Results for "Don Byas"

Don Byas

Born: October 21, 1912

Don Byas was one of the most respected and recorded tenor players of the 1940’s. In that fruitful period he had few peers in the the area of prolific productivity. Byas was a masterful swing player with his own style, an advanced sense of harmony, and a confidence and adventurousness that found him hanging around the beboppers and asking to play. He held his own and did so while insistently remaining himself: he never picked up the rhythmic phrases, the lightning triplets, which are indigenous to bop. Yet Charlie Parker said of him that Byas was playing everything there was to play. Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1912, he played alto as a teenager, subbing in territorial bands like Bennie Moten's and Walter Page's Blue Devils

Documentary: Don Byas Returns

July 27, 2021

In 1970, tenor saxophonist Don Byas returned from Europe to perform at New York's Village Vanguard. He had been living abroad since 1946. A Dutch documentary called Homecoming was made of Byas's one-time return. The artist who Byas refers to as his close friend is pianist Jaki Byard. The band he plays with is the Thad ...

A Conversation with Jackie McLean

by AAJ Staff
July 14, 2021

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in October 1998. All About Jazz: You grew up in the same neighborhood as Bud Powell. How did he impact your life? And, what was Bud Powell the man like? Jackie McLean: He certainly lived in the vicinity of my ...

New Book Teaches Newcomers How To Listen To Jazz

February 1, 2021

“Lots of people want to listen to jazz, but they don’t know where to start,” says Mark Barnett, author of Getting Into Jazz, a new book from Canoe Tree Press that offers lively tips on how to listen, along with step-by-step guides through some classic jazz CDs featuring such artists as Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz and ...

Be Bop Live

Label: Ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing:
CD 1:
Groovin' High; Big Foot; Ornithology; Hot House; Salt Peanuts; Chasin' the Bird; Out of Nowhere; Scrapple from the Apple; Be Bop; Hot House; Oop Bop Sh'bam; Scrapple from the Apple; Barbados; Salt Peanuts.
CD 2:
Scrapple from the Apple; Barbados; Be Bop; Groovin' High; Confirmation; Salt Peanuts; Ornithology; Cheryl; KoKo; Bird of Paradise; Now's the Time; Be Bop; A Night in Tunisia; Salt Peanuts.

Trumpets? Yes (And More)

by Marc Cohn
June 5, 2020

Lots of trumpeters this week (mostly 21st century music): Marcus Printup, Ron Horton, Roy Hargrove, Farnell Newton, along with Buck Clayton (and Buddy Tate) plus Emmett Berry (and Don Byas). Big band (a bit off center) from Marty Ehrlich and Django Bates and the Charlie Parker centennial (Koko, including the 'famous' breakdown) and our chronological Sonny ...

Houston Person: I'm Just a Lucky So and So

by Jack Bowers
November 3, 2019

Perhaps tenor saxophonist Houston Person is indeed A Lucky So and So, as he professes on his newly recorded album of that name, but it has taken far more than luck to sustain a long and successful career that spans more than half a century and numbers more than sixty albums as leader of his own ...

Take Five With Greg Burk

by Greg Burk
May 28, 2019

About Greg Burk Following his acclaimed 2016 release Clean Spring on SteepleChase Records, American pianist and composer Greg Burk returns with solo piano As A River--his 12th and most lyrical album to date. The son of classical musicians, Burk spent his formative years on the jny: Detroit jazz scene, followed by studies ...

Dave Liebman: On the Corner Live!

by Victor L. Schermer
March 5, 2019

When the Miles Davis album On the Corner (Columbia, 1972) was released, Davis had already begun to engage in electronic instrumentation and jazz fusion with soon to be revered recordings: In A Silent Way (Columbia, 1969), Bitch's Brew (Columbia, 1970) and Jack Johnson (Columbia, 1971). On the Corner, however, was so experimental and funky that it ...

Big in Japan: A History of Jazz in the Land of the Rising Sun, Part 1

by Karl Ackermann
October 29, 2018

Part 1 | Part 2The music market in Japan--second only to the U.S. in terms of revenue--generates more than two-billion dollars in sales annually. Enthusiasts and collectors of jazz recordings had long ago discovered that Japan's robust music scene, and the now virtual accessibility to products have made the country a go-to resource for ...