Benny Golson

"It was my hero," Golson says. "Art Blakey was on the phone. One of his guys was having trouble getting a cabaret card from the police and he asked me to come In and sub for a night. 'Oh, my God,' I said to myself, 'Art Blakey.' He didn't know it, but I would have played for free. And I went down and played, and I noticed that although the band had been together for a while, not much was happening; just tunes. But, on a personal level, he just laid me out. I'd never played with a drummer like that before." 

Blakey asked him back a second night and then for the weekend. By now, Golson though to inquire about money, and when he found out how little the band was making,

he took his leader aside for a little chat. "I said, 'Art, you're a great man. This pay is nothing for you. It makes me sad.' And he looked at me with his sad, beautiful cow eyes and said 'Can you help me?' And I can't believe what came out of my mouth, this young upstart who hadn't been in New York too long. "I said, 'Yes, if you'll do exactly what I tell you.' 

"How dared I?" Golson asks, laughing. "But he went for it. He said, 'What should I do?' And I said, 'Get a new band.'" 

He agreed, gave the men notice and on Golson's recommendation hired a new set of Jazz Messengers, all from Benny's home town. On trumpet was Lee Morgan, barely 20 years old, a fellow alumnus of the Gillespie big band. Morgan had sat in with the drummer in Philadelphia as a prodigy of 15, and the previous year had recorded two pieces with an expanded version of the Messengers. The pianist was 26-year-old Bobby Timmons, and on bass was Jymie Merritt, at 31 three years older than Golson and like him a veteran of the Bull Moose Jackson rhythm and bues band of the early 1950s. 

"What's all this Philadelphia stuff?' Blakey said. I told him 'Trust me.'"