Don Byas, born 21 October 1912

[Guest]

Don Byas is a slightly overlooked figure these days, partly because he spent much of the time after WW2 living in Europe, but he's one of my favourite tenor players. His career was at its peak during the transitional period between swing and bop: he replaced Lester Young in the Count Basie band, then a few years later played in the Dizzy Gillespie group which made the first ever bebop records.

[Byas'd Opinion]

[Byas'd Opinion]

And here he is, right where bebop began:

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

My fav Don Byas put down...to Stan Tracey..."If you have to play that shit, can you please play it quietly?"

BN.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

he sure got around Europe in his time ....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

At the end of his life Byas was something of an admirer of Albert Ayler, I think for having the confidence that way as much as the actual content.

BN.

NP: Barney Wilen, Dorham, Duke Jordon Quin at the Club Saint Germain, 1959. Magic.

[Serial_Apologist]

My fav Don Byas put down...to Stan Tracey..."If you have to play that shit, can you please play it quietly?"

BN.

I had/have him on my first-ever "modern jazz" LP, "The Greatest of Dizzy Gillespie" - the one with Diz on the front in a big sweater, head in hands - on the sextet sides. (He does a remarkable "rhythmic snag" that still floors me, deliberate I'm sure, while in full fast flow on "52nd Street Theme". Anyone who has this should listen again to guitarist Bill Darango's extraordinarily out (for 1946) guitar solos on 2 of those tracks, vignettes though they may be).

Don was the first American I saw at Ronnie's. Little guy, big 'tache and, iirc, broadrimmed hat. We wanted to rename him "Mexican Pete". How ignorant!.

[Ian Thumwood]

Byas is one of those musicians who seems to crop up on numerous recordings from the 1940's but about whom I know next to nothing. I think I have some CD's where he is in the Basie band ("including the classic "Harvard Blues" which is one of the greatest pieces of jazz recorded in the 1940s) and perhaps Andy Kirk too. I think I first heard him as a soloist with Don Redman's 1948 band which toured Europe as he is featured on Tadd Dameron's arrangement of "For Europeans only." I have always been struck by the fact that Redman, who was instrumental more than anyone else in creating the tradition of jazz writing for jazz ensembles with Fletcher Henderson's band in the early 1920's, ended up performing be-bop as was also an advocate of this newer form of jazz. (Almost as bizarre as the fact that Redman's nephew was Dewey Redman! )

Listening to the Gillespie track, it is intriguing to see such a mix of musicians who you would never have guessed had played together in this band. I was amazed to see veteran trombonist Trummy Young (ex-lunceford and later a stalwart with Armstrong's all-stars) and Shelly Manne who I always assumed was solely based on the West Coast. Byas also fits the bill of a Swing Era musician flirting with Be-bop as does Oscar Pettiford. Nice to hear Clyde Hart too. For me, he remains the ultimate "elusive" jazz musician - a name that seems to crop up on many of the swing-to-bop sessions of the early 40's and perhaps would have established himself as a major force in be-bop piano had he not died from TB in 1945. You can download a discography of his playing here but absolutely nothing about the life of this mysterious musician:-

http://www.jazzarcheology.com/clyde-hart/

I think that the whole swing-to-bop movement is hugely fascinating and a source of some terrific music.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Ian
I think Byas did much more than flirt with bebop. He "got" it in a way that Hawkins didn't. So too did Oscar Pettiford. OP was in Dizzy's quintet on 52nd Street, recorded with his own 15 piece bebop band, and later worked in Europe with Bud Powell (the Essen concert on Black Lion is a great trio, with Kenny Clarke, and - despite what I said above - a guest appearance on some tracks from Hawkins). There's an excellent short biography of Clyde Hart in John Chilton's original Who's Who of Jazz. Shelly Manne had been the drummer in Boyd Raeburn's orchestra and was a fine prototype bebop drummer (as was Stan Levey). Shelly plays on the original recording with Boyd's band of Night in Tunisia. Manne was a New Yorker and he was in the US coastguard (based in NY) when Dizzy's 1945 recordings were made. Irv Kluger always maintained he's the drummer on the Diz sextet track, because Shelly had to go back on duty before they'd finished.

[Byas'd Opinion]

Later in his career - at least judging by the early 60s live album "Anthropology" (with a teenage NHOP) - his style had moved away from the earlier more swing-based one to a contemporary post-bop one.

I think part of the reason he's not better known is that he moved to Europe shortly after the war and stayed there. There are surprisingly few recordings from the period, and some of them are very much star soloist with run-of-the-mill local rhythm section. He seems to have found Europe a good place to live: there was less racism, and it was easier to have a reasonably healthy lifestyle there than in hard-drinking New York jazz circles; but his career probably suffered as a result.

Unfortunately, as the remark to Stan Tracey demonstrates, Don Byas, like Stan Getz, apparently possessed a lovely saxophone sound but a less-than-lovely personality.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i have a motley collection of his post '45 work, dont get fussy just pile in!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

..and especially

the tribute to Cannonball album

[Tenor Freak]

Thanks for those links, I enjoyed them all.

I had read about Byas but not heard much of his music. I knew he was more of a transitional player than an out-and-out bopper, which is confirmed by these tracks. He's more adventurous than Hawk in his choice of notes, and not as gruff-sounding.

Very nice.

[Tenor Freak]

As a postscript, I recall reading somewhere that he got a lot of his harmonic ideas from Art Tatum.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Don Byas was capable of being a rather spiteful practical joker. When he was working with Buck Clayton in France in 1950 the pair of them were invited to dinner with the pianist Andre Persiany. They took a bouquet of flowers for his wife, and Don (who was helping Buck learn French) wrote out a speech for Buck to hand them over to Madame Persiany. The speech was full of grateful thanks, and it finished with a request for Madame to use them in what Don assured was a decorative arrangement. The reflexive verb he had written out for Buck was s'enculer. And a quick check on Google translator will demonstrate that what Buck suggested she do with the flowers did not go down well in polite society, Don collapsed in helpless laughter...