''The Freedom Rider'' is an album by jazz drummer Art Blakey and his group the

Jazz Messengers The Jazz Messengers were a jazz combo that existed for over thirty-five years beginning in the early 1950s as a collective, and ending when long-time leader and founding drummer Art Blakey died in 1990. Blakey led or co-led the group from the o ...

, recorded in 1961 and released in 1964 by Blue Note Records. Continuing Blakey's distinct brand of

hard bop Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospe ...

, this album features compositions from

Wayne Shorter Wayne Shorter (born August 25, 1933) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Shorter came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he joined Miles Dav ...

Lee Morgan Edward Lee Morgan (July 10, 1938 – February 19, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. One of the key hard bop musicians of the 1960s, Morgan came to prominence in his late teens, recording on John Coltrane's '' Blue Train'' (1 ...

, Blakey himself, and Kenny Dorham, a former Jazz Messenger. This was the final album by this particular edition of the Jazz Messengers, who had been together for 18 months, as Lee Morgan left after this album and was replaced by Freddie Hubbard. The title track is a seven-and-a-half-minute solo drum composition by Blakey that combines swing, Latin American and African rhythmic influences, and is named in honor of the Freedom Riders—activists who participated in

American Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...

Freedom Rides beginning in 1961. In 2019, to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Art Blakey’s birth, ''The Freedom Rider'' was one of five albums to be reissued in LP special editions by Blue Note Records, as a Vinyl Me, Please exclusive with new liner notes by Evan Haga.

Track listing

#"Tell It Like It Is" ( Shorter) – 7:53 #"The Freedom Rider" ( Blakey) – 7:25 #"El Toro" ( Shorter) – 6:20 #"Petty Larceny" ( Morgan) – 6:14 #"Blue Lace" ( Morgan) – 5:59 Bonus tracks on CD reissue: #

"Uptight" ( Morgan) – 6:12 #"Pisces" ( Morgan) – 6:52 #"Blue Ching" ( Kenny Dorham) – 6:43

Personnel

* Art Blakey — drums *

—

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

— tenor

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

Bobby Timmons Robert Henry Timmons (December 19, 1935 – March 1, 1974) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was a sideman in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers for two periods (July 1958 to September 1959; February 1960 to June 1961), between which he wa ...

—

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

Jymie Merritt Jymie Merritt (May 3, 1926 – April 10, 2020) was an American jazz double-bassist, electric-bass pioneer, band leader and composer. Merritt was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers group from 1957 until 1962. The same year he left Blakey's b ...

—

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar i ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freedom Rider, The 1964 albums Art Blakey albums The Jazz Messengers albums Albums produced by Alfred Lion Blue Note Records albums Albums recorded at Van Gelder Studio