Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert and obi included.

Twenty-five years into running the best finishing school in jazz, Art Blakey was still doing exactly the same thing: hire the most talented young musicians available, work them hard, and let the band sound like the decade it is actually living in. Straight Ahead comes from the early eighties Messengers, the edition that put a generation of New Orleans and Texas players in front of an audience for the first time, and the title is a fair warning. No fusion, no concessions, just the shuffle-and-charge hard bop template played by musicians young enough to still find it exciting. Blakey behind them, immovable.

Japanese Concord Jazz pressing, excellent surfaces. Proof that the Messengers formula had at least one more decade in it.