Art Blakey, 71, Be-Boop Drummer

NEW YORK - Art Blakey, a drummer whose band nurtured generations of leading jazz players, died yesterday of lung cancer in a New York City hospital. He was 71.

``I've got to go make a record now, feeling like this,'' trumpeter Freddie Hubbard said when he heard about Blakey's death. ``Art Blakey was the first one who gave me a big opportunity.''

Dizzy Gillespie, the giant of be-bop, once described Blakey as ``the volcano'' of be-bop drummers. He was considered in the top echelon that included such drummers as Max Roach and Buddy Rich.

For the major part of his career, Blakey did his drumming for the Jazz Messengers, the band that came together under his leadership in the early 1950s.

In a television film about Blakey's career, a Jazz Messengers alumnus, pianist Walter Davis, said: ``I think no one in jazz has brought more great musicians to music than Art Blakey.''

The 1981 Newport Jazz Festival gave over an evening to ``The Blakey Legacy,'' in which the drummer was joined by players who had been with his band during the previous quarter century.

Blakey denied being a teacher, saying that as a self-taught musician, ``I don't know anything myself.''

But another time he said, ``When I take these 18-year-old kids out on tour, it makes most of the pros feel like cutting their wrists. . . . They're going to take the music farther than it has been.''

Among the musicians who got a start with Blakey's band have been horn players Wynton Marsalis, Clifford Brown, Chuck Mangione and Hubbard, saxophonists Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter and Johnny Griffin, pianists Keith Jarrett and Walter Davis.

Hubbard spoke to Blakey by phone in the hospital on his birthday last Thursday.

``He told us, `Don't be grieving when I die. Think about the good moments, what we did together and what you can do later on.''

Marsalis said, ``His life was given to educating younger musicians and entertaining his adoring public.''

``His credo was, `You'll never see an armored car full of money following a hearse,' Marsalis said. ``The only car that will follow Mr. Blakey is a big one filled with the affection, admiration and gratitude of the many whose lives he selflessly enriched.''

Blakey was born in Pittsburgh in 1919, escaping the steel mills as a 15-year-old by playing piano at a nightclub. Then a 14-year-old hotshot named Erroll Garner showed up and ``I was told to go to the drums by the club owner,'' Blakey recalled.

The young Blakey caught on with Fletcher Henderson's band and went on to Billy Eckstine's big band in the mid-1940s, when he first worked with Gillespie and Charlie Parker. The Jazz Messengers were formed in 1954 by Blakey, pianist Horace Silver, trumpeter Kenny Dorham and saxophonist Hank Mobley. The band toured Europe and the United States for the next three decades.

Blakey's jazz drummer son, Art Jr., died in 1988 at age 47.

Survivors include his children, Evelyn Blakey, a singer, Gwendolyn Blakey, Jacqueline Blakey Meeks, Khadija Buhaina, Sakeena Buhaina, Gamal Buhaina, Takashi Buhaina, Akira Buhaina and Kenji Buhaina.