Donald Byrd
Black Byrd

I wake up with a start and send a message to Filippo to ask him to put aside the copy of the record he made me listen to the day before. I didn't take it immediately because it costs a lot. But the price is worth the content. I've decided it must be mine.

We have reached the third and final chapter of the saga on Donald Byrd. As with every saga worth its name, we find ourselves in the presence of its masterpiece. Published in February 1973, the record was recorded at Sound Factory Studio in Los Angeles.

The session musicians that flow from the grooves of Blue Note's best-selling album are: Roger Glenn on winds (flute and sax), Joe Sample (The Crusaders surely ring a bell) and Fred Parren on piano, Dean Parks and David T. Walker on guitar, Wilton Felder and Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Harvey Mason on drums, Bobbye Porter Hall and Stephanie Spruill on percussion, congas, and tambourine. A special mention goes to the brothers Larry and Fonce Mizell (trumpet and voice). Especially to Larry who, as a skilled engineer involved in the NASA Apollo program tests, was the author of the splendid arrangements of this album with orchestrations that draw inspiration from the works of Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield (but he also helped arrange some records by flutist Bobbi Humphrey and several by Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five).

With this album, Donald decidedly changes course and, leaving Hard Bop behind, skillfully sails toward crossover music and more specifically a jazz infused with funk with R&B and soul nuances.

It starts off in a big way with a jet taking off in “Fligth-Time” and, in the face of the purists of the era who cried "scandal", with its metronome-like groove it lays the foundation for a modern and innovative sound structure that delighted numerous samplers of the '90s and even the new millennium. In all the tracks, Donald’s trumpet traces melodic lines that, with the support of Glenn’s flute, help make the entire album fluid and very pleasant to listen to.

The Title Track has a beautiful funky atmosphere, in the noblest tradition of the blaxploitation genre. Isaac and Curtis rejoice.

“Love’s so Far Away” slides away nicely, reprising the melodic interplay of the winds supported by the electric bass and guitar lines.

In conclusion, I recommend listening to the entire record and, besides the already mentioned ones, particularly "Slop Jar Blues" for its blues coloration and the concluding "Where Are You Going?" characterized by Byrd's singing with Fred Perren and Fonse Mizell providing the chorus.

The album cover, very distinctive, is characterized by the colors of the Pan-African flag framing the photo of a “Ragtime Band” performing at an African American dance.

I recommend the (re)discovery of this record which has a historical importance that allows us to place it alongside much more mentioned contemporary works like: “Birds of Fire” by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, “Spectrum” by Billy Cobham, and especially “Head Hunters” by Herbie Hancock.

Despite purists and detractors, it is the prerogative of the Great Artist to tread “different paths” from mainstream ones, in search of new northwest passages to arrive where no one has ever gone before.