Search - Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Wynton Marsalis :: Art Blakey & Jazz Messengers

By anybody's yardstick it was a double celebration - Art Blakey's 61st birthday and the night when Bubba's came of age as a jazz club after four years of struggling toward this moment: the first Bubba's live album. The evening lived up to the occasion. The room was packed; Bubba's Bob Shelly bustled about with a wide grin. When the birthday cake with all the candles arrived onstage in the third set, Art said thanks, but "birthdays' aren't important to me, I just live." The crowd knew a special thing when they heard it. They whistled and screamed when the proud father of young trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a New Orleans jazz pianist himself, sat in with the Messengers for a couple of numbers. Marsalis flew to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to hear his 18-year- old son record with the legendary Art Blakey.