Moanin'

Recorded for Blue Note in October 1958, Moanin'Moanin'Art Blakey · 1958 is the masterpiece of the Golson-era Messengers. The title track, a gospel-tinged Bobby Timmons composition, helped popularize hard bop with a wider audience.

Moanin' (1958) first appeared under the plain eponymous title 'Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.' The opening tune, written by pianist Bobby Timmons, caught on so widely that the whole record came to be known by its name — the sideman's song, not the leader's, gave the album its title.

Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder (1964) was meant as routine hard bop, but the title track became a surprise hit — a chart single that ended up in a TV ad — and it shored up a struggling Blue Note. Afterward the label kept pressing its players for 'another Sidewinder.'

Brought in to rebuild the Jazz Messengers in 1958, Benny Golson recruited the new lineup — Bobby Timmons on piano among them — and wrote most of Moanin'. The tune that ended up defining the record was the title track, written by the pianist he had just hired. Golson was gone within months.