At the Cafe Bohemia Vol.1 is a 1955 live album The Jazz Messengers featuring the original incarnation of Art Blakey's career-spanning band, and is the first of two volumes recorded on November 23, 1955 at Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village in New York. Given full audiophile tratment this definitive reissue was cut from Original Analog Mono Master Tapes to 45rpm double LP by Kevin Gray!

• Limited Edition
• Only 1500 non-numbered Units available Worldwide
• Cut from the Original Rudy Van Gelder Blue Note Master Tapes (mono)
• Remastered by Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman at AcousTech
• Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
• Double LP Cut at 45rpm for ultimate dynamics
• 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl pressed at RTI USA
• Ultra-Durable Extra Thick Album Cover
• Gatefold Album with Session Photos in stunning High Resolution

For Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, it all began in 1955. One could trace the beginnings of hard bop to the underrated classic recordings that Blakey and Horace Silver made with Miles Davis in the early 1950s, and there was an important pre-Messengers quintet that they had with Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson in 1954. But it was the 1955 group which debuted on the Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album that really launched both Blakey’s band and the Blue Note label’s commitment to recording the most exciting hard bop recordings ever heard.

A few months later the same group, with Kenny Dorham and Hank Mobley, recorded two albums at New York’s Café Bohemia, showing that not only was the music more durable than one record, but that it would result in dozens of superb gems. The excitement of both performing in a brand new group and creating new music can be heard throughout this dazzling disc which contains the original versions of Dorham’s “Minor’s Holiday” and “Prince Albert.” This was history in the making and the musicians knew it.

Musicians:

Kenny Dorham, trumpet
Hank Mobley, tenor sax
Horace Silver, piano
Doug Watkins, bass
Art Blakey, drums

Track Listing:

1. Soft Winds
2. The Theme
3. Minor's Holiday
4. Alone Together
5. Prince Albert

Click here to listen to samples on AllMusic.com ♫