Places and Spaces - Donald Byrd (1975)
The second half of the 1970s was probably the last time jazz cats (weirdly, jazz cats not named Herb or Herbie) probably had much chance of landing mainstream attention.
Jazz was changing seemingly by the month. The fusion movement had pushed it into more conventional song structures. The rise of funk had made it more electric and harder edged. It was probably too contemporaneous to really figure in, but this was the same year that Smokey Robinson would usher in the smart, sophisticated jazz-adjacent R&B sound that would be around for decades.
Byrd was no neophyte. He’d been a heavyweight in the the bop and post-bop world of the 50s and 60s, leading his own band and recording with Art Blakey, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy. Guys like this, whose career survived between 1955 and 1975, survived because of a constant ear for the next thing as much as for an inventive style of playing.
Byrd’s openness to something new led him to form a lengthy relationship with Larry and Alphonso Mizell, the writing and production team responsible for several of the Jackson 5’s biggest hits who’d left Motown to make their own mark. Their slickly produced funk melded with Byrd’s talents to create a string of innovative jazz funk records in the 70s, with this one in the middle. (a few years after this the Mizell brothers were also responsible for A Taste Of Honey’s disco anthem Boogie Oogie Oogie which, cultural baggage aside, is a kind of a banger)
For my money, the early track Dominos and the the closing Temptations cover of Just My Imagination are the best track here, but it’s a solid set of funky, jazzy R&B that might be time-locked into its era, but is still a very listenable and enjoyable record.
