DONALD BYRD – Four Classic Albums (Byrd’s Word / Byrd’s Eye View / All Night Long / Byrd Blows On Beacon Hill) AVID

AVID Jazz presents four classic Donald Byrd albums, including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered and low priced double CD.
“Byrd’s Word”; “Byrd’s Eye View”; “All Night Long” and “Byrd Blows on Beacon Hill”.
Forget East Coast versus West Coast jazz! Here’s the sound of Detroit……and we don’t mean Motown!! Detroit born Donald Byrd’s second album “Byrd’s Word” features a veritable posse of Detroit connected musicians! Detroit born musicians Hank Jones…”the finest pianist in jazz today” and Paul Chambers….”no flash in the pan” are joined by Detroit based Frank Foster on tenor sax and a musician who made his mark in Detroit, Kenny Clarke on drums…”his consistant self always anticipating the beat”. “Byrd’s Eye View”…recorded in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1955 and what a line up! Dig these names…..Donald Byrd on trumpet, Joe Gordon on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, Horace Silver on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Art Blakey on drums…………phew!! And taken from the original liner notes written by producer Tom Wilson….”I hope you will enjoy this presentation of straight forward, exciting modern jazz because this Byrd’s Eye View of the real jazz scene is dedicated to you! “All Night Long” features some of the new names that had been gathering in New York in the mid to late 1950’s and were creating what became to be known as the “funky” sound of New York. A kind of blend between the old barrelhouse piano style and “down home blues style of earlier periods which was “fused to Bop in the early fifties”. Musicians in this “movement” included native New Yorkers like Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Drew and Mal Waldron alongside long time residents, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham and Lou Donaldson. Art Farmer came in from the West Coast, while John Coltrane and Horace Silver moved in from nearby Eastern cities while from Detroit came Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins, Kenny Burrell and Tommy Flanagan. For this particular set Donald Byrd is joined by Hank Mobley, Jerome Richardson, Kenny Burrell, Mal Waldron, Doug Watkins and Arthur Taylor. Our final offering”Byrd Blows On Beacon Hill” is his first quartet album and Byrd is again produced by Tom Wilson who also writes the original liner notes. We hear from a couple of new names in the line up, Ray Santini on piano and Jim Zitano on drums, both personally requested by Byrd after he had played with them in Boston while recording “Byrd’d Eye View”. As Wilson says in his original liner notes.. “both of these fine musicians are endowed with a great sense of what is fitting, harmonious, and beautiful in jazz accompaniment. In combination with Doug Watkins, Santini and Zitano form an urbanely ebullient rhythm section for the backing of Byrd’s musings”.
All four albums plus have been digitally re-mastered.

CD1
1-5: ‘Byrd’s Word’
1. Winterset
2. Gotcha Goin’ N Comin’
3. Long Green
4. Stareyes
5. Someone To Watch Over Me
6-9: ‘Byrd’s Eye View’
6. Doug’s Blues
7. El Sino
8. Everything Happens To Me
9. Hank’s Tune

CD2
1: ‘Byrd’s Eye View’
1. Hank’s Other Tune
2-5: ‘All Night Long’
2. All Night Long
3. Boo-Lu
4. Flickers
5. Li’l Hankie
6-11: ‘Byrd Blows On Beacon Hill’
6. Little Rock Getaway
7. Polka Dots And Moonbeams
8. People Will Say We’re In Love
9. If I Love Again
10. What’s New
11. Stella By Starlight