Donaldson says they were all playing bebop, after the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had turned jazz upside down. We became friends, we got a group together and we played at the Café Bohemia.'ĭonald Byrd played on more than 50 albums in that time, some with Lou Donaldson, and some of them with luminaries like John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and Max Roach. 'To me he sounded great, like Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown. 'I was playing at Minton's Playhouse and he came by with his horn,' Donaldson says.

and he had that Detroit flavor to his playing.'ĭonaldson is not from Detroit, but he did meet Byrd later, after they both played in military bands and moved to New York City. Byrd came with what we call the Detroit clan. 'Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Thad Jones, Yusef Lateef. 'Oh, there's a million of 'em,' says the saxophonist Lou Donaldson, 86. From other area high schools, and public universities like Wayne State, the Motor City was turning out exceptional musicians in the '40s and '50s. For jazz, Cass Tech has proved to be an incubator of talent: Alice Coltrane, Paul Chambers and Ron Carter went there, among many others. But no matter what style he was playing, Byrd was a teacher.īorn in Detroit, he attended Cass Technical High School. Soon after that, his music found its way into hip-hop.

He was 80.ĭonaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd played music based on bebop in the '50s - in New York and in Europe - then funk-fusion and R&B in the '70s, and wound up at the top of the charts. Haley Funeral Directors near Detroit confirmed the news, which was first circulated online last week. The trumpeter and educator Donald Byrd, a top jazz practitioner in the '50s and '60s whose later work shaped black pop music through multiple generations, died Feb. Donald Byrd onstage, in an image circulated by his record label at the time, Blue Note Records.

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