Donald Byrd
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter, composer and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop musicians who successfully explored funk and soul while remaining a jazz artist.
Also recorded as Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II · Donaldson T. Byrd
Donald Byrd

Mallory1180 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Full name
- Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II.
- Born
- 1932. · Detroit.
- Died
- 2013. · Dover.
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- music educator, composer, musician, trumpeter and bandleader.
- Fields
- jazz, funk, soul, rhythm and blues and Gypsy jazz.
- Education
- Wayne State University, Columbia University, Cass Technical High School and Teachers College.
- Teachers
- Nadia Boulanger.
- Honours
- Bessie Awards and NEA Jazz Masters.
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Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter, composer and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop musicians who successfully explored funk and soul while remaining a jazz artist.
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gnd · 126844393X · museum · 69f95e5c-4b34-4c8b-b8fe-c59f9296195a · wikidata · Q362764 · wikipedia · Donald Byrd
In this article
Early life and career
Early life and career
Donald Byrd studied at Wayne State University, Columbia University and Cass Technical High School. Training under Nadia Boulanger is recorded. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are jazz, funk, soul and rhythm and blues. Employment is recorded with Rutgers University and Howard University. Distinctions recorded are Bessie Awards and NEA Jazz Masters.
Byrd was born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. His family came from the African-American middle-class. His father, Elijah Thomas Byrd, was a Methodist minister who greatly valued education and oversaw his son's schooling. His mother, Cornelia Taylor, introduced Byrd to jazz music and it was her brother who gave Byrd his first trumpet. He attended Cass Technical High School. He performed with Lionel Hampton before finishing high school. During this period, his first professional recording session was in 1949 at Fortune Records in Detroit with the Robert Barnes Sextette for the single "Black Eyed Peas" / "Bobbin' At Barbee's." After playing in a military band during a term in the United States Air Force, Byrd obtained a bachelor's degree in music from Wayne State University and a master's degree from Manhattan School of Music. While still at the Manhattan School, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers as Clifford Brown's successor. In 1955, he recorded with Gigi Gryce, Jackie McLean and Mal Waldron. After leaving the Jazz Messengers in 1956, he performed with many leading jazz musicians of the day, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and later Herbie Hancock. Byrd's first regular group was a quintet that he co-led from 1958 to 1961 with baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams. The ensemble's hard-driving performances are captured live on At the Half Note Cafe. Byrd's 1961 LP Royal Flush was Hancock's Blue Note debut. Hancock has credited Byrd as a key influence in his early career, recounting that Byrd took the young pianist "under his wing" when he was a struggling musician newly arrived in New York, even letting him sleep on a hide-a-bed in his Bronx apartment for several years. He was the first person to let me be a permanent member of an internationally known band. He has always nurtured and encouraged young musicians. He's a born educator, it seems to be in his blood, and he really tried to encourage the development of creativity. Hancock also recalled that Byrd helped him in many other ways: he encouraged Hancock to make his debut album for Blue Note, connected him with Mongo Santamaria, who turned Hancock's tune "Watermelon Man" into a chart-topping hit, and that Byrd also later urged him to accept Miles Davis' offer to join his quintet. Hancock also credits Byrd with giving him one of the most important pieces of advice of his career – not to give away his publishing rights. When Blue Note offered Hancock the chance to record his first solo LP, label executives tried to convince him to relinquish his publishing in exchange for being able to record the album, but he stuck to Byrd's advice and refused, so the meeting came to an impasse. At this point, he stood up to leave and when it became clear that he was about to walk out, the executives relented and allowed him to retain his publishing. Thanks to Santamaria's subsequent hit cover version of "Watermelon Man", Hancock was soon receiving substantial royalties, and he used his first royalty check of $6,000 to buy his first car, a 1963 Shelby Cobra (also recommended by Byrd) which Hancock still owns, and which is now the oldest production Cobra still in its original owner's hands. In June 1964, Byrd played with Eric Dolphy in Paris only two weeks before Dolphy died from insulin shock.
Electric Byrd
Electric Byrd
By 1969's Fancy Free, Byrd was moving away from the hard bop jazz idiom and began to record jazz fusion and jazz-funk. He teamed up with the Mizell Brothers (producer-writers Larry and Fonce) for Black Byrd (1973) which was, for many years, Blue Note's best-selling album. The title track climbed to No. 19 on Billboard's R&B chart and reached the Hot 100 pop chart, peaking at No. 88. The Mizell brothers' follow-up albums for Byrd, Street Lady, Places and Spaces and Stepping into Tomorrow, were also big sellers, and have subsequently provided a rich source of samples for acid jazz artists such as Us3. Most of the material for the albums was written by Larry Mizell. In 1973, he helped to establish and co-produce the Blackbyrds, a fusion group consisting of then-student musicians from Howard University, where Byrd taught in the music department and earned his J.D. in 1976. They scored several major hits including "Happy Music" (No. 3 R&B, No. 19 pop), "Walking in Rhythm" (No. 4 R&B, No. 6 pop) and "Rock Creek Park". During his tenure at North Carolina Central University during the 1980s, he formed a group which included students from the college called the "125th St NYC Band". They recorded three albums; Love Byrd and Words, Sounds, Colors and Shapes which featured Isaac Hayes. "Love Has Come Around" on Love Byrd became a disco hit, reaching number No. 4 on Billboard's U.S. Dance Club Songs and in the UK and reached No. 41 on the charts. Beginning in the 1960s, Byrd (who eventually gained his PhD in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1982) taught at a variety of postsecondary institutions, including Rutgers University, the Hampton Institute, New York University, Howard University, Queens College, Oberlin College, Cornell University, North Carolina Central University and Delaware State University. Byrd returned to somewhat straight-ahead jazz later in his career, recording three albums for Orrin Keepnews' Landmark Records. Byrd was named a NEA Jazz Master in 2000. Byrd was a resident of Teaneck, New Jersey. He died on February 4, 2013, in Dover, Delaware, at age 80.

Donald Byrd in a press photo dated to 1975. No copyright markings on the image
Distributed by Blue Note Records · Worthpoint Archived
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
2013
Donald Byrd died at Dover.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Detroit.
Birth place
Dover.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q362764: Donald Byrd
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Donald Byrd”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Institutional database
- MusicBrainz artist record for Donald Byrd
Scholarly · MetaBrainz Foundation
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 126844393X, Chant (Zusammenstellung, Donald Byrd).
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Donald Byrd (1932-2013). February 3, 2014.
- 2.Colin Larkin. The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Virgin Books. 209. 1997. 1-85227-745-9.
- 3.Schudel, Matt. Donald Byrd, jazz trumpeter, dies at 80. The Washington Post. 2013-02-11. 0190-8286.
- 4.Broschke-Davis, Ursula. Paris without regret : James Baldwin, Kenny Clarke, Chester Himes, and Donald Byrd. University of Iowa Press. 97–118. 1986. 978-0-87745-147-1.
- 5.Donald Byrd obituary. The Guardian. 12 February 2013.
- 6.Townhall.com. Innovative jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd dies at 80. 2013-02-12.
- 7.Tom Cotter, "The Watermelon Man and the Cobra", Road & Track magazine, August 2007
- 8.Yardley, William. Donald Byrd, Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 80. The New York Times. A28. February 11, 2013.
- 9.Huey, Steve. Black Byrd (1972). Bluenote.com.
- 10.When a Byrd Flew to North Carolina Central University. www.ncarts.org.
- 11.Donald Byrd. Billboard.
- 12.Dr. Donald Byrd Named Artist in Residence , DSU Press Release, September 4, 2009.
- 13.AllMusic Richard S. Ginell album id=mw0000272131 Donald Byrd: A City Called Heaven – Review February 14, 2021
- 14.Trescott, Jacqueline. Byrd, McPartland, Baker Named American Jazz Masters. Washington Post. January 14, 2000.
- 15.The State of Jazz: Meet 40 More Jersey Greats. The Star-Ledger. September 28, 2003.
- 16."Donald Byrd With Clare Fischer – September Afternoon". Discogs. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
- 17.Feather, Leonard. JAZZ: 14 PAY TRIBUTE TO EVANS ON THE 88. Los Angeles Times. U58. May 8, 1983.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
MusicBrainz artist record for Donald ByrdMetaBrainz Foundation
Verifiedauthority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 126844393X, Chant (Zusammenstellung, Donald Byrd).Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q362764: Donald ByrdWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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