Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Strasbourg 82

Cut from the original master tapes, carefully preserved by the Blakey estate, and never-before released, Gearbox Records add another true AAA production to their astonishing archive of important gems from the Greatest Of All Time.

Resplendent with Gearbox’s high-end production specifications, it comes as a premium, double 180g Gatefold Vinyl with OBI strip, mastered in-house at their all-valve (vacuum tube) future-analogue studio in London. The recording itself stands as the earliest full-length live document of the Blanchard/ Harrison edition of the Messengers—a unit that would define the band for the next few years and help power the Young Lions movement from revivalism into something deeper. At 62, Blakey certainly was not mellowing with age. If anything, he was doubling down on the mission. “You go to school to get your diploma,” he once said. “You come with me to get your education.” Strasbourg 82 is that education in progress: live and unfiltered, and captured at the very moment the university was being rebuilt.