Byrd flew among all-time greats

Donald Byrd, a leading hard-bop trumpeter of the 1950s, later enjoyed commercial success with hit jazz-funk fusion records. Photo / Supplied

In-demand trumpeter played with Roach, Rollins, Coltrane and Monk during long, celebrated career.

Jazz musician Donald Byrd, a leading hard-bop trumpeter of the 1950s who collaborated on dozens of albums with top artists of his time and later enjoyed commercial success with hit jazz-funk fusion records such as Black Byrd, has died. He was 80.

Byrd, who was also a pioneer in jazz education, attended high school in Detroit, played in Air Force bands and moved to New York in 1955.

The trumpeter, whose given name was Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II, rose to prominence when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers that year.

He soon became one of the most in-demand trumpeters on the New York scene, playing with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. He also began his recording career by leading sessions for Savoy and other labels.

In 1958, he signed an exclusive recording contract with the Blue Note label and formed a band with a fellow Detroit native, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, making their debut with the 1959 album Off to the Races.

The band became one of the leading exponents of the hard-bop style, which evolved from bebop and blended in elements of R&B, soul and gospel music.

A 1961 recording, Free Form, brought attention to a promising young pianist, Herbie Hancock.

In the 1960s, Byrd turned his attention to jazz education. He studied in Paris with composer Nadia Boulanger, became the first person to teach jazz at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and started the jazz studies department at Howard University in Washington.

Byrd began moving toward a more commercial sound with the funk-jazz fusion album Fancy Free in 1969, taking a path followed by trumpeters Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard.

He teamed up with the Mizell brothers to release Black Byrd in 1973, a blend of jazz, R&B and funk that became Blue Note's highest selling album at the time.

Jazz critics panned Byrd for deviating from the jazz mainstream, but he was unperturbed.

"I'm creative; I'm not re-creative," Byrd told the Detroit Free Press in a 1999 interview. "I don't follow what everybody else does."

Byrd invited several students at Howard to join a jazz-fusion group called the Blackbyrds that reached a mainstream audience with a sound heavy on R&B and rock influences.

The band landed in the Top 10 on the R&B charts with the mid-70s albums Street Lady, Stepping into Tomorrow and Place and Spaces.

In 1982, Byrd received his doctorate from New York's Teachers College, Columbia University, and turned his attention to education.

Byrd, a longtime resident of New Jersey, was a distinguished scholar at William Paterson University. He didn't have much training in mathematics but created a groundbreaking curriculum called Music + Math (equals) Art, in which he transformed notes into numbers to simultaneously teach music and math.

"I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop," he told the Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark, New Jersey.

In the late 80s and early 90s, he returned to playing hard-bop on several albums for the Landmark label, which also featured saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Joe Henderson.

He performed on Guru's 1993 jazz-rap album, Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1, and his recordings were sampled on more than 100 hip-hop songs by such performers as Black Moon, Nas, Ludacris and A Tribe Called Quest.

In 2000, the National Endowment for the Arts recognised Byrd as a Jazz Master, the highest US jazz honour.

-AAP