Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World [Live, Original recording remastered]

Art Blakey, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 8, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Live, Original recording remastered
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B00005UMTX
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,519 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

(5355652)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great hard bop and a fun listen, July 25, 2002

By 

Andy Williamson (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World (Audio CD)

"Jazz shakes off the dust of every-day life."

-Art Blakey

Blakey's Jazz Messengers are heard on this double live set from NYC's Birdland in 1960, recorded by the master Ruby Van Gelder. With a stellar line up including Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter, the music cooks. And with new remastering by Van Gelder, any questions I had about sound quality were immediately answered.

Blakey is the solid foundation of course, expertly guiding these jams through a mosaic of timbres and textures. The introductions by Pee Wee Marquette are fun to listen to and place the listener right in the jazz club atmosphere. I spent days listening to both discs on shuffle-play, so unfortunately I cannot comment on any specific track-I was never sure which one I was listening to! I just know that the music is great and the live setting is fun and I enjoyed everything I heard.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great playing, not so great sound quality, October 21, 2003

By 

G B (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World (Audio CD)

This lineup of the Jazz Messengers made a bunch of great albums for Blue Note and they're all interchangeable to some degree. This recording from Birdland somehow slips past the radar when discussing the Shorter-Morgan-Timmons lineup. The sound quality leaves a lot to be desired (lots of distortion). It was also out of print for a while and there's another album recorded a year earlier with an almost identical name ("At the Jazz Corner of the World") and lineup (sub Hank Mobley for Shorter).

Nevertheless, it's worth picking up because this is an excellent performance by a terrific group. My favorite performances are "Round About Midnight", "The Breeze and I", and Hank Mobley's mysterious "High Modes". (Despite not playing on the album, Hank contributed 3 of the compositions.) Aside from "The Summit" we don't hear much of Wayne Shorter the composer, but his playing, as on most music from this period, is intense and unpredictable. The album is worth buying just to hear Wayne.

If you like grooving, intense hard bop, then the Jazz Messengers with Shorter, Morgan, and Timmons is an essential listening experience. And after checking them out on studio albums such as "The Big Beat" or "A Night in Tunisia", it's definitely worth meeting them at the Jazz Corner of the World.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sounds grate., July 5, 2005

By 

Robert Bezimienny (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World (Audio CD)

The sound quality on this double-disc set is remarkably poor. The mono Birdland sets from 1954 are much better in this regard, as is the similarly titled date from 1959, featuring Hank Mobley. Not only the piano, but also the horns distort and the sound in general has a distinctly 'hard' quality - it's bad enough to make listening difficult to enjoy, especially for long sessions. The music itself is good, but not essential - there are many Art Blakey discs that outshine this one.
*
The aforementioned Birdland dates, with Clifford Brown on trumpet, are a much better place to sample the Messengers prowess. Mosaic, Buhaina's Delight, Free For All, Indestructible, Moanin'...all these discs are terrific. If it's any guide, I have over a dozen Blakey recordings and this is close to the least precious.