RRR004: “Like Someone In Love” // Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Recorded 1960 by Rudy Van Gelder. Players: Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt, Art Blakey.

Version reviewed: Blue Note Classic Vinyl, released January 2025. Mastered from original tapes by Kevin Gray.

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Like Someone In Love kicks off with a nice take on the title track, a standard I know best from Sinatra’s Songs For Young Lovers. Lee Morgan plays the melody and takes the first solo. The whole tune swings casually and reminds me a bit of “Freddie Freeloader.” Light, easy-going, easy to listen to, not challenging in the least, none of the sadness of the Sinatra version.

A2 is “Johnny’s Blue” (mislabeled on Apple Music as “Johnny’s Blues”). This is a Lee Morgan composition, and that will not surprise you; it would be right at home on The Sidewinder (which Morgan was still three years out from recording). I need to take this opportunity to A) Praise Lee Morgan as a composer, and B) Share my feelings about the drumming of Art Blakey. Given my background as a drummer, I judge drummers harshly, and Blakey is one of my favorite targets. He spends a lot of this song playing the snare on the backbeat. Now, you could say there is no rule against a snare backbeat in jazz, but for me there absolutely is a rule against it. I learned it in high school from the world’s best teacher, Mr. Don Siegrist. He also told me to stay the hell away from the bass drum except on fills.

Just to get a little more Blakey bashing out of my system, my listening notes have this to say:

Blakey’s fists are ham. He should be in a polka band.

To pick up that point, Side B of this record is all Wayne Shorter compositions, and that can only be a good thing. The highlight is B2, “Sleeping Dancer Sleep On.” I would argue that this sublime ¾ ballad would be spoken of with the same reverence as “Naima” if only a more nuanced drummer had played on it; Blakey kind of phones this one in, mostly playing “oom-pah-pah,” presumably because he’s pouting about not having an opportunity to play a blistering, spotlight-stealing, press-roll heavy solo where he does the push-the-drum-head-to-change-the-pitch-of-the-drum trick that he so loves. If Elvin Jones or Paul Motian or Shelly Manne had played drums on this one, it would be in the pantheon of greats. It’s the perfect balance between Shorter’s writing style (hypnotic, slightly off kilter harmonically, mysteriously cosmopolitan) and the type of songs Earl Zindars was writing for Bill Evans around the same time (think “Elsa” or “How My Heart Sings,” with their elegant atmosphere and bittersweet chord changes). The way Shorter and Morgan share the melody is nothing short of alchemical, two horns blending together into some dreamy, supernatural new sonic compound.

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Fair or not, this record for me will always be associated with Freddie Hubbard’s Here To Stay. They were released as a pair, and I bought them on the same day. And I’ll just say it: this record is not as good as Here To Stay. Something holds the Hubbard record together, where this one feels like a random collection of songs that just happened to be lying around at a convenient moment for a recording date. That said, I won’t be selling this one off. It’s the kind of record you could put on any time and feel good about—not unlike, say, Soul Station. In fact, like Soul Station, it’s a good demonstration of how “mid” can be a good thing in jazz.

I don’t know if that’s damning with faint praise. It is a bit faint, but it’s still praise. I just wish Art Blakey didn’t have to plaster his name all over everything he touches. This record has more to do with Wayne Shorter and Lee Morgan than with Blakey.