[Dixielandjazz] Donald Byrd, trumpeter, dies at 80 NYTimes

[Norman Vickers]

To :Musicians and Jazzfans; DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

I sent this from another publication but since it's NYTimes and likely the
definitive obit, I send along.

 

 




  _____  

February 11, 2013


Donald Byrd, Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 80


By WILLIAM YARDLEY
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/y/william_yardle
y/index.html> 


Donald Byrd, one of the leading jazz trumpeters of the 1950s and early
1960s, who became both successful and controversial in the 1970s by blending
jazz, funk and rhythm and blues into a pop hybrid that defied
categorization, died on Feb. 4 in Dover, Del. He was 80. 

His death was confirmed by Haley Funeral Directors
<http://www.haleyfuneraldirectors.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=195996
8&fh_id=13208>  of Southfield, Mich. Word of Mr. Byrd's death had circulated
online for several days, but was not announced by his family. 

Almost from the day he arrived in New York City in 1955 from his native
Detroit, Mr. Byrd was at the center of the movement known as hard bop, a
variation on bebop that put greater emphasis on jazz's blues and gospel
roots. Known for his pure tone and impeccable technique, he performed or
recorded with some of the most prominent jazz musicians of that era,
including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and the drummer Art
Blakey, considered one of jazz's great talent scouts. As a bandleader, Mr.
Byrd was sometimes a talent scout too - one of the first to hire a promising
young pianist named Herbie Hancock, who, like Mr. Byrd, would later be
called a renegade for an approach that won a wide audience but displeased
many critics. 

Mr. Byrd, a strong advocate of music education, spent much of the 1960s
teaching. Then, in 1973, he made a surprising transition to pop stardom with
the album  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIf6Vsphtmo> "Black Byrd,"
produced by the brothers Larry and Fonce Mizell, who had been his students
at Howard University in Washington. With Mr. Byrd's restrained licks (he
played both trumpet and fluegelhorn) layered over an irresistible funk
groove seasoned with wah-wah guitar and simple, repeated lyrics ("Get in the
groove, just can't lose"), "Black Byrd" reached the Billboard Top 100, where
it peaked at No. 88. 

Mr. Byrd was hardly the first jazz musician to try such a crossover: Miles
Davis had achieved a similar musical synthesis with "Bitches Brew" three
years earlier. But "Black Byrd," unlike "Bitches Brew," was overtly
pop-oriented, and its success was extremely rare for a jazz musician. It
became, and for a long time remained, the best-selling album in the history
of Blue Note Records <http://www.bluenote.com/> , the venerable jazz label
for which Mr. Byrd had been recording since the 1950s. 

"Then the jazz people starting eating on me," Mr. Byrd recalled in a 1982
radio interview. "They had a feast on me for 10 years: 'He's sold out.'
Everything that's bad was attributed to Donald Byrd. I weathered it, and
then it became commonplace. Then they found a name for it. They started
calling it 'jazz fusion,' 'jazz rock.' " 

The criticism did not stop him from making more pop records. In addition to
recording as a leader, he organized some of his Howard students into a group
called the Blackbyrds and produced their records. The band had a string of
hit singles in the 1970s, including "Walking in Rhythm," which reached the
Top 10 on the pop charts, and "Rock Creek Park
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbLYsuudJuA> ," which evoked late-night
romance in a wooded park in Washington, D.C. 

"Rock Creek Park" became something of a local anthem and one of many
recordings by Mr. Byrd to be sampled by rap and hip-hop artists, including
Public Enemy, Nas and Ludacris. His music and the Blackbyrds' has been
sampled more than 200 times, with the 1975 album "Places and Spaces" among
his most frequently repurposed recordings, according to the Web site
whosampled.com. 

"They use all of the music that I did in the '50s, '60s and the '70s behind
people like Tupac and LL Cool J," Mr. Byrd told students in a lecture at
Cornell in 1998. "I'm into all that stuff." 

Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II was born in Detroit on Dec. 9, 1932.
His father, E. T. Byrd, was a Methodist minister. His music studies there at
Wayne State University were interrupted by two years in the Air Force. After
receiving a bachelor's degree from Wayne State, Mr. Byrd moved to New York,
where he began his jazz career in earnest and received a master's in music
education from the Manhattan School of Music. 

His musical pursuits were paralleled by a lifelong interest in education. He
taught jazz at Howard, North Carolina Central University, Rutgers, Cornell,
the University of Delaware and Delaware State University, and also studied
law. In 1982 he received a doctorate in education from Teachers College at
Columbia University. He spent many years, at various institutions, teaching
a curriculum that integrated math and music education. 

In 2000 Mr. Byrd was given a Jazz Masters award by the National Endowment
for the Arts. 

Mr. Byrd had homes in Dover, Del., and Teaneck, N.J. Information on his
survivors was not available. 

In his 1998 Cornell lecture Mr. Byrd said he had been inspired by musicians
who changed music, notably John Coltrane. 

"I met him in the 11th grade in Detroit," he said. "I skipped school one day
to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy
Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at
the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone
across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?' 

"So he played piano, and I soloed. I never thought that six years later we
would be recording together, and that we would be doing all of this stuff.
The point is that you never know what happens in life." 

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.