- Day Dream
- Hold On, I'm Coming
- Secret Agent Man
- I Can't Grow Peaches On A Cherry Tree
- Walking My Cat Named Dog
- Sakeena
- Got My Mojo Working
- Mame
- She Blew A Good Thing
- Monday, Monday
- Slowly But Surely *
Limelight PHCE-6001
1967
*Does not have Chuck Mangione on this song. Instead, it features Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard
1967
*Does not have Chuck Mangione on this song. Instead, it features Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard
Liner Notes
The jazzman draws on music of every age and type for his inspiration and improvisation. He is limited only by his imagination.
So it appears that Art Blakey has been reading the music trade papers and noting what's happening up there on the single record charts. And what's happening is simply this... Sam & Dave, Jimmy Smith, The Lovin' Spoonful, and like that.
The sound that's happening today has a fierce beat, usually a firm base of loping electric organ, and an out-front guitar that seems to take the group where it's headed. Horns are fine, if they hang in with the right stridency.
So, what Art Blakey has done is, as usual, dig what's happening, and then put it all into his own personal bag, the one with the hickory rim-shot sticks.
The range is wide, indeed. It takes Art from the British TV scene, with Secret Agent Man, theme song of the fine show that was, alas, shot down after one gas of a season. There there's a jazzed-up jazz performance of a tune that originally came from jazz and went through all the changes to emerge a pop hit, Got My Mojo Working. Plus, a large helping of the chart toppers, the songs young America is frugging to: along with a salute to one of the great Broadway musicals of recent years, "Mame."
Who plays what and where here isn't so important as the fact that it's Blakey turning his hand to a survey of the pop scene today. And if the tongue occasionally slips into the cheek, let it happen. You don't see The Lovin' Spoonful taking themselves seriously all over the place except on deposit day at their neighborhood bank. It's a Pop, Op, comic book world we live in, anyway. And who's counting?
Just note, in passing, the way Art falls into a swinging groove on such easy-goers as Mame and Day Dream, among others. And also note the tough guitar of Grant Green and the appropriately raunchy tenor sax of Frank Mitchell.
Whistle a bar or two of any of these and find yourself looked on with new respect by your inferiors (in age, or course, in age). It's almost enough to start you growing skin blemishes all over again. Or whatever that was 'way back then.
Notes by Dom Cerulli, 1967
