Art Blakey band members
Art Blakey (drums)
Wynton Marsalis (trumpet)
Branford Marsalis (alto sax)
Billy Pierce (tenor sax)
Donald Brown (piano)
Charles Framborough (bass)

Willie Dixon band members
Willie Dixon (vocals, double bass)
Baby Doo Caston (leyboards)
Chicago Allstars

This six-part series commemorates some of the great jazz names who died in the early 1990s: Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Drew, Red Rodney, Stan Getz, Willie Dixon, Dexter Gordon and Art Blakey.
Each programme consists of two quarter-hour performances from one of them. No opinion, no commentary, no analysis - just great music. Which is, we're sure, just as they'd want it.

Art Blakey (1919-90)
The drummer was, for over 50 years, the guide and mentor for some of the greatest jazz musicians in the world. His Jazz Messengers groups featured, over the years, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Horace Silver and Freddie Hubbard.

Willie Dixon (1915-92)
Dixon was one of the most influential of all rhythm'n'blues men, and wrote some of the great R'n'B songs such as Little Red Rooster, Seventh Son and Back Door Man which were recorded by the Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and many others.