through this band, Blakey became part of the bebop movement, along with musicians like Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan.

After the Eckstine band ended, Blakey said he traveled to Africa in 1947. He planned to stay for three months but stayed for two years to learn about the people and their drumming traditions. He later converted to Islam during this time, taking the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina and the nickname "Bu." However, he stopped practicing Islam in the 1950s and continued performing as "Art Blakey."

In the 1950s, Blakey played with musicians like Davis, Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. He is often seen as Monk’s most understanding drummer. Blakey played on Monk’s first recording session as a leader in 1947 and his last one in 1971. He also toured with Buddy DeFranco from 1951 to 1953 in a band that included Kenny Drew.

On December 17, 1947, Blakey led a group called "Art Blakey’s Messengers" in his first recording session as a leader for Blue Note Records. The records were released as 78 rpm records, and two songs were later included on a 10″ LP compilation. The group included Kenny Dorham, Sahib Shihab, Musa Kaleem, and Walter Bishop Jr.

Around the same time, Blakey led a big band called Seventeen Messengers. The band struggled financially and disbanded quickly. Later, Blakey and pianist Horace Silver co-led a group called the Jazz Messengers. The name was not used on their earliest recordings.

The "Jazz Messengers" name first appeared on a 1954 recording led by Silver, with Blakey, Hank Mobley, Dorham, and Doug Watkins. The same group recorded The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia the next year. Donald Byrd later replaced Dorham, and the group recorded an album called The Jazz Messengers for Columbia Records in 1956. When Silver left the band in 1955, Blakey took over the group name. The name eventually became "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers." Blakey led the group for the rest of his life.

The group was a key example of hard bop music in the 1950s, blending fast-paced bop with strong blues influences. Saxophonists Johnny Griffin and Benny Golson briefly joined the group in the late 1950s. Golson, as musical director, wrote jazz standards like "I Remember Clifford," "Along Came Betty," and "Blues March," which were later performed by other editions of the group. Other Golson compositions included "Whisper Not" and "Are You Real."

From 1959 to 1961, the group included tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Merritt. They recorded albums like The Big Beat and A Night in Tunisia for Blue Note Records. From 1961 to 1964, the band became a sextet, adding trombonist Curtis Fuller and replacing Morgan, Timmons, and Merritt with Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton, and Reggie Workman. The group became a place for young musicians to grow and recorded albums like Buhaina’s Delight, Caravan, and Free for All. Each version of the Messengers included new young players, and being part of the group was considered a major step in a jazz musician’s career.

Many members of the Jazz Messengers went on to become famous jazz musicians, including Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, Joanne Brackeen, Woody Shaw, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, and Mulgrew Miller.

Blakey continued to record with the Jazz Messengers, often working with new musicians. He once said, "I’m gonna stay with the youngsters. When these get too old, I’ll get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active." After the 1970s fusion era, the group’s popularity declined, but Blakey kept performing with new musicians like Terence Blanchard and Kenny Garrett.

He continued touring with the group until the end of the 1980s. In 1983, Ralph Peterson Jr. joined as a second drummer because Blakey’s health was declining. Blakey played with such intensity that he lost much of his hearing. He refused to wear hearing aids, claiming they affected his timing, and often played by sensing vibrations. Some bandmates said he exaggerated his hearing loss, as he could still hear clearly in one ear and quickly corrected mistakes during performances.

Blakey’s final performances were in July 1990.

Music style

Blakey adopted a strong and forceful swing style similar to other drummers of his time, including Chick Webb, Sid Catlett, and Ray Bauduc. He is recognized, along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, as one of the pioneers of the modern bebop style of drumming. Max Roach described him as follows:

Blakey’s drumming technique continued to use the traditional grip, although in later performances, he was also seen using a matched grip. During a 1973 drum battle with Ginger Baker, he was observed changing his grip multiple times throughout his performance.

According to materials from Ken Burns’s series Jazz, Blakey was a major figure in modern jazz and an important stylist in drumming. From his earliest recordings with Eckstine, and especially in his historic sessions with Monk in 1957, he showed strength and creativity. His playing featured a deep, dark sound from the cymbals, with frequent loud hits on the snare and bass drum in triplets or cross-rhythms. This source continues:

Personal life

Blakey had many interests beyond music. Jerry "Tiger" Pearson described him as a storyteller who enjoyed music, food, and boxing.

Blakey married four times and had many long-term relationships. His first wife was Clarice Stewart, whom he married as a teenager. Later, he married Diana Bates in 1956, Atsuko Nakamura in 1968, and Anne Arnold in 1983. From these relationships, he had 10 children: Gwendolyn, Evelyn, Jackie, Kadijah, Sakeena, Akira, Art Jr., Takashi, Kenji, and Gamal. Sandy Warren, a longtime friend, wrote a book about their time together in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Blakey lived in Northfield, New Jersey, with Warren and his son, Takashi.

In 1948, Blakey traveled to West Africa to learn about the culture and religion of Islam. He later adopted this faith and changed his name. This happened around the same time many African Americans were influenced by the Ahmadi missionary Kahili Ahmed Nasir, as noted in the Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History. At one point, Blakey led a jazz band called the 17 Messengers, which may have included only Muslim members, reflecting ideas about music and religion as ways to share spiritual messages. A friend said Blakey chose his faith on his own terms, explaining that Muslim imams would visit his home to pray and talk, and later, they would go to restaurants and eat together. Some believed his name change helped him avoid discrimination, as some African American musicians used Muslim names to access places that were not open to Black people.

Drummer Keith Hollis said Blakey struggled with drug use, particularly heroin, during his early career. Many musicians of that time faced similar challenges. Some accounts suggest Blakey influenced others in this area, though opinions vary.

Blakey avoided drinking alcohol while performing after being disciplined by drummer Sid Catlett early in his career. Later, he was inspired by Wynton Marsalis, a health-conscious musician, which led to a period where he was less affected by drugs during performances. Blakey smoked heavily, as seen in photos from the Buhaina's Delight album cover, where he appears surrounded by smoke. In a 1973 performance with Ginger Baker, Blakey lit a cigarette during a drumming competition.

Death

Blakey passed away at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in Manhattan on October 16, 1990, due to lung cancer. He was survived by nine children: Gwendolyn, Evelyn, Jackie, Sakeena, Kadijah, Akira, Takashi, Gamal, and Kenji.

At his funeral held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on October 22, 1990, a group of former Jazz Messengers, including Brian Lynch, Javon Jackson, Geoffrey Keezer, Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Valery Ponomarev, Benny Golson, Donald Harrison, Essiet Okon Essiet, and drummer Kenny Washington, performed several well-known songs from the band, such as Golson's "Along Came Betty," Bobby Timmons's "Moanin'," and Wayne Shorter's "One by One." Jackson, who was part of Blakey's last Jazz Messengers group, shared how his time with Blakey influenced his life, saying, "He taught me how to be a man. How to stand up and be accounted for." Musicians Jackie McLean, Ray Bryant, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach also honored Blakey at his funeral.

Legacy

Art Blakey and his bands left a lasting impact not only through the music they created but also by offering opportunities to many jazz musicians over several generations. The Jazz Messengers helped develop and inspired many important musicians in the hard bop movement of the late 1950s to early 1960s and in the neotraditionalist movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The Jazz Messengers played a key role in shaping the style of both movements. Drummer Cindy Blackman said shortly after Blakey's death, "When jazz was at risk of disappearing during the 1970s, there was still a scene. Art helped keep jazz alive." Blakey was added to the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982, the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Japanese video game music composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who created the soundtracks for Chrono and Xeno, said that Art Blakey was the jazz musician who influenced him the most, because his father often played Blakey's music.

Awards

• Received the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame Reader's Choice Award in 1981
• Was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982
• Won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Group for the album New York Scene in 1984
• Was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for the single "Moanin'" in 1998
• Was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for the album Moanin' in 2001
• Received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, which was awarded posthumously

Discography

• Blakey's albums where he plays alone or with a small group are shown in bold.
• The dates listed for the albums refer to when they were recorded, not when they were released.