Jazz Articles about Donald Byrd

About Donald Byrd

Album Review

Donald Byrd: Donald Byrd Live: Cookin' With Blue Note at Montreux

Read "Donald Byrd Live: Cookin' With Blue Note at Montreux" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
December 18, 2022

With the release of his chart-topping, funk-fueled Black Byrd in 1973, Donald Byrd found himself in a volatile place in jazz circles. He was being hailed as having finally stepped out of Miles Davis' considerable shadow, while simultaneously many found the album to be Byrd's selling out his bop legacy for chart success. As most defining artistic moments reveal, a little of both were true. Produced and arranged by the brothers Fonce Mizelland Larry Mizell, Black Byrd incorporated ...

Album Review

Various Artists: John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop

Read "John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 3, 2022

Valuable as both a curated chronicle of jazz history and as high-grade music, John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop: Community, Jazz And Art In The Motor City 1965—1981 comprises around 70 minutes of live recordings by some of Detroit's finest sons along with an informative 24-page booklet. Among the musicians are trumpeters Donald Byrd and Charles Moore, reeds player Bennie Maupin and, resident in the city in the mid 1960s, pianist Stanley Cowell. The backstory: The Artists ...

Radio & Podcasts

The Cocaine Years

by Patrick Burnette
July 16, 2020

Listeners of a certain age will remember the Saturday Night Live “sound"--all squealing saxophones and twice-removed soul gestures. In this podcast we talk about one possible precursor to the sound and three of its best known practitioners--some of whom may or may not have partaken in Bolivian Marching Powder from time to time. No Pop Matters this round, as it ended up growing so big it got its own .5 edition. Playlist Discussion of Donald Byrd's album Street ...

Reassessing

Sonny's Crib

by C. Michael Bailey
June 7, 2020

From the outset, pianist Sonny Clark's sophomore effort as a leader is crisp, white-hot hard bop. Leading a standard bop trumpet-tenor saxophone quintet (Donald Byrd, John Coltrane), supplemented with trombone (Curtis Fuller), Clark and his most reliable rhythm section of bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor carve five dictionary examples (with alternate takes on the CD) of the music evolving from bebop, principally on the East Coast (if we consider that cool jazz took root on the West Coast ...

Album Review

Hank Mobley: The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70

Read "The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 8, 2020

The music world has changed considerably since Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie founded their boutique reissue label Mosaic Records back in 1983. From its inception, vinyl was still the preferred format, shortly to be overtaken by the popularity of the compact disc. At the cusp of vinyl's recent resurgence, Mosaic briefly got back into that format only to find themselves on the brink of closing up shop. Fortunately, the powers that be have forged on and recent CD boxed sets ...

Album Review

Donald Byrd: Ethiopian Knights

Read "Ethiopian Knights" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 16, 2019

Donald Byrd (1932-2013) was a solid and dependable and prolifically recorded hard-bop trumpeter during the style's mid 1950s to mid 1960s heyday, though he was never an innovator, far less an auteur. He later went on to make a string of tedious disco-cum-jazz-funk albums which sold by the truckload. On the cusp of this shift in trajectory, Byrd made a handful of unassailable groove-jazz classics. Ethiopian Knights is the best of them. Such is the enduring demand for ...

My Blue Note Obsession

Donald Byrd: A New Perspective - 1963

by Marc Davis
July 3, 2015

A New Perspective is unlike any jazz album you've heard before--and the change is refreshing. The biggest difference? Voices--singers, but not jazz singers. A New Perspective includes a seven-voice gospel choir, singing wordless syllables. Not scat, but pure notes. At first, the choir feels wrong. The very first notes of this 1963 album are voices. They start with a powerful gospel feel, but then quickly change to a more pop-ish, happy-happy 1960s mode. It's jarring and ...