Craft Vinyl & CDs

Review: Reissued via Craft now, after a long run with Art Blakey's original issuers Riverside Records, Caravan is the first record by the drummer to be released in 1963. With Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cedar Walton on piano and Reggie Workman on bass, Blakey commands a fiery, banging temper on this eight-track record, yet somehow still makes such carpal explosives flow like poetry. The album's most notable element is that Blakey finds immense joy in subtly variating around difficult, tupletting riffs, which nonetheless go on to produce discernible and well-rounded progressions. We wouldn't expect anything less from the master.