Donald Byrd

Byrd's third and last album for Orrin Keepnews' Landmark label – Part Three of his mainstream comeback – is another mostly straightahead affair with a sextet, sounding a few high-minded themes and taking a few unusual twists. Twice, Art Blakey is memorialized with drummer Carl Allen's sturdy application of the Blakey shuffle ("King Arthur," "Byrd Song"), but his drumming also salutes the M-Base brigade on the concluding "Not Necessarily the Blues." "A City Called Heaven," the spiritual-turned-title track with an nearly operatic vocal by mezzo-soprano Lorice Stevens, gets a moving extended modal treatment where Byrd has some rapid flurries that usually, but not always, hit their mark.

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…

Donald Byrd - Donald Byrd with Strings (1959) {Phoenix Records 131583 rel 2013}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 363 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 166 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 21 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1959, 2013 Phoenix Records |131583
Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Trumpet

This release presents the complete session pianist and composer Clare Fischer arranged for trumpeter Donald Byrd. It features Byrd, Fischer himself on piano, and a string and wind section. This amazing date marks the first time Fischer contributed all of the arrangements for a session. However, its release was postponed many years. As a bonus, we have added the complete LP Byrd Blows on Beacon Hill (Transition LP-17), which showcases the trumpeter in a quartet format.

Donald Byrd & Gigi Gryce - Complete Jazz Lab Studio Sessions, Vol. 2 (1957) {2006 Lone Hill Jazz Remaster}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 431 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 181 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 44 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1957, 2006 Lone Hill Jazz | LHJ10254
Jazz / Hard Bop / Trumpet / Saxophone

Vol. 2 in the Lone Hill Jazz reissue label's Donald Byrd/Gigi Gryce Jazz Lab Project opens with three tracks that resulted from a planned college concert tour by the Jazz Lab and vocalist Jackie Paris, a native of Nutley, NJ, who also worked with Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, and Charles Mingus. While planning their tour, the team of Byrd, Gryce, and Paris conceived a didactic overview involving what Nat Hentoff described in the original liner notes as "some of the root channels of jazz with the blues as a primary linking element" but sketched "in broad chronological and stylistic skips."