Jazz / R&B trumpeter Donald Byrd turns 77 years old today! He’s played with other great jazz musicians such as John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, and Thelonius Monk to name a few. A long list of today’s artists have also sampled his music such as Black Moon (Wind Parade), Pete Rock & CL Smooth (Places and Spaces) and, of course, J Dilla and Erykah Badu (Think Twice). In honor of his birthday today we thank Mr. Donald Byrd for all the great music he continues to bless us with!

Donald Byrd “Wind Parade” (1975)

Black Moon “Buck’em Down” (1994)

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Donald Byrd “Places and Spaces” (1975)

Pete Rock & CL Smooth “All The Places” (1994)

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Donald Byrd “Think Twice” (1974) (sample appears at 4:46)

Tribe Called Quest “Footprints” (1990) (sample appeas at 0:10)

The Red Garland Quintet with John Coltrane: Dig It! (Prestige PR7229)
Of course it is that crucial “with…” that makes the ears prick up, and pricked ears are just the thing for listening to Coltrane’s dazzling opening solo on Billie’s Bounce, filled as it is with the remnants of bop and the beginnings of the sheets of sound explorations that the saxophonist would increasingly engage in.

This was 1957 and along with Trane, the Miles Davis Quintet pianist had Donald Byrd on trumpet, Paul Chambers or George Joyner on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums. This was an influential band for record collectors but not a live playing unit. Nevertheless it has that late ’50s jazz essence, and Garland remained a favourite for many piano fans.

The tracks are unusually long for the era – Garland’s original composition, Lazy Mae, which concludes this Rudy Van Gelder remastered edition CD, runs to over 16 minutes. It’s a stately blues with the leader laying out the basics in a left hand riff before he adds some treble, and the rhythm team enter for a strong, swinging work through. In fact, it’s not until near the halfway mark that Coltrane enters with another masterful solo, followed by Joyner and finally Byrd, high and lyrical.

The single trio track is Crazy Rhythm, with Garland in exemplary form.

Apparently this disc was originally compiled from the left-overs from sessions which had produced three previous records. Well, what delicious leftovers!

…to paraphrase Prince. A little baby brother to this blog, It Might Also Go A Little Something Like That, has been born over at tumblr, where I will be posting a track-a-day until something explodes. Already we’re two days in and you can enjoy Isaac Hayes covering The Blue Nile and Donald Byrd gloriously at the logical end of his jazz-funk tether. The hook? Each day’s track will be tangentially connected to the day before until I paint myself into a musicological corner. It’s also an indulgent way of sorting my online stuff for the short term future. Music will live there, longer and sadly more infrequent posts here, and short bursts of tosh will thrive on twitter.

In the meantime, you can enjoy a slew of mixes on this blog, and flick through the mine of downloadable mp3s already hosted here. I plan to be back with a needlessly comprehensive series of posts about Guess Who and a best of 2009 music retrospective before the decade’s out. So see you then. Right? Right.

Bassist Linda Oh

Two strangers will meet on stage at Wangaratta, writes Roger Mitchell

THEY seem so different. She plays bass — electric and upright. He plays trumpet. She is 25, was born in Malaysia and grew up in Perth listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers. He is 67, was born in Jacksonville, Florida and grew up listening to his parents’ 78rpm Jazz at the Philharmonic records.

Both live in New York, but they have never met. In a few days they will share a stage at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz, in a quartet with pianist Mike Nock and drummer Tommy Crane.

One of the joys of this festival, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary, is that Linda Oh and Charles Tolliver, who are from such different generations and genres in jazz, can link up.

Yet they have much in common. Each was inspired to play when given an instrument — Tolliver’s grandmother, Lela, gave him a cornet; Oh’s uncle gave her an electric bass. Both were initially self-taught and both considered other careers— Tolliver as a pharmacist, after working for a local apothecary, and Oh as a lawyer.

Both musicians like challenges and both are perceptive, intelligent and thoughtful.

Asked about the importance of music in people’s lives, Oh says, “It’s a shame these days that everything is so overrun by TV and advertisements and reality TV that a lot of people don’t have the energy to go out to live music or put an album on and listen to it from start to finish.

“If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie said to everyone ‘You should go and see a jazz show’ everyone would go. We need more spokespeople.”

Tolliver’s view, fittingly, is borrowed from Art Blakey: “He would come up to the microphone and, in that inimitable voice of his, say ‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we are here to wash away the dust from your everyday lives’. I think that’s it.”

Linda Oh says her entry to jazz was “a little backwards”, beginning with the fusion of Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke and Chick Corea and then being turned completely around by Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson on the album Night Train.

Driven by the desire to “do something that I didn’t know much about and to learn as much as I could”, she studied bass at the WA Academy of Performing Arts, graduating with honours. Oh says Perth had many talented musicians who were “very honest about what you need to do to get better”.

Winning a Sisters in Jazz competition in 2004 gave her a chance to visit New York. She was “pretty blown away, but not just in awe of it — I checked out local musicians and universities and saw there was so much stuff to be learned out here and I knew I had to do it”.

Oh won a scholarship to Manhattan School of Music, where she completed a Masters in Jazz-based Performance and met trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Obed Calvaire, with whom she recently released her acclaimed debut album, Entry. With Oh and Crane, Akinmusire will perform tunes from that album at Wangaratta.

Oh has never played with Tolliver, though she has heard a lot of his music. “Tommy went to New School University, where Charles has an Art Blakey Ensemble, so it will be a very interesting mix, especially with Mike Nock — I’m a huge fan.”

Tolliver recalls playing with Blakey’s Messengers “for a minute, replacing Lee Morgan, a long time ago”, but as other names of jazz identities from his past tumble out there is no self-promotion.

He says it was “an act of providence of miraculous proportions” that the young dropout from Howard University met bandleader Jackie McLean and within six months was making his first recording.

Labels such as hard bop, bebop and post bop meant little, Tolliver says. “We understood that was just print journalism. We were just trying to expand on what Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk had laid out there.”

Tolliver admits to many influences on his sound, including Gillespie (“He’s the go-to guy for inspiration”), Charlie Shavers, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Durham, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, Booker Little, Fats Navarro and Roy Eldridge.

But Tolliver’s improvising involves taking risks. “You’re really trying to make a statement of your emotional self on that instrument and the only way I can see to do that is to get busy exploring something right away. I need to have that little bit of danger there that I might not be able to get out of what I’m trying to do.”

Tolliver will perform twice with Sydney’s Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra, playing tunes from With Love and the recent Emperor March. With the quartet he’ll play a selection from the Mosaic Select box set.

Wangaratta Festival of Jazz starts on Friday, October 30

An edited version of this article appeared in the Herald Sun newspaper, Melbourne, on October 28

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1. Bill Evans. Peace Piece. 1958. download HERE.

2.Donald Byrd. Cristo Redentor. 1963. download HERE.

3.Miles Davis. In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time. 1969. download HERE.

4.John Coltrane. A Love Supreme Pt. 1: Acknowledgement. 1965. download HERE.

5.Grant Green. Down Here On The Ground. 1970. download HERE.

6.Brother Jack McDuff. Oblighetto. 1969. download HERE.

7.Joe Chambers. Mind Rain. 1978. download HERE.

8.Billy Brooks. Forty Days. 1974. download HERE.

9.Marc Moulin. Humpty Dumpty. 1971 – 1974 (Placebo Sessions). download HERE.

10.Bobbi Humphrey. New York Times. 1974. download HERE.

Download List as a 100mb zip file HERE, or as individual mp3’s above and below. Zipped folder has an extra track that I couldn’t find a video for …so I didnt put it up, that track is..

*Idris Muhammad. Lorens Dance. download that HERE as an mp3.

Listening to Jazz through Hip Hop headphone’s.

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1. Bill Evans. Peace Piece. 1958. 6mins.43secs. 191kbps. download  HERE.

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2.Donald Byrd. Cristo Redentor. 1963. 5mins.40secs.  186kbps. download HERE.

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3.Miles Davis. In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time. 1969. 19mins.53secs. 160kbps. download HERE.

(Part 2) video from this youtuber (also has Parts 1 & 3)

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4.John Coltrane. A Love Supreme Pt. 1: Acknowledgement. 1965. 7mins.43secs. 256kbps. download HERE

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5.Grant Green. Down Here On The Ground. 1970. 6mins.44secs. 160kbps download HERE.

Sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on Vibes and Stuff from The Low End Theory..

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6.Brother Jack McDuff. Oblighetto. 6mins.36secs. 1969. 160kbps. download HERE.

Sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on Scenario from The Low End Theory

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7.Joe Chambers. Mind Rain. 2mins.35secs. 1978. 192kbps. download HERE.

Sampled by Nas on N.Y. State Of Mind

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8.Billy Brooks. Forty Days. 6mins.18secs. 192kbps. 1974. download HERE.

Sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on Luck Of Lucien from Peoples Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm

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9.Marc Moulin. Humpty Dumpty. 1min.56secs. 1971-74 (Placebo Sessions). 192kbps download HERE.

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Bobbi Humphrey. New York Times. 6mins11secs. 1974. 192kbps. download HERE

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All Megaupload

Some murder sampled throughout hip hop. Donald Byrd and Isaac Hayes made a classic with this slow tempo funk ballad. Enjoy it!

DOWNLOAD

You figure it out

Chilli

Encore une petite vidéo dont je ne me lasse pas…..réalisée par Bud Luckey pour Sesam street à l’époque avec un coté jazzy bien rétro… j’en mangerai tous les jours…. et pour ceux qui aiment le jazz, la prod est signée Donald Byrd and the Blackbyrds…. bref y’avait pas de mauvais à cet époque…

If it’s Saturday evening on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis it’s the time and place for Temposphere, a weekly musical amalgam of fresh and classic jazz, samba, salsa, dub, Afrobeat and funk. This week’s edition featured classic cuts from the likes of Donald Byrd, PM Dawn, Mark Murphy and Ennio Morricone, plus tracks from some superb recent CDs: Sara Tavares, Kylie Auldist, Quantic & His Combo Barbaro, and Brownout have all released great new records that you won’t regret tracking down. You can relive the 2 hours via MP3 or Real Audio streams at the KFAI site; the playlist is posted both there and here after the break.

image source: This Isn’t Happiness

Bobby Hutcherson – Love Song
album: Blue Note Trip; label: Blue Note

Sara Tavares – Bué
album: Xinti; label: Four Quarters

Masters At Work featuring Wunmi – The Time Is Now
album: Afrobeat Sessions; label: Sessions

Nomo – Rings
album: Ghost Rock; label: Ubiquity

Brownout – C 130
album: Aguilas & Cobras; label: Six Degrees

Peaches – Lose You
album: I Feel Cream; label: XL

Marc Moulin – S.U.S.
album: The Placebo Years; label: Blue Note

Anna Domino – Rhythm
album: Anna Domino; label: Disques du Crepuscule

Kylie Auldist – One Goodbye
album: Made of Stone; label: Tru Thoughts

Ennio Morricone – Sauna
album: So Sweet, So Sensual; label: Pick Up

Maria Rita – Mal Intento
album: Segundo; label: Warner Latin

Os Mutantes – Ando Meio Desligado
album: Everything Is Possible; label: Luaka Bop

Freddie McGregor – Peaceful Man
album: Big Ship; label: Thompson Sound

Lord Newborn & The Magic Skulls – Astro Blue
album: Lord Newborn & The Magic Skulls; label: Ubiquity

Heritage Orchestra – Sky Breaks
album: Heritage Orchestra; label: Brownswood

PM Dawn – Art Deco Halo
album: Dearest Christian; label: V2

Q Tip – All In
album: Amplified; label: Arista

The Upstroke – Special Delivery
album: Porno Groove; label: Secret Stash

Ed Motta – Tem Espaco Na Van
album: Poptical; label: Trama

Gary Higgins – It Didn’t Take Too Long
album: Red Hash; label: Drag City

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On (Truth & Rights remix)
album: 7″; label: Al Fingers

Quantic & His Combo Bárbaro – The Dreaming Mind
album: Tradition In Transition; label: Tru Thoughts

Gilberto Gil – One O’Clock Last Morning, 20th April 1970
album: Gilberto Gil; label: Philips

Mark Murphy – On The Red Clay
album: Mark Murphy Sings; label: Muse

Smith & Mighty – Higher Dub
album: Bass Is Maternal; label: !K7

Viceroys – The Can’t Stop Us Now
album: Haul & Pull Up Selecta; label: Trojan

Donald Byrd – Places & Spaces
album: Places & Spaces; label: Blue Note

Este é certamente o disco mais conhecido de Donald Byrd, um dos principais trompetistas da gravadora Blue Note. Esse disco foi gravado em janeiro de 1963 após uma longa turnê de Byrd pela Europa. Abandonando um pouco a energia do Hard-Bop, Byrd se aproxima do Gospel juntando ao grupo um coro de oito vozes. Ainda há a qualidade inquestionável do grupo instrumental escolhido pelo líder que inclui o guitarrista Kenny Burrell, o piano suingado de Herbie Hancock e o sax tenor que mais gosto da Blue Note, Hank Mobley. Outro ponto que preciso destacar é o belo design dessa capa, uma das mais legais que tenho. Aliás as capas dos disco da Blue Note eram tão vanguardistas que ainda hoje considero-as belas, graças a percepção e criatividade de Reid Miles, diretor de arte da gravadora.

Os destaques ficam por conta da faixa inicial, “Elijah” e a belíssima “Cristo Redentor”, composta e arranjada por Duke Pearson, um criativo pianista que pretendo em breve postar.

Este é um disco diferente, onde já é possível perceber a aproximação de Byrd com o Soul e o Funk, que anos depois seria o tempero no som deste trompetista. São poucos 40 minutos de música porém de grande qualidade.

1 – Elijah 9:21
2 – Beast of Burden 10:07
3 – Cristo Redentor 5:43
4 – The Black Disciple 8:12
5 – Chant 7:31

Donald Byrd – trompete
Hank Mobley – sax tenor
Herbie Hancock – piano
Kenny Burrell – guitarra
Donald Best – vibrafone
Butch Warren – baixo acústico
Lex Humphries – bateria
Duke Pearson – arranjos
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson – direção vocal
Rudy Van Gelder – engenheiro de som

Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, from New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and late 1980s developments such as acid jazz, which blended jazz influences into funk and hip-hop. As the music has spread around the world it has drawn on local national and regional musical cultures, its aesthetics being adapted to its varied environments and giving rise to many distinctive styles. Here are 10 Jazz albums you should have in your collection whether beginner or aficionado.

1. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis: Classic example of why jazz became such a popular genre of music.

2. A Love Supreme by John Coltrane: Instrumental for its influence on the free jazz concept, the manuscript for the album is one of the National Museum of American History’s “Treasures of American History,” part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

3. A Night in Tunisia by Art Blakey: Originally this song was written by Dizzy Gillespie, The title track “A Night in Tunisia” has become a jazz standard covered by multiple artists both in and outside of  jazz.

4. Now by The Stark Reality: Experimental, Jazz, Funk, Fusion… Whatever you want to call it, this album stretches the lines of conventional jazz (whatever that may be) and offers listeners a new soundscape. Regardless of how long ago this album was released (album was re-released by Stones Throw in 2003).

5. Black Byrd by Donald Byrd: This album from 1972 was greatly successful and became Blue Note Records’ highest-ever selling album.

6. Liberated Brother by Weldon Irvine: The first ever album by bandleader for jazz singer Nina Simone.  Irvine was also a mentor to many New York hip-hop artists, including Q-Tip and Mos Def. (Q-Tip references Irvine on the song “Shaka” off his latest album “The Rennaissance”.

7. Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk: The third album composed for the Riverside label and the first, for this label, to include his own compositions.  In 2003, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. Because of its historical significance the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

8. Byrd & Diz by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie: The final collaborative studio recording by Parker and Gillespie which is also notable for featuring an early appearance of pianist Thelonious Monk.

9. Sun Song by Sun Ra: Originally titled “Jazz“, is Ra’s debut album which was released in 1956 before being  licenced to Delmark Records and reissued in 1967.

10. Experience by Joe McDuphrey Experience: Producer Madlib offers a glipse into the direction of jazz/hip-hop fusion. This album could very well be a blueprint for up-and coming hip-hop producers and jazz musicians alike making it an album you should definitely own.

Thema: “Schinken- und Speckulation”

Anwesend: Thomas

Ein Lernbeitrag über Transfette, darüber, daß weniger mehr ist und ich daher jetzt zu schreiben aufhöre.

Download:

Teil 1

Teil 2

Teil 3

Musik mit:
1. Std:
Curtis Fuller, Henri Mancini, Horace Silver, Machito & his Afro-Cubans, Bud Shank, Rev. Gary Davis, Pirron & Knapp, Ray Draper, Jack Sheldon

2. Std:
John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Lee Morgan, Sonny Criss, Art Farmer, Horace Parlan

3. Std:
Jutta Hipp, Walter Bishop Jr., Johnny Hodges, Lee Morgan, Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd, Coleman Hawkins

Bis in 14 Tagen!

listen to the track here

…normally female rappers get a bad rap (no pun inteded).  Most talk about the same thing, which many can’t relate to.  RaTheMC is an exception.  She has the “it” factor that Monie Love had, MC Lyte had or  ____ insert your favorite female MC.  The best part is she reps the DMV.  Check out her remake of Donald Byrd and Blackbyrd’s Rock Creek Park produced by Judah.

Finally, a book review … !

1961 – Blue Note

Gênero: Jazz – Hard Bop

Avaliação: Ótimo

Donald Byrd viveu durante sua carreira um grande paradoxo: foi um dos mais importantes trompetistas do hard bop, e mesmo assim foi um dos músicos mais subestimados da história do jazz.

Nascido em Detroit, Byrd iniciou sua carreira, assim como muitos grandes músicos, ao lado dos Jazz Messengers de Art Blakey em meados dos anos 50. Foi um ícone do hard bop e, à partir da segunda metade da década de 60 começou a migrar para outras vertentes do jazz. Famoso por sempre buscar novos conhecimentos musicais, Donald chegou a lecionar em diversas universidades.

No período hardbopper, marcou a música de Byrd a constante presença de um ‘blues feeling’, ligando-a à um jazz ensolarado e alegre.

Neste álbum estão presentes dois dos mais importantes parceiros de Byrd: o saxofonista Pepper Adams e o pianista Duke Pearson. Três das seis faixas são composições de Pearson, todas muito boas por sinal. Das outras três, duas do próprio Donald, e uma de Neal Hefti.

Completam o quinteto Philly Joe Jones na bateria e Layman Jackson no baixo.

Faixas:
1. Say You’re Mine
2. Duke’s Mixture
3. Each Time I Think Of You
4. The Cat Walk
5. Cute
6. Hello Bright Sunflower

Ouça o álbum The Cat Walk.