Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: "Free For All"

This amazing edition of master drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers was together with this same personnel from the Fall of 1961 until the Spring of 1964. This powerful band made many great albums both live and in the studio. Tonight's album was the final statement by this band with this group of players and the four tunes on this record captured the band at it's very best just like it would sound in a hip club except it was in the optimum conditions of the recording studio. The players were Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone and the band's musical director, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cedar Walton on piano, Reginald Workman on bass and the essential ingredient.....the mighty Art Blakey on drums. Shorter wrote two tunes including the title track and Hubbard wrote one and the album ends with a very pulsating but gentle bossa nova styled piece by pianist/composer Clare Fischer called "Pensativa". Free For All represents the very best of this great band. Check it out!