In just one month tenorist Wayne Shorter participated in two classic Blue Note sessions, Lee Morgan's "Search for the New Land", and this ringer, Blakey's "Free for All", after one more session with this renowned group ("Indestructible"), Shorter left the group to join Miles Davis. But what a group. Perhaps Blakey's best group since the Hank Mobley/Donald Byrd days, this album is perhaps their best. Hubbard, in particularly, comes out as an arranger of note with his version of Claire Fischer's "Pensativa" and composer (The Core) plus Wayne contributes the fiery title tune and an hard hitting blues (Hammerhead). All hands were on fire at Rudy Van Gelder's that day and the feeling is that of a group captured live!!

THIS IS ONE TRULY GREAT RECORDING, WITH A GREAT BAND. CURTIS FULLER, WAYNE SHORTER, FREDDIE HUBBARD, CEDAR WALTON, REGGIE WORKMAN. WOW! AND ART BLAKEY IS ON FIRE. IF YOU ENJOY LISTENING TO THE HARD BOP SOUND, THEN THIS ALBUM IS A MUST-HAVE FOR YOU. ANOTHER GREAT BLUE NOTE RECORDING FROM THE EARLY 60'S.............

Blakey is all up Wayne Shorter's backside on the opening track and for chorus after chorus WS positively burns. Top shelf post bop. One of Art's best collaborations. Good thru out.

In terms of hard bop,this is a genre defining piece of music... gold standard... transcendent... a timelesss piece of art, yet a spirit of the times then too.

I was born and raised on the soulful Southside of Chicago. Along with this, Hank Mobley's "No Room for Squares", Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", Otis Redding's "Dictionary of Soul" and "a little help from me friends", this music insured I survived college in Moorhead, Minnnesota on a conservative Lutheran campus in the late 1960's. God is good!

If you have a functional pulse rate,there's absolutely no way to lose with this one.

All the elements are here: The undeniable blue note sound, the terrific Art Blakey smashing drums and a fantastic trio like a dream team of a rythim section: Shorter/Hubbard/Fuller.
"Free for all" shows a renewed fresh Messengers album with all the traditional elements of Blakey's hard bop, but forwarding upcoming free jazz tunes like others contemporanies. Ok, the title track is not exactly free when we use ithis term to describe other musicians like Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Sum Ra and the pioneer Ornette Coleman, but free for all is going in the same directions as John Coltrane tunes. No wonder this album was released in the same year "A Love supreme" was.
However, we have three different directions on the album, something more free and modal in "Free for all", the essential hard bop in "the core" and "hammer head" and the last track "pensativa" a hommage to bossa nova, that differ from the others quit a lot.
The major point is really the incredible team Blakey came up with specially the 3 metal genious Shorter, Hubbard and Fuller as I said before.
4.5 stars