Donald Byrd

An ambitious fusion artist, Donald Byrd is a jazz trumpeter who became an important figure pioneering jazz fusion with funk and soul music, enjoying a number of hits with tracks such as Happy Music, Walking In Rhythm and Rock Creek Park. The son of a Methodist minister who was also a musician, Byrd started young, playing with Lionel Hampton while still at high school and played in a military band during a spell in the US Air Force. He achieved a Masters Degree at Manhattan School of Music, where he also joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, working with the likes of John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins. In 1958 he formed his own quintet with sax player Pepper Adams and was regarded as one of the top figures in hard bop when he experimented with a mixture of jazz and R&B; teaming up with Larry and Fonce Mizell for the influential Blue Note album Black Byrd album in 1972. Other important Byrd albums include Ethiopian Knights (1971), Love Byrd (1981) and Harlem Blues (1987) and while jazz purists regarded his modern innovations as a betrayal of his natural talent, he became the hero to a new generation. His work became popular on remixes and he became an iconic figure in the new acid house genre while Byrd himself became much in demand as a teacher (his band The Blackbyrds was drawn from his students at Howard University).