Art Blakey
| Art Blakey | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Arthur Blakey |
| Also known as | Abdullah Ibn Buhaina |
| Born |
October 11, 1919 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | October 16, 1990 (aged 71) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz, hard bop, bebop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, bandleader |
| Instruments | Drums, percussion |
| Years active | 1942–1990 |
| Labels | Blue Note |
| Website | www |
Arthur "Art" Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he became a Muslim.
Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group that the drummer was associated with for the next 35 years. The Jazz Messengers were formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, and Wynton Marsalis. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz calls the Jazz Messengers "the archetypal hard bop group of the late 50s".
He was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (in 1981), the Grammy Hall of Fame (in 1998 and 2001), and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1991.
Blakey was born on October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a single mother, who died shortly after his birth. He is described as having been "raised with his siblings by a family friend who became a surrogate mother"; he "received some piano lessons at school", and was able to spend some further time teaching himself. According to Leslie Gourse's biography, the surrogate mother figure was Annie Peron. The stories related by family and friends, and by Blakey himself, are contradictory as to how long he spent with the Peron family, but it is clear he spent some time with them growing up.
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