Donald Byrd

The first signal that everything is about to change. Pearson produces a large ensemble session with electric piano, flute from Lew Tabackin or Jerry Dodgion depending on the session, Julian Priester on trombone, Frank Foster on tenor, Jimmy Ponder on guitar, and Joe Chambers and Leo Morris splitting the drum chair across the two sessions. This is not hard bop anymore, but it is not yet funk: it is something in between, exploratory and atmospheric.

There is something valedictory about the record, as if both Byrd and Pearson know the straight-ahead phase of their project is ending. The compositions are the most expansive yet: longer forms, more open textures, space for the ensemble to breathe. A transitional record, but a fully realized one.

And then everything changes. A massive ensemble: Frank Foster and Lew Tabackin on tenors, Pepper Adams on baritone, Jerry Dodgion doubling alto and soprano sax with flute, Bill Campbell on trombone, Wally Richardson on guitar, Airto Moreira on percussion, even Hermeto Pascoal guesting on flute. Pearson on electric piano, Ron Carter and Mickey Roker holding down the rhythm. Compared to what Miles Davis was doing in the same period, Electric Byrd is less radical in structure but more immediately pleasurable: the melodies are more conventional, the grooves more locked in, the whole thing more willing to be enjoyed.

There is no title track, just four long pieces: three Byrd originals and Airto Moreira's thirteen-minute "Xibaba," the only track with Hermeto Pascoal on flute. This is the beginning of something, and unlike a lot of transitional records, the beginning is fully realized. The same Pearson-Byrd chemistry that made the hard bop records great survives the format change intact.

The best of the early funk period, and one of the best records in Byrd's entire catalog. Recorded in Los Angeles with a West Coast ensemble that includes Harold Land on tenor, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, and Crusaders members Joe Sample and Wilton Felder, this is a wholly different sound world from the Blue Note hard bop records. The opening "The Emperor" is a genuine achievement: fifteen minutes of interlocking groove and melodic development that earns its length every step of the way.

Byrd plays the trumpet with a completely different sensibility: open-voiced, melodically direct, more interested in the phrase than the solo. On "The Little Rasti," David T. Walker's guitar work adds a silky R&B dimension, and Hutcherson's vibraphone floats above the groove. While Black Byrd would be the commercial breakthrough, Ethiopian Knights is the artistic breakthrough.

For many years the best-selling album in Blue Note's history (Blue Note itself still calls it the label's best seller of all time), produced by Larry and Fonce Mizell, and a cultural document as much as a jazz record. The Mizell brothers brought in a completely different production sensibility: dense instrumental arrangements, a funky pocket that owes more to Stevie Wonder's early-1970s records than to anything happening in the jazz world. Byrd plays the trumpet over the top of it all with a directness that cuts through every layer of production.

"Flight Time," "Black Byrd," "Sky High": these tracks are not just successful records but cultural objects, appearing in dozens of hip-hop productions from the 1980s onward. The critical establishment of 1973 was skeptical; the audience was not.

The second Mizell production is slightly more formulaic than Black Byrd: the template established, now being applied rather than invented. That said, the template is very good, and "Lansana's Priestess" is one of the finest individual tracks of the Mizell-Byrd collaborations: a slow, incantatory groove with Byrd's trumpet floating above it like something only half-material.

The commercial direction is settled here. These records are being made for an audience that is not primarily jazz, and Byrd plays to that audience without condescension. The production is lush, glossy, and extremely well-executed. Street Lady does not reach Black Byrd's heights but it does not need to.

The third Mizell collaboration, and the formula is now fully established if not yet exhausted. The title captures what the record actually feels like: optimistic, forward-looking, genuinely enthusiastic about the sounds being assembled. The production has gotten denser, more layers and more studio craft, sometimes at the expense of the jazz-band-in-a-room feeling that even Black Byrd retained.

Byrd's trumpet solos are shorter as the productions get larger, which is an unfortunate trade-off. But the grooves are real and the energy is genuine. This is the Mizell period slightly past its peak, still producing excellent music, not quite as fresh as it had been.

The fourth Mizell production in three years is the most ambitious of the run: more elaborate arrangements, more variety of texture, a more conscious attempt to make an album that works as a sustained listening experience rather than a collection of singles. The title track runs a little over six minutes, and the length gives it room to develop.

Still essential Byrd-Mizell territory, though by this point the sounds they had pioneered in 1972 were being imitated widely enough that the originals were starting to sound like part of a genre rather than the invention of one. The playing is excellent throughout. Places and Spaces is the graceful last statement of the peak Mizell period.

The Mizell collaboration begins to show its limits here. The arrangements have gotten more ornate at the expense of rhythmic urgency, and Byrd's trumpet is increasingly buried under production decisions that do not serve it well. The title track has some of the old groove, but "Caricatures" is an unfortunately accurate description of what happens when a formula outlasts the excitement that generated it.

Not without value as a document of its moment in time, and there are tracks that stand up on their own. But compared to Black Byrd or Ethiopian Knights, this is a record going through the motions with declining enthusiasm. The Mizell partnership had produced some extraordinary music. It was time for something new.

The move to Elektra brings a new context but similar production values. Byrd now producing himself, and the records have a slightly leaner sound: less layered, which should work in their favor but does not quite. The funk vocabulary is by 1978 crowded with imitators, and the original practitioners find themselves competing with the sound they invented.

Byrd plays with enthusiasm, and certain tracks land. But the cultural moment that made Black Byrd a phenomenon has passed, and records like this one ask to be measured against the earlier peak. They do not quite measure up.

Disco has arrived and Byrd arrives with it. The Harlem address in the title is a gesture of connection to a specific community and place, but the music on this record is less rooted in any particular geography than the Black Byrd material was. Synthesizers dominate, the rhythms are more mechanical, and Byrd's trumpet is used decoratively in a way that makes you miss the directness of the early records.

There are moments, though no title track to hang them on: 125th Street, N.Y.C. is the name of the band. But this is Byrd chasing commercial viability rather than exploring something new. After the Mizell-period invention and the hard bop decade before it, these late Elektra records feel like a holding pattern.

A significant archival release: these are April 1961 Blue Note recordings that sat in the vault for nearly two decades before finally being issued. The Byrd-Adams front line is heard at its sharpest here, with a young Herbie Hancock already bringing harmonic sophistication to the piano chair. Chant is one of the essential documents of Byrd's early Blue Note period.

Doug Watkins's bass work is authoritative, and Teddy Robinson maintains a steady, responsive pulse from the drums. For listeners who came to Byrd through the funk records, this is the history they had not heard. For listeners who came through the hard bop, it is confirmation of what they suspected: the vault contained more masterpieces.