Tracks like this are why I fell in love with jazz and why it continues to influence my musical taste. The first Blue Note album I owned was a Christmas present from my mum, ‘Indestructible’, by Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers. I have no idea why it happened to be this particular release. I suppose there’s something in the name, and I liked the idea of a collective. That’s not to say I didn’t already own other jazz albums, but I came around to it in a convoluted way. My first Miles Davis album was ‘The Man With The Horn’, probably because it had been recently released and the fusion with disco appealed to me at the time. I was listening to a lot of funk-orientated stuff as a consequence of the burgeoning post-punk sound at the time and scouring for influences, of course jazz was there. Anyway, this track, recorded live at Birdland, New York almost exactly 60 years ago, contains almost exactly the same line up as ‘Indestructible’, the exception being Freddie Hubbard replacing Lee Morgan on trumpet. As tracks go, it’s one of those rolling pieces that for me, typifies the hard bop genre, relentless but studied simultaneously. The quality of musicianship is unsurpassed and feels as natural as breathing. The band: Art Blakey (drums), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Cedar Walton (piano), and Reggie Workman (bass), is one of the greatest combos ever assembled and they make it sound effortless. Listening to it I immediately feel immersed in a world of late nights, cigarette smoke, (for the ambience, naturally), conversation, cocktails and cars. It’s not happening where I live now, but in a metropolis of the mind, at a time when I was barely a bundle of cells.
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