Art Blakey
October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990
Art Blakey was a drummer and band leader whose Jazz Messengers, a band he led for an astonishing thirty years, was the onetime home of such future legends as Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. His funky hard bop would become a major influence on all idioms of jazz to come. The artists he worked with outside of the messengers reads like a who’s who of jazz history. Art Blakey died of natural causes at the age of 71 but not before recording dozens of albums.