What's your favorite jazz album?

[jazznut]

Saw Art Blakey a couple of times at the old Rising Sun Club in downtown Montreal back in the 1980s. Back then, a $5 cover charge and a couple of beers netted you three sets of great music lasting well into the wee hours of the morning. Art would sit at his drumset in the back corner of the stage, kicking, tapping, brushing and otherwise taunting his young musicians on while he perused the audience for attractive young women. At the end of each set, he'd head on over to the bar and strike up a short conversation with a chosen 'chick' before escorting her to a little side room where the club owner, Dou Dou Boicel, kept his recording equipment. Art would emerge 'refreshed' twenty odd minutes later and launch right into the next set, fully re-energized. He was well on in years, even then, but he still knew how to keep the beat!