The Big Beat
by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers

The Big Beat by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
Year: 1960
Release date: 1960-09-00
Overall rank: 6,191st   Overall chart history
Average Rating: 
75/100 (from 67 votes)
  Ratings distribution   Average rating history
Accolades:
Award Top 20 albums of 1960 (19th)
Award Top albums of of the 1960s (470th)
Award Best albums of all time (6,191st)

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Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers bestography

The Big Beat is ranked 6th best out of 66 albums by Art Blakey on BestEverAlbums.com.

The best album by Art Blakey is Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers which is ranked number 483 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 3,518.

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers album bestography « Higher ranked (5,456th)
A Night At Birdland Vol. 1
This album (6,191st)
The Big Beat
Lower ranked (6,257th) »
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk

(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).

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The Big Beat track list

  Track ratings The tracks on this album have an average rating of 80 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).

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The Big Beat rankings

The Big Beat rankings summary
Overall rank: 6,191st | 1960s rank: 470th | 1960 rank: 19th  Overall chart history
Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings).Help Click to see how the rankings are calculated (Last updated: 5 hours ago)

The Big Beat collection

The Big Beat ratings

Average Rating: 
75/100 (from 67 votes)
  Ratings distribution Help Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

Showing latest 5 ratings for this album.  | Show all 67 ratings for this album.

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RatingDate updatedMemberAlbum ratingsAvg. album rating
 
85/100
 !
02/05/2026 19:58 RockyRaccoon  Ratings distribution  7,15884/100
 
75/100
 !
12/21/2025 05:05 Exist-en-ciel  Ratings distribution  15,38970/100
 
0/100
 !
12/15/2025 06:54 shanelovesyou111  Ratings distribution  71871/100
 
75/100
 !
12/05/2025 22:28 mketchum  Ratings distribution  6181/100
 
55/100
 !
05/31/2025 14:27 Elauqsapid  Ratings distribution  2,72064/100

Rating metrics: Help Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)

This album is rated in the top 7% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 75.2/100, a mean average of 74.6/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 75.7/100. The standard deviation for this album is 15.0.


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The Big Beat favourites

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The Big Beat comments

Showing all 3 comments |
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Really excellent, should be ranked way higher
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
95/100
Belongs to the Jazz Canon. Excellent balance. sound and song constructions.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
The awesome power of the fully operational Messengers on display on this killer album. Lee Morgan had become an uncontainable monster by this point and is just ridiculously good here. The songwriting of Shorter and Timmons makes this one of the best Messengers albums to my ears; the tempos and the energy, the whole album is just right in the pocket.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

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