A Donald Brown

AVID Jazz presents the latest release in our Four Classic Album series with a second re-mastered 2CD release from Donald Byrd, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details.

Reuniting with Larry Mizell, the man behind his last three LPs, Donald Byrd continues to explore contemporary soul, funk, and R&B with Places and Spaces. In fact, the record sounds more urban than its predecessor, which often played like a Hollywood version of the inner city. Keeping the Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Sly Stone influences of Street Lady, Places and Spaces adds elements of Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Stevie Wonder, which immediately makes the album funkier and more soulful. Boasting sweeping string arrangements, sultry rhythm guitars, rubbery bass, murmuring flügelhorns, and punchy horn charts, the music falls halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire. Also, the title Places and Spaces does mean something – there are more open spaces within the music, which automatically makes it funkier. Of course, it also means that there isn't much of interest on Places and Spaces for jazz purists, but the album would appeal to most fans of Philly soul, lite funk, and proto-disco.

Reuniting with Larry Mizell, the man behind his last three LPs, Donald Byrd continues to explore contemporary soul, funk, and R&B with Places and Spaces. In fact, the record sounds more urban than its predecessor, which often played like a Hollywood version of the inner city. Keeping the Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Sly Stone influences of Street Lady, Places and Spaces adds elements of Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Stevie Wonder, which immediately makes the album funkier and more soulful. Boasting sweeping string arrangements, sultry rhythm guitars, rubbery bass, murmuring flügelhorns, and punchy horn charts, the music falls halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire. Also, the title Places and Spaces does mean something – there are more open spaces within the music, which automatically makes it funkier. Of course, it also means that there isn't much of interest on Places and Spaces for jazz purists, but the album would appeal to most fans of Philly soul, lite funk, and proto-disco.

Donald Byrd's 1961 recording Free Form is both a smorgasbord of modern jazz styles and a breakthrough album showing the Detroit born trumpeter's versatility and interest in diversity. At age 30, turning down offers to teach and a full decade before turning to commercial funk fusion with his Blackbyrds, Byrd, alongside a wonderful collection of jazz professionals, proves his mettle as an individualist while also stylistically straddling the blurred lines of jazz. Where his brass tone is very lean and toned, he does not resort to outlandish outbursts into the ionosphere, but shows a refined yet daring approach removed from his predecessors or peers - Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan in particular. With tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, a very young pianist Herbie Hancock, drummer Billy Higgins, and bassist Butch Warren, Byrd tackles different flavors of jazz…

Like swing guitarist Charlie Christian, Clifford Brown was incredibly influential for someone who died so young. The Fats Navarro-minded trumpeter was only 25 when a car accident claimed his life in 1956, but his influence remained long after his death - Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Donald Byrd, and Carmell Jones were among the many trumpet titans who were heavily influenced by Brown. In the early to mid-'50s, Brown kept getting more and more exciting; those who found him impressive in 1952 found even more reason to be impressed in 1955. That means that when it comes to Brown's dates, excellent doesn't necessarily mean essential…

Ron Carter & Danny Simmons - The Brown Beatnik Tomes (2019) {Blue Note 0060257752454}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 165 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 75 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 85 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2019 Blue Note / KMW Studio / UMG | 0060257752454
Jazz / Spoken Word / Straight-Ahead Jazz / Beat Poetry

Ron Carter has always been way more than a straight jazz bassist – especially in the past few decades, where his collaborative spirit has taken him into territory we never would have imagined early on in his career! Here, he works alongside writer Danny Simmons – whose words inform most of these tracks, read by Simmons himself. Carter plays these amazing basslines that are vivid and illustrative while Danny reeds – and a few tracks change up the approach slightly, one with a reading from Liza Jessie Peterson, two more with trio performances that feature Donald Vega on piano and Russel Malone on guitar.

John Lee & Gerry Brown - Still Can't Say Enough (1976) {2013 Japanese BNLA Series 24-bit Remaster TOCJ-50546}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 289 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 99 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 179 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1976, 2013 Blue Note / EMI Music Japan | TOCJ-50546
Jazz / Fusion / Neo Bop / Jazz Funk

Reissue with the latest 24bit/192kHz remastering. Features original cover artwork. Comes with a descripton in Japanese. Great work from John Lee and Gerry Brown – a pair of fusion stalwarts who added key help to a number of classic 70s sessions for other artists – and got to make a rare few albums like this on their own! Lee's on bass and Brown's on drums, and the pair are in perfect time throughout – working with Skip Drinkwater production, which helps them find even more focus than before, and shake off some of the more jamming aspects of their rock-fusion performances with others – a move that helps them come up with a wonderfully soulful sound in the process – very much in the best Drinkwater soul jazz style of the time!

Right from the stop-start bass groove that opens "The Emperor," it's immediately clear that Ethiopian Knights is more indebted to funk – not just funky jazz, but the straight-up James Brown/Sly Stone variety – than any previous Donald Byrd project. And, like a true funk band, Byrd and his group work the same driving, polyrhythmic grooves over and over, making rhythm the focal point of the music…