Art Blakey (1919-1990)

August 31, 2010

Art Blakey

Photo by Brian McMillen (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Art Blakey, jazz drummer and band leader, was born Arthur William Blakey in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 11, 1919. Blakey’s father, Burtrum, who worked as a barber, left his family when Blakey was a newborn. Blakey lost his mother, Marie Roddericker, before his second birthday. His cousin, Sarah Oliver Parran, and his extended family raised him until he moved out to work at the local steel mill around 1932.

As a teenager, Blakey began playing piano in Pittsburgh nightclubs. Influenced by the work of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett, and Ray Bauduc, Blakey soon started drumming. Throughout his early career, Blakey played drums for a variety of bands, including Mary Lou Williams’s twelve-piece band, the Henderson band, and the Billy Eckstine orchestra. He met and collaborated with Thelonious Monk, Dexter Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Blakey’s early work reflected swing style drumming, but he later popularized hard bop, which drew on bebop, blues, gospel, and African drumming styles.

In 1948, Blakey traveled to Africa. The trip influenced him to convert to Islam and to change his name to Abdullah Ibn Buhaina. Soon after his return he created the Jazz Messengers with Horace Silver. In 1956, Blakey became the sole leader of the band, which played and recorded until his death. The Jazz Messengers featured and mentored many upcoming jazz musicians, including Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, and Lee Morgan among others.

Blakey’s key recordings include The Complete Blue Note Recordings of the 1960 Jazz Messengers and The Best of Art Blakey. Between 1959 and 1972, the Jazz Messengers also collaborated on multiple film soundtracks. In 1981, the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inducted Blakey. In 1984, the Jazz Messengers won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Group Performance. Blakey also appeared in the documentary Art Blakey: The Jazz Messenger (1988) and video series Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Jazz at the Smithsonian (1982).

Blakey married successively Clarice Stuart, Diana Bates, and Ann Arnold and had at least ten children. Late in life, Blakey lost his hearing, but he still continued to play with the Jazz Messengers. Art Blakey died on October 16, 1990 in New York City.

Author Profile

Michelle Granshaw

Michelle Granshaw is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. She is affiliate faculty with the Global Studies Center, the European Union Center of Excellence/European Studies Center, Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies Program, and Cultural Studies. At Pitt, she teaches in the BA, MFA, and PhD programs and mentors student dramaturgs. Granshaw was honored to receive the University of Pittsburgh’s 2021 Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award.

As a cultural historian, her research focuses on disenfranchised, and migrant communities and how they shaped and were influenced by the embodied and imaginative practices within theatre and performance. Her research interests include U.S. theatre, popular entertainment, and performance; performances of race, ethnicity, gender, and class; global and diasporic performance; and historiography.

Granshaw’s articles have appeared in Theatre Survey, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Popular Entertainment Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Topics, and the New England Theatre Journal. In 2014, Granshaw was awarded the American Theatre and Drama Society Vera Mowry Roberts Award for Research and Publication for her Theatre Survey (January 2014) article “The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre’s 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law.” Her book, Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre (University of Iowa Press, 2019) argues that nineteenth-century American variety theatre formed a crucial battleground for anxieties about mobility, immigration, and ethnic community in the United States. It was named a finalist for the 2019 Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Book Award and supported by grants and fellowships including the Hibernian Research Award from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, American Theatre and Drama Society Faculty Travel Award, and Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship. “Inventing the Tramp: The Early Tramp Comic on the Variety Stage,” part of Irish on the Move’sfirst chapter, also won the 2018 Robert A. Schanke Theatre Research Award at the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Currently, she is working on a new monograph titled The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre After the Civil War. In November 2022, she received an American Society for Theatre Research Research Fellowship in support of the project.

Granshaw currently serves on the Executive Board for the American Theatre and Drama Society (term 2021-5) and co-organizes ATDS’s First Book Bootcamp and Career Conversations series.

Categories:
African American History People in African American History

Tags:
20th Century (1900-1999) Composers Education - Historically Black Colleges (HBCU) Gender - Men Legal Profession Legal Profession - Judges Music - Jazz Musicians Religious Organizations - Islam Sports United States - Pennsylvania

Listen while you learn!

Hear a soundtrack specially chosen to enhance your learning about this article.

Let it play in the background as you study and immerse yourself in this topic!

(1923) Bishop Randall Albert Carter, “Whence and Whither“

By the standards of African American history, Bishop Randall Albert Carter is a little known figure. Born in Fort Valley,… ...

Leighla Frances Whipper (1913-2008)

Leighla Frances Whipper, author, songwriter, and restaurateur, was born on September 22, 1913 in Athens, Georgia into a prestigious family… ...

Andrea Long (?- )

Thirteen years principal dancer at Dance Theatre of Harlem, Andrea Long began her career dancing with the New York City… ...

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (1906-1982)

Leroy Robert Paige, one of the few African American baseball athletes to play in both the Negro Baseball Leagues and… ...

Zoë Saldaña (1978- )

Zoë Saldaña is an accomplished actress and dancer known for her roles in four of the six highest-grossing films produced… ...

The Webster Telephone Exchange Building (1906- )

Located at 2213 Lake Street in North Omaha, Nebraska, the Webster Telephone Exchange Building is an important Black heritage site… ...

Huel Davis Perkins (1924-2013)

Huel Davis Perkins, a distinguished composer, pianist, professor, administrator, and orator, was born on December 27, 1924, in Baton Rouge,… ...

Thomas Bailey Shropshire (1925-2003)

Thomas Bailey Shropshire, a Past Grand Sire Archon of the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (The Boulé), was a transformative figure… ...

Do you find this information helpful?

A small donation would help us keep this available to all. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone.

BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Your donation is fully tax-deductible.

DONATE

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Granshaw, M. (2010, August 31). Art Blakey (1919-1990). BlackPast.org. https://new.blackpast.org/african-american-history/blakey-art-1919-1990/

Source of the Author's Information:

Leslie Gourse, Art Blakey: Jazz Messenger (New York: Schirmer Trade
Books, 2002); T. Dennis Brown, “Art Blakey,” African American National
Biography, vol. 1, eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks
Higginbotham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Timothy
O’Brien, “Art Blakey,” Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896
to the Present, vol. 1, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009).