Ed Blackwell

I started playing with Elvin Jones in the mid-80s.

toured with elvin in 87 came here to play to the montmartre with elvin i started to put my own bands together and recording for soul note records as a leader and injure records i started playing with ed blackwell in bands and uh dewey redmond and i was experiencing playing with some amazing players throughout the 80s That brought me into the 90s when I first signed with Blue Note.

So my first records with Blue Note was dealing with where I was, where I had been in those last few years, the players I was playing with, cats I was developing ideas with, you know.

Those led to my early recordings on Blue Note.

From the Soul, Shell Petrucciani, Dave Hound, Ed Blackwell, you know, for example, you know.

Paul Motion is on my record Village Rhythm from Soul Node.

Mel Lewis is on my record Tone, Shapes, and Color.

It was a collision of people and politics in December 1960.

Think about Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins on one side, and Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Hayden, Ed Blackwell on the other.

Four musicians per channel, two channels.

That's not just a gimmick.

I know, on the ninth.

The 10th, we got Ed Blackwell, Thelonious Monk, Henry Sweet Tessie, Harry C Teddison, and Cecil Bridgewater on the 10th, just to start out the month.

Of October.

Yes.

He was a big band singer and entertainer who had his signature song called That Old Black Magic.

Ed Blackwell passed away in 1992 at the age of 62 from kidney failure.

He was a jazz drummer who was part of the Ornette Coleman Quartet.

Arnold Jacobs passed away in 1998 at the age of 83 from natural causes.

It was also one of the few places in New York where black musicians could perform without being segregated into separate rooms.

In November 1959, Ornette Coleman and his Los Angeles quartet, Don Cherry on cornet, Charlie Hayden on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums, arrived to play a residency that would change the genre.

The group was already known for pushing bebop's harmonic limits in LA clubs, but they had no record deal at the time and were essentially free-spending improvisers.

The Five Spots owner, Frank O'Malley, was a friend of jazz musicians and willing to give them an extended run despite the risk of alienating more conservative patrons.