Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Strasbourg 82 - 2 x Vinyl LPs

2026
Hard bop heroes Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers are one of the most important acts in jazz. Their music navigated a path that creatively balanced adventurousness and accessibility. The group led by drummer Blakey enjoyed its biggest commercial success with the 1959 single “Moanin,’” a tune which would go on to become a standard. That song embodied the Messengers’ strengths, distilling them down to a tidy 9:35 (“tidy” is used advisedly; this is jazz, people).

Blakey’s band enjoyed its apex in the public eye and ear from the middle 1950s and into the mid-sixties. As rock (and the more unbridled and “free” flavor of jazz) took hold, Blakey’s more structured (yet never less than impressive) styleo f jazz fell out of favor, and for a decade or so, the group floundered a bit. But by ‘76, the band caught fire again, and would in fact continue in one form or another until 1990 (Blakey died in October of that year at age 71).

Those later years didn’t find the Jazz Messengers restring on past glories. In fact the lineup circa 1982 – the time during which the recording with which we’re currently concerned was made – the lineup featured Terence Blanchard (trumpet) and Donald Harrison (alto sax), Chrles Fambrough (bass), Billy Pierce (tenor sax) and pianist Johnny O’Neal. As liner note essayist Syd Schwatz emphasizes in the pages of the booklet accompanying the new archival live document Strasbourg 82, the Messengers had only recently seen the exit of brothers Wynton and Branford Marsdalis; the pair had been on board about tow years before heading off for even bigger things.

In doing so, the Marsalis brothers followed on from a Messengers tradition; countless top players had passed through the ranks of the group. Yet as Schwartz points out, the “revolving door” Jazz Messengers “were no finishing school.” One didn’t get in to begin with if one couldn’t deliver the goods. And so it was with this coterie of new players.

The set list for this night captured in high fidelity featured the group’s trademark mix of exploration leavened by flashes of warm familiarity. New (or newish) tunes like Fambrough’s “Little Man” and former Messenger Bobby Watson’s “Fuller Love” fit neatly into the group’s aesthetic: state the head in catchy, hooky fashion, head off on flights of exploration, and then restate the head as you come back down to Earth again. It’s a tried-and-true approach, but Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers refined it to an art, applying the something-for-everybody mindset without disappointing the hardcore jazzheads.

Miles’ “Eighty-One” and the Messengers chestnut “Along Came Betty” remind the audience – if remidner were even necessary – that the band hasn’t forgotten or forsaken its hard bop roots of nearly three decades before. And they mix it up with some sweeter, more contemplative numbers in “I Can’t Get Started.”

No surprise that the set would conclude with a reading of “Moanin,’” which is as should be; the crowd applauds just as soon as the memorable piano hook intro is played. The group swings, playing it – once again – close enough to the record to delight more casual audience members, and taking flight enough to establish the then-current lineup as quite formidable in its own right.

Schwartz is spot-on when he makes a point of extolling the sonic virtues of Strasbourg 82: while there are plenty among us who would have complained not a bit if the audio quality was so-so, emphasizing that the recording’s existence itself is important enough to overlook and shortcomings, instead what we have here is a superb and high fidelity recording, even better-sounding that most off-air captures of the era. Highly recommended.

https://blog.musoscribe.com/index.php/2025/12/19/album-review-art-blakey-and-the-jazz-messengers-strasbourg-82/