Jazz Messengers
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The Jazz Messengers were a jazz ensemble founded by Art Blakey and Horace Silver in 1955. Blakey had already used the name for an album he recorded with Silver, Kenny Dorham, Doug Watkins, and Hank Mobley – Dorham and Mobley were the other two members of the permanent group. The name may have religious significance, since Blakey was a Muslim.
In 1956 Silver left and Blakey became the sole leader of the group. Over the years the band included Jackie McLean, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt, Wynton Marsalis, Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, and Wallace Roney, among many other well known musicians. It is now widely regarded as an important training ground for many of the best young hard bop players of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Two of the group's most famous lineups featured Wayne Shorter on saxophone. The first was a quintet that existed from 1959 to 1961 and included Blakey, Shorter, Merritt, Morgan, and Timmons. The second was a sextet that added trombonist Curtis Fuller and replaced Morgan and Timmons with Hubbard and Walton, respectively.fr:Jazz Messengers de:Jazz_Messengers