Art Blakey, Free For All, Blue Note

I'm not sure there could be anything more difficult than deciding what you consider the best Jazz Messengers CD. The music is almost universally great, the musicians are almost universally great, running a gamut from Clifford Brown to Wynton Marsalis and Jackie McLean to Javon Jackson, with Art Blakey, of course, always at the eye of the hurricane (and the Messengers' music is, in fact, almost always a perfect storm).

But if I had to pick one, if somebody put a gun to my head and said choose, this might be it. Freddie Hubbard on trumpet in his prime (what a golden, yet powerful, tone: every bit of Maynard Ferguson and possessed with subtlety to boot) and Wayne Shorter, displaying the chops that made him integral to the second great Miles Davis quintet, are the headliners, and rightfully so. But it is the incredible support of Cedar Walton, Reggie Workman, Curtis Fuller and Abdullah Ibn Buhaina himself, employing his kit to drive this session relentlessly, even on a ballad like Pensativa, that makes the set stand out. Free For All, Hammer Head (both Shorter compositions) and The Core (Hubbard's) are, jeez, where do I catch my breath pieces. Four songs, 37 minutes of lightning in a bottle, with more than a little thunder courtesy of Mr. B.