‘Indestructible’: Art Blakey’s Final Blue Note Album Is A Hard Bop Classic

‘Indestructible’: Art Blakey’s Final Blue Note Album Is A Hard Bop Classic

In the late 50s, drummer Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers set the gold standard for a new and exciting style of jazz: hard bop. A driving and energetic offshoot of bebop, hard bop predominantly featured horns in a small group setting and stylistically absorbed elements from rhythm’n’blues and gospel music. In the spring of 1964, when they recorded the Indestructible album for Blue Note, Blakey’s Messengers had been in existence for exactly a d…