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| Byrd in Paris with Walter Davis (p), Bobby Jaspar (ts) and Doug Watkins (b). |
Trumpet player, composer, band leader and jazz educator Donald Byrd passed away last month. He left a prodigious legacy behind which among them his long and abundant tenure with Pepper Adams remains my favorite.
(a fast dissolve to Nat Hentoff)
Nat Hentoff, during his exuberantly active years as the session attendant, liner note author and producer, wrote more liner notes for Donald Byrd than any other trumpet player of the 1960s. What follows is a small part of Hentoff's illustration of Byrd, as well as his attempt to reflect Byrd's views on various issues - from educating jazz to church music and evaluation of his colleagues.
Byrd Emerges
The continuing growth of Donald Byrd as a uniquely melodic improviser with authoritative command of his instrument has not been sufficiently underlined, it seems to me, in the past couple of years. Several critics have, however, been cognizant of Byrd's increasingly substantial achievement. Frank Kofsky, for one, noted in Down Beat that "the history of Byrd's recording career has been one of consistent improvement; and the British critic, Michael James, has observed in the Jazz Review that Byrd's "tone sings loud and clear throughout the range of his horn, and his invention has more that kept pace with his improved technique...There is not a hint of blandness technical confidence will sometimes bring."
Also heartening is the fact that Byrd does not find necessary to pound home the point that he has roots. A blues feeling courses through everything he plays, but he is also able to range through a much wider variety of moods than are several of his more self-consciously "hard" contemporaries. There is in Byrd a linkage to sunny, light-hearted jazz playing as well as to vigorously assertive self-expression.
