Few musicians so clearly embodied the sound of hard bop like drummer Art Blakey. His long-running band, the Jazz Messengers, were not only one of the most consistently strong combos in jazz during the 1950s and 1960s, they also doubled as kind of a finishing school for many of the style’s greatest figures. Born in Pittsburgh in 1919, Blakey initially played piano before switching to drums sometime in the late 1930s. He worked with pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson before ending up in New York in 1942. Beginning in 1944, he played in Billy Eckstine’s big band, and when the group split in 1947 Blakey began working as a leader, including for an octet called the Messengers that recorded for Blue Note in 1948, but playing mostly as a sideman for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Fats Navarro among others until launching the Jazz Messengers in 1954. As a bandleader he codified the hard bop sound: relentlessly swinging, blues-based, and less frantic than the bebop that preceded it. While Blakey continued to play behind most of jazz’s major figures, his legacy is built on a massive discography with the Jazz Messengers, with alumni including Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Keith Jarrett, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, and Wynton Marsalis. He continued performing and recording until his death in 1990, aged 71.