Product Description
Cut from the original master tapes and never-before released, Gearbox Records add another true AAA production to their astonishing archive of important gems - this time from drum legend Art Blakey.
At 62, Blakey certainly was not mellowing with age. If anything, he was doubling down on the mission. "You go to school to get your diploma," he once said. "You come with me to get your education." Strasbourg 82 is that education in progress: live and unfiltered, and captured at the very moment the university was being rebuilt.
Art Blakey: drums
Johnny O'Neal: piano
Donald Harrison: alto saxophone
Terence Blanchard: trumpet
Billy Pierce: tenor saxophone
Charles Fambrough: double bass
Recorded on 1st April 1982 in Strasbourg, France
Mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones at Gearbox Records, London
"A revelation in the crispness of it's fidelity and dynamics of the group's performance with a 62-year old Blakey defying his age by rumbling through such classics as "Along Came Betty" and "Moaning" as well as an interesting run through Miles Davis' "EightyOne" that really allows the new blood to shine." - Downbeat Magazine
"There have been so many extraordinary iterations of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that some remarkable editions have tended to get overlooked. I think that's the case with the 1982 band...Strasbourg 82 shows that the Blakey bands never stopped pushing the envelope." - NPR
