Billboard : 10/28/1957

A significant set for this label features Art Blakey and his well-known hard sound, with Jackie McLean, Bill Hardman, Sam Dockery and Spanky DeBrest. Modern jazz fans will find this set rewarding.

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Audio Magazine
Charles A. Robertson : November, 1957

After recording for Elektra, Columbia and Victor, the new edition of the Messengers now turns up on a West Coast label. The album derives its title from one of Art Blakey’s descriptive drum suites, in this case executed with only the members of the quintet doubling as percussionists. It consists of three short sketches of life in an African village, the last being a well-punctuated tale of the momentous arrival of the first motor car, a noisy and aptly rhythmic beast. It is a charming representation of the humor the group might put into a nightclub performance.

The five other numbers are mostly distinguished by a waltz theme in Mal Waldron’s Touche, and rampant bagpipes in Scotch Blues, a joint effort by Duke Jordan and Blakey. Pianist Sam Dockery’s plunging Sam’s Tune sets the loosely-swinging mood of the session. On the liner, trumpeter Bill Hardman’s name is misspelled and Jackie McLean, alto sax, turns up on tenor.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 11/17/1957

When The Jazz Messengers broke up some months ago, dividing up the assets of the co-operative organization, it was said by some (including this reviewer) that Art Blakey had taken the name and that the others (Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, et al) had taken the jazz feeling.

Blakey’s newest LP with his new group (Ritual: The Jazz Messengers – Pacific Jazz) demonstrates adequately that this is not true. What has happened, instead, is that Blakey has succeeded in forming a band which is able to wrap itself about his own explosively swinging style so completely that, for perhaps the first time, he has a Blakey band instead of merely a band with Blakey on drums.

Jackie McLean’s sharp. biting tenor is always on top of every situation especially in the beautiful short phrases he trades with Bill Hardman’s trumpet; Sam Dockery fills in excellently on piano with Spanky DeBrest more than adequate on bass. This is, in brief, an album which puts Blakey back very near the top of the drum world.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON, Canada)
Roger Feather : 09/07/1957
Three stars

Blakey, one of the leaders of the so-called “hard-bop school.” is generally considered the most explosive and primitive drummer in jazz. He exhibits these qualities on this record but neither he nor his colleagues are at their top form. But Blakey, even though not at his best, is still a masterful and stimulating drummer who generates a great deal of excitement.

The title selection is a 10-minute impressionistic solo of various things Art saw and heard during his three-year stay in North Africa in the late forties. Although this is influenced by native folk drumming, it uses a basic 4/4 jazz pulsation. It is well-constructed, using a good balance of cymbal, tom-tom. and snare work with a background of cowbells, maracas and claves played by the other members of the group.

Of the other five tunes. Mal Waldron’s Touche and a blues called Once Upon A Groove are the best. Hardman’s work leaves much to be desired in both execution and ideas and McLean, who also plays alto here, is below his usual standard. DeBrest plays more than adequately but Dockery is rather weak, particularly in solo.

There have been three or four albums released in the last few months which show Blakey to better advantage.

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Down Beat : 10/31/1957
Don Gold : 3.5 stars

This LP was produced for Pacific Jazz by George Avakian, in exchange for a Chet Baker LP produced for Columbia by Dick Bock. I don’t know who won.

This is a turbulent sounding group, generally content with one dynamic level (except for Blakey, who exists apart from such limitations). McLean can play convincing alto. Hardman’s many-noted approach is too limiting. Dockery plays with appropriate fervor. DeBrest supports adequately. Blakey is Blakey.

In this collection, Blakey is omnipresent, surging behind the soloists, laying down transitional bombs, and soloing violently. His work is remarkably fascinating in many cases, and apparently the soloists don’t mind being clubbed from behind.

There are several moving tracks. The title selection is a vividly presented Blakey composition, based on his knowledge of African tribal music. On the track preceding it, Blakey speaks for two minutes on the African origins and inspiration for the composition. Then he digs in. McLean and DeBrest accompany on cowbells; Dockery shakes maracas, with Hardman not far behind on claves. It amounts to nine minutes and 45 seconds of percussion, with Blakey firing more intercontinental missiles than the Russians dreamed existed. It’s all quite fascinating, in its savagery.

Scotch Blues is a Duke Jordan-Blakey tune expressing a feeling of bop in Glasgow; its content, however obvious, is humorous. Dockery’s Tune features a series of wild fours. Owen Marshall’s Groove contains an intricate Blakey solo. Mal Waldron’s Touche, coming after Ritual, tends to break the tension; it’s relatively relaxed and worthwhile. Blakey’s Wake is the closer, another frenetic, appropriately titled, return to 52nd St.

The Messengers undoubtedly have a message to deliver. Most of the members of the group, however, aren’t musically articulate enough to do so. McLean has potential. Blakey is a unique, amazing drummer with much to say. This is not therapeutic music for tense people, but it is part of the story of one of jazz’ most colorful drummers.

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Liner Notes by Ed Michel

The rhythm of jazz is the force in time which ties the performer to his audience. It is this aspect of jazz which propels and forces the listener into a direct physical response which is the music’s strength and individuality. While jazz is capable of great beauty, dignity, elegance, profundity, and massive depth of feeling, these considerations are secondary to the basic propulsive quality of the music. The primary meaning of jazz is tied to the rhythmic response it creates in its listeners.

Jazz is a dance music, if dancing is a response with the body. The dance to jazz is most often as simple as head-swinging or foot-patting, but even simple finger-tapping is more meaningful here than the more restricted Arthur Murrayish social skill. It is the personal response of the jazz listener which binds him to and makes him a part of the music, the activity which separates him from the purely passive listener.

No jazz soloist can achieve a meaningful music without the ability to create this feeling of rhythmic tension to be relieved through physical activity. This is to be considered in the light of jazz as the music of a supported soloist: it has always been natural to accept such propulsive skill from the rhythm section, a Freddie Green, a Jo Jones, but the rarer ability of a Lester Young or Zoot Sims to create this feeling for himself in his line is a subtler thing, too easy to pass over in careless listening. While the rhythm section had always been understood to be present to provide a background quality against which the soloist could create, an evolution took place here too, moving the section to the point of loss of collective identity in the interrelating solo lines of its members. This necessarily created new demands upon the listener as well as the soloist, with respect to absorbing this more complex propulsion into his own playing.

Art Blakey represents such a shift of emphasis as a drummer. Perfectly characterized by his individual strength, his drumming is built on the expression of ideas characteristic to the drum, even to the extent of giving this primacy over the feeling the soloist may be creating. Art does not give easily, rather forcing the elements surrounding him, if capable enough, into his groove. The difficulty lies in the fact that Art frequently plays things which other musicians, even drummers, do not necessarily feel, creating the added tension of rhythmic incompatibility. Yet he plays with the strong sureness that his way is right for him, and with such a feeling cannot compromise himself into the rhythmically simpler, more economical style to which other drummers may be more suited.

As a drummer, Art tends to always keep something going, as opposed to merely providing a steadily moving beat. A constant development, never as extensive as a solo, limited by its responsibility to the soloist, characterizes his playing. The beat is always there, but more often than not it is other than the more common even dotted-eighth-and-sixteenth repetition; instead one finds the simple syncopations and phrases growing into the question-and-answers, complex phrase developments, and contrapuntal feeling of which non-melodic rhythm is capable in the proper hands.

Due to the idea growth in his playing, Art may tend to occasionally overpower the soloist with what he has going; with a weak soloist, Blakey’s overwhelming and seemingly competitive qualities can easily inhibit activity. With a strong enough performer, however, the added impetus of a development, secondary to but continuous with his, may inspire new performance levels, called forth by corresponding levels of background activity. The immediate association here is to the remarkable combinations on record of Art and Thelonious Monk, another unquenchable individual, with each tempering his unique strength with appreciation for the other.

Art’s drumming falls into two classes, both well-exemplified on this album. The first is his accompaniment style, a constant shift of technics to suit the quality and feeling as well as the notes he is underlining. Note the manner in which he shifts his pushing beat from behind the Moody- and Donaldson-removed-from-Parker-influenced alto of Jackie McLean to what he does with Bill Hardman’s choppy, hard single-note trumpet, along with his drop to a shifting rise and fall pattern under Sam Dockery’s piano, producing an undulating wave on which the piano can ride. In this context, Art’s fours are the measure of his solo ability, allowing only a cameo presentation of his imaginative richness in the stretching room of a longer solo, the second element of his drumming. RITUAL, a direct impression of Art’s, gives him a chance to successfully extend his feelings and ideas. In the accompaniment, McLean is the principal cowbell, bassist Spanky DeBrest is a little further from the mike with a lower-pitched cowbell, Dockery plays maracas, and Hardman plays claves.

With the immense percussive and melodic resources at his disposal, Blakey’s drumming can be and is a direct expression of his feelings and temperament. In terms of his personal individuality and strength, as well as in the overall drive and conception of his playing, Art Blakey demands the respect and necessary responsive attention of his audience.