Art Blakey 是硬波普（Hard Bop）时期的代表人物，他的节奏感不能只用“敏锐”来形容，一些乐人索性以“Time”做为他的外号，表达出对他的崇敬。Blakey击鼓时速度运行有致，急缓之间的律动感紧凑相连，他最大的特色是他非常善于运用大鼓及鼓缘的敲打造成音色上的变化，另一项特色则是他打鼓时所发挥的强劲力道，常能振奋人心。40年代开始其职业演奏的生涯，一直要到50年代他成立了The Jazz Messengers之后才算真正奠定大师级的地位。Blakey的The Jazz Messengers不但创作出许多叫好的专辑，难能可贵的是他也为爵士乐界孕育出许多优秀的乐手，从早期的Wayne Shorter、Woody Shaw到近期的Wynton Marsalis、Branford Marsalis等皆出身于此，这个乐团从50年代至90年代都不断有作品推出，是爵士乐发展史上足轻重的乐团之一。
 
by Chris Kelsey
In the 60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another 30 years the musics mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favor of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of swing and blues, characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the 40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the 80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey — as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent — was its master.
 
The Jazz Messengers had always been an incubator for young talent. A list of the bands alumni is a whos who of straight-ahead jazz from the 50s on — Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, Joanne Brackeen, Billy Harper, Valery Ponomarev, Bill Pierce, Branford Marsalis, James Williams, Keith Jarrett, and Chuck Mangione, to name several of the most well-known. In the 80s, precocious graduates of Blakeys School for Swing would continue to number among jazzs movers and shakers, foremost among them being trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis became the most visible symbol of the 80s jazz mainstream; through him, Blakeys conservative ideals came to dominate the publics perception of the music. At the time of his death in 1990, the Messenger aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past 20 years.
 
Blakeys first musical education came in the form of piano lessons; he was playing professionally as a seventh grader, leading his own commercial band. He switched to drums shortly thereafter, learning to play in the hard-swinging style of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. In 1942, he played with pianist Mary Lou Williams in New York. He toured the South with Fletcher Hendersons band in 1943-1944. From there, he briefly led a Boston-based big band before joining Billy Eckstines new group, with which he would remain from 1944-1947. Eckstines big band was the famous cradle of modern jazz, and included (at different times) such major figures of the forthcoming bebop revolution as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. When Eckstines group disbanded, Blakey started a rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers. He also recorded with an octet, the first of his bands to be called the Jazz Messengers. In the early 50s, Blakey began an association with Horace Silver, a particularly likeminded pianist with whom he recorded several times. In 1955, they formed a group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, calling themselves Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers. The Messengers typified the growing hard bop movement — hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the musics primal rhythmic and harmonic essence. A year later, Silver left the band, and Blakey became its leader. From that point, the Messengers were Blakeys primary vehicle, though he would continue to freelance in various contexts. Notable was a 1963 Impulse record date with McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, and Art Davis; a 1971-1972 world tour with the Giants of Jazz, an all-star venture with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Al McKibbon; and an epochal drum battle with Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Blakey also frequently recorded as a sideman under the leadership of ex-Messengers.
 
Blakeys influence as a bandleader could not have been nearly so great had he not been such a skilled instrumentalist. No drummer ever drove a band harder; none could generate more sheer momentum in the course of a tune; and probably no drummer had a lower boiling point — Blakey started every performance full-bore and went from there. His accompaniment style was relentless, and woe to the young saxophonist who couldnt keep up, for Blakey would run him over like a fullback. Blakey differed from other bop drummers in that his style was almost wholly about the musics physical attributes. Where his contemporary Max Roach dealt extensively with the drummers relationship to melody and timbre, for example, Blakey showed little interest in such matters. To him, jazz percussion wasnt about tone color; it was about rhythm — first, last, and in between. Blakeys drum set was the engine that propelled the music. To the extent that he exhibited little conceptual development over the course of his long career, either as a player or as a bandleader, Blakey was limited. He was no visionary by any means. But Blakey did one thing exceedingly well, and he did it with genius, spirit, and generosity until the very end of his life.