Donald Byrd - Royal Flush
Released - August 1962
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 21, 1961
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.
tk.1 Jorgie's
tk.6 Shangri-La
tk.10 Hush
tk.16 6 M's
tk.19 Requiem
tk.26 I'm A Fool To Want You
Session Photos
Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| Hush | Donald Byrd | 21 September 1961 |
| I'm a Fool to Want You | Joel Herron, Frank Sinatra, Jack Wolf | 21 September 1961 |
| Jorgie's | Donald Byrd | 21 September 1961 |
| Side Two | ||
| Shangri-La | Donald Byrd | 21 September 1961 |
| 6M's | Donald Byrd | 21 September 1961 |
| Requiem | Herbie Hancock | 21 September 1961 |
Liner Notes
THE music on these sides offers powerful evidence of the progress Donald Byrd continues to make, not only on the first level at which most of us first came to know him, as an instrumentalist, but also on the second level, as composer. Less directly, but perhaps by implication, it also offers striking testimony of the reason for his comparatively new success in a third role, as teacher.
This plunge into pedagogy should come as no shock to those among Donald’s admirers who, instead of merely accepting the emotional message of his performances, have taken the trouble to investigate the technical mastery that enables him to communicate so effectively with his listeners.
It is a stale cliché of jazz criticism that technique per se is no virtue, and that soul is what counts. There is an inherent fallacy here, for the implication is that emotional values can compensate for technical inadequacies.
As Donald once pointed out, “The trumpet player who does not hove properly developed breathing cannot hope to phrase at length, or play sustained tones, or high notes. He has crippled his playing at the start.” In other words, it won’t help you at all to play with inspiration if there’s something amiss with your expiration. He also observed: “Dizzy Gillespie, who is looked on as a genius by every brass player I know, takes a completely scientific approach to his playing.”
I quote these points not to impress the listener with Donald’s breath control or any other technical aspect of his work, but rather as a reminder that no style as mature and self-possessed as his can ever spring full-blown out of the mere combination of ideas and the desire to express them.
Donald’s thoughts about qualifications for capable performance were carried into didactic action when he joined the trumpet faculty of the Stan Kenton Clinics of the National Band Camp. “The two weeks I spent teaching at Michigan State and Indiana U. were among the most inspiring and moving experiences of my life,” he said after his incumbency there in the summer of 1961.
The musical merits of the six performances in Royal Flush can be credited in large measure to the some thorough knowledge of his instrument that made Donald on eager and effective teacher. There is in his work no difficulty in making any musical statement, no trouble with tone or range, no tension; on the contrary, he swings today more than ever, and has more to soy, because he now hos a control of the horn that few other trumpeters in jazz can match.
Even the qualification “in jazz” is superfluous, for Donald is fully equipped on the classical level. He hos established a firm rapport with many symphony trumpet players in cities around the country, and reports that it has been a mutually enriching experience: "I strongly feel that jazz musicians should listen to more classical music — and classical musicians should listen to jazz musicians.”
When he has not been busy either studying or teaching, Donald has continued to work frequently as leader of a jazz quintet. Though there have been changes in the rhythm section, the basic personality of the group has remained the same because of the permanence of the front line. Almost five years have passed since Pepper Adams and Donald began gigging together in New York City. Their musical compatibility has improved with the passage of time; by now they have achieved a cohesion comparable with that of few other two-piece front lines in modern jazz; Diz and Bird, Mulligan and Baker are the only others that come to mind.
When Donald’s group appeared at the Birdhouse in Chicago early in 1961 reviewer Don De Micheal stated in Down Beat that “Byrd hos come up with what may be o major piano find in 21-year-old Herbie Hancock...he showed brilliance in both technique and conception.” Donald himself says: “Herbie is very learned, very studious, and he sounds almost like a combination of Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal and Hank Jones. He was at Grinnell U. and I found him in Chicago. I’m sure he’s going to be very important.
“Pepper and Herbie and I went to rehearse one day at a place called the White Whale in New York. We found two musicians working there — Butch Warren, the bass player from Washington, and Billy Higgins, the drummer from Los Angeles who’d worked with Ornette Coleman. They both seemed to fit our requirements fine, so that’s how this quintet was put together.”
The set opens with Hush, a blues in C by Donald, complete with touches of shuffle rhythm. It ¡s a fitting opener, for Donald, Pepper and Herbie manage to establish a solid blues groove that reflects all the essential qualities of their respective styles.
I’m a Fool to Want You, a superior popular song of 1951, is played very slowly and lyrically, serving as an illustration of the technical points noted above. Higgins’ gentle, tasty brush work is an extra plus factor in one of Donald’s finest ballad performances to date.
Jorgie’s (named for a spot in St. Louis) is one of Donald’s most intriguing ventures as o composer. Donald says that there are touches here of George Russell’s Lydian chromatic concept: “I wasn’t deliberately using the system, but George came to the club one night and heard the way we were running different scales simultaneously, and he recognized what we were doing.” Note especially the continuity and expressiveness of Herbie’s passage here.
Of Shangri-La Donald says: “I spent quite some time working on this composition. I was trying to break away from the conventional concept of using the drums just to keep a specific meter; here used the percussion more to complement the music."
Herbie establishes a 6/4 beat at the opening of 6 M’s before the horns blow, first in unison and then in tenths, the very simple and moving melody. Donald and Pepper maintain the back-to-roots feeling in their unpretentious and powerfully convincing solos; Herbie’s contribution involves touches of genuine down-home blues.
Requiem, composed by Herbie, manages to live up to its title without becoming lugubrious. The theme is stated by piano and horns in question-and-answer or call-and-response form, then by horns-vs-rhythm. Donald’s loose-jointed, free-flowing phrases and compelling sound are at their most impressive on this track. There is an effective arco passage by Butch Warren before the reprise and fadeout end.
To sum up the achievement of these sides, it is relevant to point out that each of the six compositions — four by Donald himself, one by Hancock and the one standard — hos o character distinctive enough to lend the entire album a consistency of interest through its changes of moods, tempos and concepts. Clearly Donald has applied a number of the lessons he has learned in composition. A touch of polyphony at one point, a breakaway from the regular clichés of solo structure at another, and an ability to retain melodic simplicity while imbuing variety through changes in the underlying harmonic pattern - these are among the characteristics to be found at various moments during the course of this LP.
Donald continues to learn, to search as well as to teach. As these words went to press he was taking extra classes at the Manhattan School of Music, preparing for his doctorate; he was also planning a trip to California to work with Clare Fischer. “In the fall,” he said, “I hope to start at Columbia U.” Still a few months short of his thirtieth birthday, Donald Byrd clearly is a man who, whether studying, teaching, writing or performing, dedicates himself full and successfully to the task at hand. The evidence is unmistakably and persuasively present throughout this, his most mature and stimulating album to date.
—LEONARD FEATHER
Cover Photo by FRANCUS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
A NEW LOOK AT ROYAL FLUSH
This album turned out to be about an ending and beginnings. The end of the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams working partnership that recorded under both men's names; and the beginning of Blue Note Records' relationships with the members of the talented rhythm section.
The chance meeting with Butch Warren and Billy Higgins that Leonard Feather describes introduced a rhythm team that would become synonymous with Blue Note in the two years that followed. After this session, the pair appeared together in support of Jackie McLean, Sonny Clark, Don Wilkerson, and Dexter Gordon. With Hancock at the piano, this trio also powered Byrd's next session, Free Form, Grant Green's Feelin' the Spirit, and Hancock's debut as a leader, Takin'Off. Warren's time on the national scene was short-lived, as he returned to his native Washington, D.C. in a few years, while the Los Angeles native Higgins remained in New York and over the remainder of the decade became Blue Note's drummer of choice.
Herbie Hancock first caught the attention of the jazz world with his work here, in what was his first Blue Note session to be released, and the first album to contain a Hancock composition. The pianist has frequently credited Byrd with being an important mentor, and has told of how he first connected with the trumpeter in Chicago early in 1961. Hancock, back home with his college degree from Grinnell, had recently abandoned a post office job to make a full-time commitment to music when he got a call to sub for Duke Pearson in the Byrd/Adams band. The co-leaders heard the young pianist at a jam session and then worked with him for two nights. "After Sunday night," Hancock recalled in a 2000 interview, "they told me that the band had taken a vote, and wanted me to replace Duke Pearson."
History shows that the transition was not direct. "Donald and Pepper didn't break off their relationship with Duke for several reasons," Hancock recalled. "He was a friend and a very good player, and he was writing some great tunes in that period." Hancock recorded twice in the next few months, on the Warwick album Out of this World (billed as by the Pepper Adams/Donald Byrd Quintet) and on Byrd's Chant, which Blue Note did not issue until 1979. The pianist also played a gig that June at the St. Louis nightclub Jorgie's with Byrd and Adams, where three of the compositions heard here were played. In May of '61, however, Byrd had Pearson on piano and contributing four exceptional compositions for the trumpeter's Blue Note album, The Cat Walk. That classic session (with Laymon Jackson and Philly Joe Jones) provides evidence enough of why Byrd would continue working with Pearson, just as this session reveals why the trumpeter (and everyone else) was so excited by Hancock.
Beyond the musicians it introduces into the Blue Note fold, Royal Flush presents a program of music that, were it not for The Cat Walk, would deserve hands-down consideration as Byrd's best studio effort. Certainly the sound of his trumpet and his feeling (especially the first bridge and coda) make "I'm a Fool to Want You" definitive ballad Byrd, and the four Byrd compositions show command in both funky and more unusual settings. "Hush" is a patterned blues that Byrd returned to four months later on a Duke Pearson session for Jazzline where Johnny Coles completed the unusual two-trumpet front line. "6 M's," an even more laid-back blues in 6/4, confirms all of Byrd's praise for the pianist in the original liner notes.
"Jorgie's" and "Shangri-La" represent the more venturesome notions that were taking young veterans like Byrd into new harmonic and formal areas, and both are successful attempts to stretch the hard-bop format. Hancock's incredible solo on "Jorgie's" provides something different and magical with each new phrase. One suspects that the leader would have liked to do his reentrance over, and wonders if he didn't do so out of deference to Hancock's brilliant performance.
Hancock's "Requiem" might be considered an outward-bound gospel tune, with the eight-bar suspension that introduced the performance retained at the head of a more swinging 16-bar form, thereby sustaining the dirge-like atmosphere of the title while still allowing everyone to bear down and swing. The track also has a rare bowed chorus by Warren, who, like everyone else in this band, has a great sound and a great melodic gift.
— Bob Blumenthal, 2006
Udiscover Music Notes
On Thursday, 21 September 1961, Detroit trumpeter Donald Byrd took a quintet into Rudy Van Gelder’s famed New Jersey recording studio to lay down the tracks for what became Royal Flush, his eighth album for Blue Note Records. Though still only three months shy of his 29th birthday, Byrd could almost be considered a veteran at this point, such was his experience both on stage and in the recording studio. Indeed, his CV was mightily impressive, including a stint as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, alongside work as a sideman on albums by John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, Jackie McLean, Red Garland, Lou Donaldson and numerous others.
Despite his relative musical maturity, Byrd’s quintet revealed that he was willing to take a chance on youth and inexperience. In his band was a largely untested 21-year-old pianist called Herbie Hancock, whom the trumpeter had discovered in Chicago. He was struck by Hancock’s unique style – “He sounds almost like a combination of Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal and Hank Jones,” Byrd remarked to writer Leonard Feather in Royal Flush’s original liner notes – and also recruited a young rhythm section that had caught his ear, bassist Butch Warren and drummer Billy Higgins, both of whom had cut their teeth with free jazz maven Ornette Coleman. All three young men – Hancock, Warren and Higgins – would quickly become stalwarts of Blue Note sessions in the next few years. But while Byrd was giving youth a chance, he also continued his long association with a fellow veteran, Michigan musician Pepper Adams, whose husky baritone saxophone imbued the trumpeter’s band with earthy sonorities.
‘Hush’ is the first of four original Byrd tunes on Royal Flush, and in terms of structure, as well as synthesis of blues and gospel inflections, it is an archetypal piece of early 60s hard bop. Higgins and Warren establish a swinging groove and, after the “head” theme, each member of the band proceeds to solo, with Byrd at the front of the queue.
Byrd displays his prowess as a balladeer on the forlorn ‘I’m A Fool To Want You’, a song co-written by Frank Sinatra, who recorded it first in 1951 and then waxed a definitive version six years later. Behind Byrd’s luminous trumpet lines – he’s the only soloist on the cut – Hancock plays masterful delicate chords while the rhythm section grooves along slowly and softly.
The Byrd-written ‘Jorgie’s’, named after a St Louis nightclub, begins as a more progressive slice of jazz with a spacey intro before morphing into a medium-paced piece of swinging hard bop. The intriguing ‘Shangri-La’, meanwhile, is another Byrd composition that offers something different, especially in relation to Billy Higgins’ drums, which, instead of playing a fixed, regular, swing-type pattern throughout, have more of a freer, individual role. This gives the track a jagged, stop-start feel.
Herbie Hancock’s languid piano begins the loping ‘6 M’s’, played in 6/4 time, and on which Byrd and Adams enunciate the theme in an authentically classic hard bop fashion. It offers an opportunity for all the players to show their affinity for blues music, with Hancock impressing via a funkified piano solo.
It’s Herbie Hancock who shows his hand on Royal Flush’s final track, ‘Requiem’. The first of the pianist’s compositions to be recorded, despite its title the music is far from solemn or morose. After an intro defined by the call-and-response cadences of gospel music, it evolves into a swinging groove with deft solos from Byrd, Adams, Hancock and even Warren, who gives us a brief taste of bowed double bass.
Royal Flush remains a significant album in Donald Byrd’s canon. While it waved goodbye to a five-year association with Pepper Adams – it would be his and Byrd’s final collaboration together – it also introduced the world to his protégé Herbert Jeffrey Hancock, who, shortly afterwards, would go on to make his mark as both a solo artist and as a member of the groundbreaking Miles Davis Quintet.
Though Hancock left Blue Note in 1969 to start new adventures elsewhere, Byrd stayed with the label until 1976, by which time he was in the vanguard of the fusion and jazz-funk movements. Even so, Royal Flush remains a go-to album from the trumpeter’s golden hard bop period, even though it finds him stretching the boundaries of the genre. But that wouldn’t have been possible without the presence of Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren and Billy Higgins. They were the aces up Byrd’s sleeve, and their youth opened up new vistas of sonic expression, helping to take the trumpeter – and jazz – in an exciting new direction.
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