Donald Byrd with Strings -- Lunatic wrong info

[Larry Kart]

I know, I shouldn't have bought it; my excuse (if it is one) was that it's at Berkshire for $3.99

http://www2.broinc.com/search.php?row=0&am...p;submit=Search

but the liner notes state that arranger Clare Fischer "made his first recording with Pee Wee Hunt's Dixielanders in 1946 and would record numerous sessions with Hunt, Frankie Laine and Mannie Klein through the early fifties." Damn, the doofus who wrote that (one Arthur Kramer) was thinking of bandleader-composer Carl Fischer, who with Laine co-wrote "We'll Be Together Again." Nice to know that Lonehill is a class outfit all the way.

[Chas]

Idiotic annotation aside , what are your impressions of the string session ?

[JSngry]

I've got the old Revelation(?) LP issue, and frankly, Byrd has some occasional intonation issues that clash with the string writing.

[Larry Kart]

Idiotic annotation aside , what are your impressions of the string session ?

Jim is right, and Byrd doesn't yet seem to be quite the player who can sustain a whole album of ballads with strings (in terms of technique and feeling), but on the whole it's a plus for me, in part because of Fischer's fairly adventerous at times, "tasty" (or perhaps just tasty) writing. BTW, I took a look at the Donald Byrd discography:

http://www.jazzdisco.org/donald-byrd/discography/

and the amount of recording he did that year is mind-boggling. In any case, for $3.99 you can't go wrong. It makes me uncomfortable to say so, but Lonehill has added tp the album the tracks (stolen from Blue Note's reissue of the Transition material) that Byrd and rhythm (Ray Santisi, Doug Watkins, Jimmy Zitano) recorded in Boston in 1955.

In his own arguably unspectacular way, Byrd sure was a shape-changer. I was going to say "a chameleon," but it wasn't so much a matter of him emulating, say, Clifford Brown, (which he certainly did for a while to some extent) but of him trying on different, basically self-generated ways of playing, technically and emotionally. I recall reading once that Byrd became enamored of the so-called "no pressure" system (there was his later brief affair with the pocket trumpet, on which he definitely sounded different), and he studied composition (with Nadia Boulanger?) in France and probably beforehand as well. Not my favorite player of that era and style, but there are some marvelous things, e.g. his solo on "Nica's Dream" with the Messengers.

[JSngry]

Donald Byrd was just a damn good musician, period. Not always who I want to hear on a date, but still, respect, and plenty of it, is certainly always given without hesitation or begrudgement, even when the love's not particularly pulsing.

[Chuck Nessa]

I've got the old Revelation(?) LP issue, and frankly, Byrd has some occasional intonation issues that clash with the string writing.

Originally recorded for Warner Bros. but first issued by Albert Marx (on his Discovery label) around 1980.

[JSngry]

Discovery, yeah, that's it. Thanks.

[Shawn]

Donald Byrd was just a damn good musician, period. Not always who I want to hear on a date, but still, respect, and plenty of it, is certainly always given without hesitation or begrudgement, even when the love's not particularly pulsing.

Agreed. Of course Jim is well aware of my fondness for Byrd...but that primarily starts a little later when he started recording for Blue Note. His early work is "spotty", but there are great moments to be had (like his work with Garland on Prestige). One of those guys who was over-recorded right at the beginning...but I view those early recordings as his training ground for the much better work he did later.

[Chas]

I wonder if the fact that Byrd has intonation problems on this recording tends to support Lonehill's 1957 recording date for the session over Lord's May/June 1959 date ? I have all of Byrd's recordings from 1959 , and can't recall ever hearing any intonation problems on them .

[Larry Kart]

Take a look at the Donald Byrd discography:

http://www.jazzdisco.org/donald-byrd/discography/

Lord clearly is wrong (whoduh thunk it?). The discog says Nov., 1957, which in itself proves nothing, but Byrd's sound on his 1959 recordings proves everything.