Jazz Con Class will be featuring a One Day special Jazz presentation of Art Blakey music. SIX powerful hours in total of the unique hard pounding rhythmic sounds of the great drummer Art Blakey. This Sunday November 11th will be the day and with the first three hours starting at 7AM and until 10AM (Eastern New York Time). The second three hours will begin at 9PM and run to Midnight (Eastern New York Time). Check the schedule to confirm and to learn more of all the other playlists that are playing 24 Days/7 Days.
More on Art Blakey (Biography):
American jazz percussionist Art Blakey (1919–1990) helped to forge the characteristic sound of hard bop, perhaps the dominant style of modern jazz. His own powerful playing was instantly recognizable among jazz fans, but equally important was his influence—the long list of players who passed through Blakey’s band, the Jazz Messengers, formed the nucleus of the jazz scene in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the new millennium.
Grew Up in Foster Care
“Icall ours the music of survival,” Blakey was quoted as saying by Steve Voce of the London Independent . “I’m a Depression baby. I was orphaned in Pittsburgh—I didn’t know my dad and my mother died when I was six months old, so I played jazz on account of survival because I didn’t like to work in the mines. They had child labour then and I worked in coal mines and steel works.” Arthur Blakey, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1919, was raised by a woman named Marie Roddericker who was a friend or relative of his mother. He started out musically on piano, playing by ear, and by the time he was a teenager he had skills enough to be able to organize a big band (with as many as 18 musicians) that played in Pittsburgh clubs. He had other bands depending on his income. “When I should have been an adolescent, I was a man,” Voce quoted him as saying. “At the age of 14 I had a family and at 15 I was a father. I never had a childhood.” Blakey would marry four times and have a reported 12 children, five of them adopted……Read More
