Donald Byrd

The last Elektra record, and the most overtly smooth-jazz adjacent of his career. Smooth jazz had not yet coalesced as a genre by 1981, but Love Byrd anticipates its vocabulary: glossy production, soprano saxophone throughout, melodies designed not to disturb. Byrd's trumpet is present but subdued, playing within a context that does not demand much from a jazz soloist.

Not without its pleasures as a period artifact, and George Howard's saxophone work has a legitimate warmth to it. But this is the nadir of the commercial period, and it is a relief that the late-career records that followed would find Byrd returning to more substantive territory.

Another archival Blue Note release from the October 1967 sessions, and one of the most surprising personnel combinations in the catalog. Pepper Adams returns on baritone, Sonny Red stays on alto, and the rhythm section is remarkable: a young Chick Corea on piano and Miroslav Vitous on bass, both years before their fame with Return to Forever, plus Mickey Roker driving from the drums. The interplay between Corea and Vitous already sounds prescient.

The vault releases from this period are essential Byrd listening: records that got caught between the shifting Blue Note aesthetic and the label's commercial needs, and that come out on the other side sounding exactly as good as the best of the catalog. Arriving in 1981 between Love Byrd and Words, it is a welcome reminder of what Byrd was capable of.

The final Elektra record, and a step up from Love Byrd's smooth inclinations. There are jazz-rooted performances here that would not have felt out of place on a more straightforwardly jazz-labeled record. Byrd plays with more directness than the late-seventies records allowed him. The production is still firmly in the early-eighties R&B-jazz fusion idiom, but it carries it better than its predecessor.

Not a return to form exactly, but an indication that there was still a serious jazz musician inside the commercial projects. The gap between this and Harlem Blues is the longest in the discography, and the contrast between them is remarkable.

The comeback nobody quite expected, and the record that reminded everyone what Byrd sounded like when he was playing jazz. Kenny Garrett on alto is a natural pairing: Garrett, like Byrd a Detroiter, had studied with Byrd at Howard University, and his vibrant alto draws something from Byrd that the commercial records had not. Mulgrew Miller at the piano is one of the finest accompanists of the generation, and he gives Byrd harmonic support worthy of the earlier Blue Note dates.

The blues-rooted material matches the title: more emotionally direct than anything Byrd had recorded since the early seventies, with a willingness to sit in a groove and develop it at length. A genuine return to substance after too many years of the other thing.

The follow-up to Harlem Blues raises the stakes considerably by adding Joe Henderson on tenor alongside Kenny Garrett on alto: two of the most powerful saxophonists of their respective generations in the same front line. Donald Brown at the piano brings a different sensibility than Mulgrew Miller, more angular and unpredictable, and the rhythm section of Peter Washington and Al Foster has a directness that suits the title. Byrd sounds galvanized.

Henderson and Garrett push Byrd harder than any front-line partners since McLean in 1960, and Byrd responds by playing with a commitment the late-period commercial records never demanded. The two Landmark comeback records taken together are the strongest consecutive pair in his post-1970 catalog.

The last Landmark record assembles an extraordinary cast: Joe Henderson on tenor, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Donald Brown at the piano, Rufus Reid on bass, Carl Allen on drums. The personnel alone makes this a significant late-career session. Hutcherson's vibraphone gives the ensemble a harmonic richness the other Landmark records lacked, and Henderson's authority on tenor is never in question.

The result is slightly more diffuse than the two records that preceded it: material that ranges across idioms without the coherence of Harlem Blues or Getting Down to Business. But with this band, even the less focused moments have substance. The three Landmark records taken together represent his most artistically consistent late-career stretch, and A City Called Heaven closes that chapter with a band worthy of the occasion.

An archival Blue Note release from the 1969-70 transitional sessions: recorded after Electric Byrd had been made and before the Mizell productions began, sessions that fell between the label's changing priorities. The ensemble is large and varied: Frank Foster and Lew Tabackin on tenors, William Campbell on trombone, Wally Richardson on guitar, two bassists in Ron Carter and Bob Cranshaw, Mickey Roker on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion. The size of the group gives these sessions a weight and texture quite different from the earlier Blue Note dates.

Pearson is back at the piano, and the familiar warmth of the long collaboration is immediately audible. Byrd plays with a freedom that the transitional moment had apparently created, supported by an ensemble that bridges his hard bop past and his electric future. Of all the archival Blue Note releases, Kofi is the most valuable, and the one that most convincingly argues the vault still had things to say.

Recorded live at the 1973 Montreux Jazz Festival at the peak of the Mizell-era commercial success, but sounding considerably more alive than the studio records of the same period. The touring band is enormous: two trumpets with Fonce Mizell beside Byrd, Allan Barnes and Nathan Davis on saxophones and flutes, Larry Mizell on synthesizer, Kevin Toney on electric piano, Barney Perry on guitar, Henry Franklin on bass, Keith Killgo on drums, and Ray Armando on congas. You can hear the space in the live context that the studio productions had filled with overdubs, and the result is simultaneously looser and more powerful.

Byrd's trumpet solos are longer and more developed than the studio versions of similar material, as if the audience's presence reminded him to be a jazz musician rather than a recording artist. Released nearly fifty years after it was recorded, this is a final document that earns its place in the catalog.