Milestones of a Jazz Legends: Donald Byrd [CD de audio] Donald Byrd

Donald Byrd (1932-2003), the American trumpeter, was one of the most important representatives of hardbop and, like his colleagues Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard, managed to redirect his productions towards funk and soul, thus finding a new audience and conquering the Pop charts when Rock began to push Jazz into a niche in the late 60s. The second generation of hip hop sampled his albums 'Black Byrd', 'Street Lady' and his productions for the Blackbyrds . He was also actively involved in projects such as Guru's Jazzmatazz. Byrd hailed from Detroit and was a respected member of the Motor City's Jazz scene, where he learned his craft alongside colleagues such as Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan and Pepper Adams, all of whom also later moved to New York. He also enjoyed a thorough academic and professional education, which was always important to him as a professor at leading universities in the United States. In 1955 he moved to the Big Apple and almost immediately replaced Clifford Brown, who had recently died in tragic circumstances, in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the following years, he played on albums by almost every well-known and important colleague of the time: from The lonious Monk to John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. In addition to leading his own ensembles with Gigi Gryce and old friends from Detroit, he had a quintet with Pepper Adams from 1958-1961 and recorded regularly for Blue Note. Byrd showed his touch for extraordinary piano talents with the collaboration of Duke Pearson and Herbie Hancock, supporting the latter in the early stages of his career and being the one who recommended Hancock's collaboration with Miles Davis. Interestingly, the Byrd composition 'Pentecostal Feelin' from the album 'Free Form', which completes this collection of the most important recordings from Byrd's early work, sounds like a blueprint for the Blue Note label's first hit, 'Sidewinder' by Lee Morgan, which would be released three years later. In the '90s, Byrd returned to the hardbop of his youth and also taught many of today's Jazz stars as a professor at various universities.