Another Of The Greats Is Gone - R.I.P Donald Byrd

  • Another Of The Greats Is Gone - R.I.P Donald Byrd
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    For a long time it was hard to get a hold of this album

     

    image



    It was a classic, but the good people who ran Blue Note (stand up Michael Cuscuna) thought it wasn’t “jazz enough” to need to be reissued.

    Instead they gave us a steady diet of the Byrd-man’s wonderful hard bop playing, most of which was housed in wildly beautiful sleeves like this

     

    image



    But much as I did love listening and looking at those records – and in particular the one pictured with its weird choral arrangements and its beautiful version of Christo Redentor (Christ the redeemer for those of you who haven’t been to Rio)

    it became frustrating that you couldn’t get a record that everyone wanted and everyone was sampling. And we thought they should be able to.

    We loved the later part of Prof/Dr Donald’s career and didn’t see commercialism as a bad thing. We saw it as reaching out. To us it was jazz – just different jazz. We thought that the fact that the prof was a teacher open minded enough to listen to his own students and catch the wave (Byrd formed the amazing BlackByrds with students from his jazz programme at Howard University in 1973 – check this jam out as it still sounds amazing today, and he repeated the trick with the New York 125th Street Band on this cracking tune which holds up just fine.

    We loved the fact that Byrd’s album BlackByrd was the biggest selling Blue Note album of all time and arguably the straight up funkiest jazz funk record this side of Herbie’s Chameleon. And we loved that Street Lady is amongst the funkiest of funk album covers as well as a straight up gangsta-jam.

     

    image



    So we just didn’t get it that they weren’t all available all the time. We thought he was like another side to Miles Davis, but a side that channelled James Brown and Sly Stone into an easy to understand funk where Miles took it to an abstract black music of the future (but more on electric Miles another time).

    And most of all we loved 1975 uber classic Places & Spaces. This beautiful record of Larry and Fonce Mizell produced space age (and spacy) jazz funk productions is an unusual album in that all 7 of its tracks have been sampled multiple times. That says a lot about how great it’s sounds and beats were. Among those “guilty” of jacking those beautiful jazz funk beats were master beatminers like Stetsasonic and Pete Rock, and top line hitmakers like Ice Cube, 2Pac and Jazzy Jeff. Byrd’s breaks made it onto mainstream house jams like Armand Van Helden’s “Flowerz” and R&B jointz by the likes of Destiny’s Child. Everywhere in fact – and you probably heard them all so many times without knowing it would amaze you. It would (and maybe should) make a compilation in its own right.

    And whilst there is no doubt that Byrd’s productions were wicked I like to think that my pal Dean Rudland and I helped a bit with spreading this gospel.

    Because out of our frustration over being unable to get those beats we managed to persuade the ultra conservative Blue Note that it would be worth releasing first Dean’s great “Best Of” Donald Byrd (all the best electric jams for 7.99!)

    And then the even more ambitious Blue Break Beats (a compilation of Blue Note records that had or should have been sampled under a then topical header from a Steps Ahead record) which sold over 500,000 copies and became a series in its own right

     

    image



    They are, I believe, both still in catalogue today and still selling.

    And finally even the Americans got the idea and reissued Places & Spaces. Which was a bummer for collectors but a relief to everyone else.

    So this week as we mourn the passing of Professor Donald Byrd, a great hard bop trumpeter and an educator hip enough to listen to his own students and join in with the funk I am very sad to see him go, but a little happier in the fact that we helped remind the world of his contribution to some degree. And I’m thrilled that because these compilations sold so well Blue Note let Dean and I put out another compilation called “Early Byrd’ which collected Donald’s soul jazz tunes that were his stepping stone between hard bop and jazz funk

     

    image

     



    And that allowed us to reissue this fantastic tune The Weasil which went on to be sampled by Hard Knocks and Lords of the Underground and is maybe my favourite of all.

    Another of the greats is gone. Take 5 minutes to dig his catalogue through the links here and treat yourself.

     



    [Dr Donald Byrd passed away in early Feb 2013 aged 80 – surely too young. I couldn’t do justice to his contribution or full discography as he recorded for 40 years as leader and firey sideman but Early Byrd and the Best of Byrd do to some degree, especially if you like the Beats aspect. For me he is certainly up there with the better known likes of Freddie Hubbard and arguably he connected jazz to a new 70s audience better than even Miles. I haven’t talked about his wonderful hard Bop records either but if you had to get one early Byrd record probably “A New Perspective – Byrd for Brass and Voices” is the most unusual and special. If you like Jazz Funk the BlackByrds are a must too and I didn’t link Walking in Rhythm or Rock Creek Park which were both club favourites. Youtube or Spotify them as is your poison. At some point Dean persuaded me to put out a collection of the seminal Mizell Brothers productions aptly called Sky High

     

    image



    Which I remain very pleased we did and is a great snapshot of an incredible time when for a few years they were the hottest crew around. This got reissued in a much worse sleeve as Mizell but includes Rance Allen’s great gospel funk tune “Reason To Survive” which is a nice way to end.]



     

    -Tony H



    *Further Listening - Check out this 2 hour DB tribute set by Patrick Forge

    152971
Submitted by Site Factory admin on


 



For a long time it was hard to get a hold of this album

 

image



It was a classic, but the good people who ran Blue Note (stand up Michael Cuscuna) thought it wasn’t “jazz enough” to need to be reissued.

Instead they gave us a steady diet of the Byrd-man’s wonderful hard bop playing, most of which was housed in wildly beautiful sleeves like this

 

image



But much as I did love listening and looking at those records – and in particular the one pictured with its weird choral arrangements and its beautiful version of Christo Redentor (Christ the redeemer for those of you who haven’t been to Rio)

it became frustrating that you couldn’t get a record that everyone wanted and everyone was sampling. And we thought they should be able to.

We loved the later part of Prof/Dr Donald’s career and didn’t see commercialism as a bad thing. We saw it as reaching out. To us it was jazz – just different jazz. We thought that the fact that the prof was a teacher open minded enough to listen to his own students and catch the wave (Byrd formed the amazing BlackByrds with students from his jazz programme at Howard University in 1973 – check this jam out as it still sounds amazing today, and he repeated the trick with the New York 125th Street Band on this cracking tune which holds up just fine.

We loved the fact that Byrd’s album BlackByrd was the biggest selling Blue Note album of all time and arguably the straight up funkiest jazz funk record this side of Herbie’s Chameleon. And we loved that Street Lady is amongst the funkiest of funk album covers as well as a straight up gangsta-jam.

 

image



So we just didn’t get it that they weren’t all available all the time. We thought he was like another side to Miles Davis, but a side that channelled James Brown and Sly Stone into an easy to understand funk where Miles took it to an abstract black music of the future (but more on electric Miles another time).

And most of all we loved 1975 uber classic Places & Spaces. This beautiful record of Larry and Fonce Mizell produced space age (and spacy) jazz funk productions is an unusual album in that all 7 of its tracks have been sampled multiple times. That says a lot about how great it’s sounds and beats were. Among those “guilty” of jacking those beautiful jazz funk beats were master beatminers like Stetsasonic and Pete Rock, and top line hitmakers like Ice Cube, 2Pac and Jazzy Jeff. Byrd’s breaks made it onto mainstream house jams like Armand Van Helden’s “Flowerz” and R&B jointz by the likes of Destiny’s Child. Everywhere in fact – and you probably heard them all so many times without knowing it would amaze you. It would (and maybe should) make a compilation in its own right.

And whilst there is no doubt that Byrd’s productions were wicked I like to think that my pal Dean Rudland and I helped a bit with spreading this gospel.

Because out of our frustration over being unable to get those beats we managed to persuade the ultra conservative Blue Note that it would be worth releasing first Dean’s great “Best Of” Donald Byrd (all the best electric jams for 7.99!)

And then the even more ambitious Blue Break Beats (a compilation of Blue Note records that had or should have been sampled under a then topical header from a Steps Ahead record) which sold over 500,000 copies and became a series in its own right

 

image



They are, I believe, both still in catalogue today and still selling.

And finally even the Americans got the idea and reissued Places & Spaces. Which was a bummer for collectors but a relief to everyone else.

So this week as we mourn the passing of Professor Donald Byrd, a great hard bop trumpeter and an educator hip enough to listen to his own students and join in with the funk I am very sad to see him go, but a little happier in the fact that we helped remind the world of his contribution to some degree. And I’m thrilled that because these compilations sold so well Blue Note let Dean and I put out another compilation called “Early Byrd’ which collected Donald’s soul jazz tunes that were his stepping stone between hard bop and jazz funk

 

image

 



And that allowed us to reissue this fantastic tune The Weasil which went on to be sampled by Hard Knocks and Lords of the Underground and is maybe my favourite of all.

Another of the greats is gone. Take 5 minutes to dig his catalogue through the links here and treat yourself.

 



[Dr Donald Byrd passed away in early Feb 2013 aged 80 – surely too young. I couldn’t do justice to his contribution or full discography as he recorded for 40 years as leader and firey sideman but Early Byrd and the Best of Byrd do to some degree, especially if you like the Beats aspect. For me he is certainly up there with the better known likes of Freddie Hubbard and arguably he connected jazz to a new 70s audience better than even Miles. I haven’t talked about his wonderful hard Bop records either but if you had to get one early Byrd record probably “A New Perspective – Byrd for Brass and Voices” is the most unusual and special. If you like Jazz Funk the BlackByrds are a must too and I didn’t link Walking in Rhythm or Rock Creek Park which were both club favourites. Youtube or Spotify them as is your poison. At some point Dean persuaded me to put out a collection of the seminal Mizell Brothers productions aptly called Sky High

 

image



Which I remain very pleased we did and is a great snapshot of an incredible time when for a few years they were the hottest crew around. This got reissued in a much worse sleeve as Mizell but includes Rance Allen’s great gospel funk tune “Reason To Survive” which is a nice way to end.]



 

-Tony H



*Further Listening - Check out this 2 hour DB tribute set by Patrick Forge

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