BST 84349

Donald Byrd - Electric Byrd

Released - November 1970

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 15, 1970
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Bill Champbell, trombone; Hermeto Pascoal, flute #4; Jerry Dodgion, alto, soprano sax, flute; Lew Tabackin, tenor sax, flute; Frank Foster, tenor sax, contra-alto clarinet; Pepper Adams, baritone sax, clarinet; Duke Pearson, electric piano; Wally Richardson, guitar; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Airto Moreira, percussion.

6344 tk.2 Estavianco
6343 tk.4 Essence
6341 tk.5 The Dude
6342 tk.8 Xibaba

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Estavanico	Donald Byrd	May 15 1970
Essence	Donald Byrd	May 15 1970
Side Two
Xibaba	Airto Moreira	May 15 1970
The Dude	Donald Byrd	May 15 1970

Liner Notes

If a musician were merely trendy — a chameleon of fashion — an album by him with “electric” in the title would be predictably nondescript. But in the case of Donald Byrd, whose consistency is internal, an opening to electronic sounds is distinctively personal and not in the least artificial.

As is clear in Electric Byrd, the presence of Duke Pearson on electric piano, along with other electronic colorations, are organic extensions of Donald’s essential lyricism and of his concern with newly variegated, continually shifting textures. At least as vital as the electronics here is the constantly provocative, subtle interplay of percussive accents and colors. with particular wizardry employed by Airto Morreira.

What takes place, especially in the first three pieces. are absorbing aural landscapes — or rather feelingscapes — of the imagination. Moods are set, with electric immediacy, and then they change as the focus moves from solo statements to collective movement-through-texture to intricate rhythm section designs and then on in various mixtures of the previous ingredients. There is, in sum, a pervasive cohesiveness n these works even though so much is going on—in terms of dynamics, color changes, rhythmic contours, melodic shapes — in each piece.

Since this is primarily — and, I would add. primordially — music of mood, verbal exegesis is hardly necessary or pertinent. But I would like to take note of the cool, floating woodwind patterns that recur in Estavanico and that, when intermingled with Donald’s trumpet, set up intimations of Ellingtonia. And in Essence, listen at least one time through just to Mickey Roker for an illustration of how unpretentiously resourceful this drummer can be.

Xibaba, with its effective opening of multi-layered electric shadings. contains, among other pleasures, the open-air balm of Hermeto Pascoal’s flute and a remarkable dialogue between bassist Ron Carter and the astutely imaginative Airto Morreira. The Dude, after its varyingly introspective predecessors, is a robustly stimulating essay in assertiveness with, among other high energy bursts, the brisk improvisations of Frank Foster, Jerry Dodgion and trombonist Bill Campbell.

Throughout, the center of these mobiles of kinetic colors is Donald Byrd — as composer of three of the four pieces and as the speech-like, incisive, reflective trumpet soloist in all. As could have been expected of him, Donald has adapted from the electric ambience of these musical times what most exactly complements his own musical temperament as composer and player. He has gone on to transmute those elements into his own entirely individual fusion of forms and feelings so that the full range of his expressivity is thereby intensified.

As in his work throughout the years, Donald shapes the time rather than being imprisoned in it. Accordingly, this set will be worth revisiting no matter what trends crest a year or a decade from now. Electric Byrd is an arresting stage in the continuing musical odyssey of a singularly inquisitive and “together’ composer-performer.

—Nat Hentoff