3 albums as leader and 11 as sideman (1982–2013), each listed chronologically.
2000 · Wandering Moon and 1 more
Terence Blanchard has picked up multiple Oscar nominations for film scoring, but his career started as a 20-year-old trumpeter. He was tapped to replace Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, appearing on the band's 1983 record New York Second Line.
2005 · Flow
Aaron Parks plays keys on Flow (2005) — a name in the small print on someone else's record. He had entered university at 14 and joined that band while still a teenager; his own Invisible Cinema came three years later, in 2008. The sideman credit is the earlier one.
1983 · New York Second Line and 1 more
Wynton Marsalis joined Art Blakey's band as a teenager without having heard a single Blakey record — just playing scales over the chords, not yet knowing that a solo is something you construct, as he admitted at twenty-two. That was the starting point of the man later cast as jazz's traditionalist-in-chief.
— Statement stmt-wynton-marsalis-on-art-blakey
1987 · Hard Champion
Kenny Garrett says Art Blakey's press roll wasn't just a dynamic cue — dropping it in the second chorus forced the soloist to resolve whatever they were saying, right then. Garrett calls it Blakey's way of teaching young Jazz Messengers how to become bandleaders themselves.
— Statement stmt-kenny-garrett-on-art-blakey
Aaron Parks
Art Blakey
Wynton Marsalis
Kenny Garrett