Art Blakey spent nearly four decades leading the Jazz Messengers, a rotating band that doubled as one of jazz's most productive finishing schools, launching the careers of Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, and dozens of other future bandleaders. His thunderous, press-roll-driven drumming and the Messengers' 1958 album Moanin' helped define hard bop, a bluesy, gospel-inflected answer to the cooler jazz styles of the era. He died in 1990, having mentored more influential jazz musicians than perhaps any other bandleader of his generation.

the sound in question

1958

Moanin'Art Blakey