Free For All (album)

Free for All is a 1964 jazz album by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers released on Blue Note in 1964.

Freddie Hubbard's composition "The Core" is dedicated to the CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and expresses "Hubbard's admiration of that organization persistence and resourcefulness in its work for total, meaningful equality." "They're getting", he explains, "at the core, at the center of the kinds of change that have to take place before this society is really open to everyone. And more than any other group, CORE is getting to youth, and that's where the center of change is." The piece was called that way also because Hubbard thought that the musicians "got at some of the core of jazz - the basic feelings and rhythms that are at the foundation of music."

"Pensativa" was composed by Fischer, but was arranged by Hubbard for the occasion: "I was playing a gig in Long Island", he recalls, "and the pianist started playing it. The mood got me, this feeling of a pensive woman. And the melody was so beautiful that, after I'd gotten home, I couldn't get it out of my mind."

The Allmusic review by Al Campbell awards the album 4 stars and states " This edition of the Jazz Messengers had been together since 1961 with a lineup that would be hard to beat: Freddie Hubbard on trumpet (his last session with the Messengers), Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cedar Walton on piano, and Reggie Workman on bass. Shorter's title track is one of the finest moments in the Jazz Messengers' history."

Track listing

 * 1) "Free for All" (Shorter) - 11:09
 * 2) "Hammer Head" (Shorter) - 7:51
 * 3) "The Core" (Hubbard) - 9:25
 * 4) "Pensativa" (Clare Fischer) - 8:22

Personnel

 * Art Blakey - drums
 * Cedar Walton - piano
 * Wayne Shorter - tenor saxophone
 * Freddie Hubbard - trumpet
 * Curtis Fuller - trombone
 * Reggie Workman - bass