Tearing The Roof Off This Sucker

On February 10, 1964, Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers went into the Van Gelder Recording Studio (in Englewood Cliffs, NJ) & laid down one of their most enduring releases to date, as well as one of the most hardest-hitting jazz albums from that same year, Free For All. This would also be a swan song for this incarnation of the Jazz Messengers: tenor saxman Wayne Shorter (one of the most awesome tenor sax players all time!!), trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (one of the most intense trumpet players of the day; if Coltrane ever picked up a trumpet, this is who he'd sound like), pianist Cedar Walton, trombonist Curtis Fuller & bassist Reggie Workman. But did they ever go out in a blaze of glory & fury as the title track clearly indicates, & this will be the selection of interest for my latest review.

The title track was written by Shorter (who would develop his composing abilities to the max with his next boss, Miles Davis) & naturally enough, the opening solo (which is his, BTW) definitely had to grab the listeners' attention. And boy, of all the solos which Shorter has ever done, none has sounded so loaded with superlatives as his presentation on Free For All does. From the opening burst of notes, you could have sworn that Art Blakey & company were going to melt the walls off the recording studio that day. In a sense, they just about did. Or should I say that they about tore the studio's roof off while I'm at it...lol?

With Shorter's solo starting things off, things get cooking real quick; one can sense that he was playing as if he had nothing to lose (as if...lol). You can even hear his bandmates cheering him on in the background...talk about a fiery environment in which this composition was recorded!! When Fuller & Hubbard get in on the fun during the brief ensemble moments they have in this solo, you can tell that the intensity isn't going to let up anytime soon (& it doesn't). When Shorter's solo draws to a close (one of the most magnificent ever!!), Fuller picks up the baton & gives things a go...again one of Fuller's most defining solo moments ever committed to tape. Soloist #3, Hubbard, reveals why I dubbed him "the John Coltrane of trumpet." With aggressive flurries which would make Trane proud, he proves (as on many of his solos either as leader or as sideman) that he was a force to be reckoned with in his day.

Of course, Blakey saved the best for last with this composition's last solo, a drumming tour de force which is devastating as much as it is pure ritualistic mayhem: the rage, the primal fury, the fever-pitch emotion...it's all here & is good as drum solos ever get (not to forget the times which Elvin Jones took a solo by his lonesome & literally destroyed like none other). And Blakey, in this particular section, lays down with relentless force why he was one of the more imposing drummers & most important bandleaders in all of jazz, period.

All told, Free For All is a defining moment for this round of the Jazz Messengers but the title track was & always will be a masterpiece in its own right. If that doesn't suffice, it's not just a landmark album in Art Blakey's discography; it's also one of the most important releases Blue Note ever put out, bar none.