JAKI BYARD

Candid Recording(s):

Biography:

The multi talented Jaki Byard was born on June 15th 1922 in Worcester, Mass. His father played baritone horn in a marching band and his mother was a pianist. This musical background led to Jaki studying classical piano at an early age and subsequently to appearances at the local Boy’s Club. By the time he was sixteen years old, he was working professionally, one of his first jobs being with the local Freddie Bates Band and incredibly he had soon arranged Body and Soul – made popular by Coleman Hawkins, for the Bates Band with four horns.

Eventually Jaki mastered trumpet, trombone, saxophone, guitar and drums as well as the piano which was to become his main instrument. After service in the Army from 1941 to 1946, he moved to Boston playing jobs there on alto with the Louis Perry Group and then joining athe Earl Bostic band on piano in the late forties. The fifties found Byard still in Boston with various bands. A stint with the Maynard Ferguson Band on piano brought Jaki to the atten ion of the jazz cognoscenti and soon he began recording as a solo artist.

He left the Maynard Ferguson band in 1961, moving to New York where he soon found himself a part of the votalie Charles Mingus Ensemble. His pianist virtuosit vitalized and coloured the band all the way through and can be heard to good advantaged on several live albums recorded with Mingus, in particular those from Monterey and Paris.

There are really countless jazz pianists in this world, but how many could be called “great” jazz pianists? Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Tatum, Monk, Bud Powell, Tristano and Bill Evans certainly. They were all geniuses and virtuosos who had the creativity and power of expression pcular to them as individuals, and all of them were capable of totally representing themselves in solo performances. Whilst Byard is not an innovator in the grand mould, he is truly a great pianist in the real sense, able to interpret and expand musical thought ion a totally individual way and with this collection of his own compositions, Jaki reconfirms his unique talent and deep feeling for the whole kaleidoscope of jazz piano styles.