Le grand don byas

[Larry Kart]

This MJR (Master Jazz Recordings) LP, which collects recorded-in-Paris by Charles Delauney small group dates from 1952-5, is just stunning, as good as anything by the great Byas as anything I've heard. His sound is a bit more purring and liquid than usual, and his phrasing and time feel are also remarkably fluid. I was gripped throughout. Unfortunately the album seems to be o.o.p. If you see a used copy, don't hesitate.

[Caravan]

These tracks have been reissued innumerable times on many different labels and in many different combinations.

[Stefan Wood]

When the hell will someone (Mosaic???) put out a box set of all his work that isn't from dubious Spanish origin?

[gmonahan]

I'm pretty sure Mosaic planned a Byas box many years ago.  Don't know why it never happened.  Probably too much "public-access" stuff out there.

 

gregmo

[Larry Kart]

10 hours ago, Caravan said:

These tracks have been reissued innumerable times on many different labels and in many different combinations.

I looked at the contents of (I think) all the Byas CDs available on Amazon and saw only a few titles duplicated from the MJR LP.

[Caravan]

13 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I looked at the contents of (I think) all the Byas CDs available on Amazon and saw only a few titles duplicated from the MJR LP.

They may not all be currently available at Amazon, but a broader search will find you many. Check here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83140263/Don%20Byas%201946-1972.pdf

[Larry Kart]

Many thanks, Caravan.

[Gheorghe]

Got a Vogue disc from about that period, 1953, 54 "Byas meets the Girls" , might be something from that period. With Mary Lou Williams, with Beryl Briden and so on.....if I remember well, didn´t spin it lately.....

Bought it many many years ago together with some other Byas albums. But somehow, the earlier and later recordings got spinned much more often (the Savoy dates, and later the boppish Copenhagen recordings about ´63 , the "Americans in Europe" on Impulse! and so on......

[Larry Kart]

Got the other day a fully packed 3-CD compilation of most of Byas' French quartet dates from '46 to '54; it doesn't include the material on "Le Grand Don Byas." So far, Byas is at a very high level throughout, though it's not an album to listen through track after track -- many performances are similar in tempo, plus the gaps between tracks are negligible, which can lead to a feeling that one is hearing a single long Byas solo, albeit that "solo" is the work of a magician. The liner notes reproduce Byas' familiar statement that his primary musical influence after Coleman Hawkins (IIRC he says he heard Hawkins a lot in person in the late '30s and pretty much absorbed all he needed to or wanted to from him at that time) was Art Tatum, and that his Tatum affinity was perpetual, particularly in the areas of harmonic ("e.g "there are no 'wrong' notes") and rhythmic adventurousness. In any case, there's something about Byas that reaches the depths of my soul.

[clifford_thornton]

Just picked up a beautiful French Vogue LP edition of this for ten bucks today. Superb.

[OliverM]

Maybe the recent 2CD comp on Frémeaux has some of those tracks on disc 2:

https://www.fremeaux.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=64&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=1697&option=com_virtuemart