This is from the 1955 album Hank Mobley Quartet (it doesn’t appear to have been reissued recently, so you’ll have to just buy the mp3). The tune is Avila and Tequila, and Art Blakey plays […]
Category: Art Blakey
Tune of the moment: Misterioso
Thelonious Monk’s Misterioso is a strangely beguiling little tune: It’s a slow blues, with a melody of running even 8th notes. That doesn’t sound hard. Except somewhere in the playing of it, it always goes […]
Occasional Blakey: Afrique
While I put myself back together after a long holiday in Seattle with the family, here’s a favorite old Art Blakey track, Afrique, from the album Witch Doctor, written by Lee Morgan. Buy it. Purely […]
Transcription: Four – the classic intro
Here in chronological order are three very similar intros to the tune Four, recorded by Miles Davis. The one by Philly Joe is the classic beginning of this tune— I don’t know if he was […]
Chick Webb drum lesson – part 2
Another time I went to see him, and I thought I’d hang out with him all night. Instead, he put me upstairs with a metronome, made that damn thing go at the slowest tempo you […]
Chick Webb drum lesson – part 1
He came in wearing a camel-hair coat and a cap, and brought Ella Fitzgerald and a chihuahua with him. He said, ‘Make a roll, kid,’ and I started rolling—what I thought was a roll. He […]
Zildjian cymbal set-ups of the 70’s
In the mid-70’s the Zildjian cymbal company put out what has become a classic booklet of cymbal set-ups of their pro endorsers. Who were all using those same bright, middle-of -the-road 70’s A’s across a […]
Favorite albums: Thelonious Monk Trio
Thelonious Monk – Trio Prestige 7027 Thelonious Monk – piano Percy Heath, Gary Mapp – bass Art Blakey, Max Roach – drums This record doesn’t seem to get talked about much, and I don’t know […]