Kathleen Loves Music

The CD reissue from 2000

The original cover from 1978

Jaki Byard
Family Man
Produced by Frederick Seibert

Click the titles to play.
1. Just Rollin’ Along
2. Mood Indigo/Chelsea Bridge
3. L.H. Gatewalk Rag
4. Ballad to Louise
Excerpts from Family Suite
5. Prelude No.16
6. Gaeta
7. Garr
8. Emil
9. John Arthur

Jaki Byard: piano, tenor saxophone, alto saxophone
Major Holley: bass, tuba, Fender bass
Warren Smith: drums, tympani, vibraphone
J.R. Mitchell: drums
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Jaki Byard was one of my great heroes and inspirations when I started listening to jazz in earnest in the early 70s. “Eclectic” was the word that best described him since he recorded in styles directly linked to stride, swing, bop and the avant-garde, all with authenticity and enthusiasm. When Muse Records’ owner Joe Fields asked me to suggest a suitable recording project Jaki immediately came to mind.

–Fred Seibert
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Muse Records MR 5173
Jaki Byard
Family Man

Produced by Frederick Seibert
Engineered by Chuck Irwin & Elvin Campbell, CI Recording (110 W57th Street, NYC)
April 28 & May 1, 1978

Muse Records Discography

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Liner notes by Fred Bouchard:

Jaki Byard - pianist, composer, family man. Family man? Yes, indeed.

Whatever paradoxes and inconsistencies may surround Byard’s career, his roles as husband and father have been steady, certain, and rewarding. The family center has a sure, clear light that has burned through Byard’s life with love and commitment for over thirty years. It has brought peace and solace to a career that has been less than meteoric and well-rewarded, often because of its own exigencies (Byard cut short travels with Maynard Ferguson and Charles Mingus preferring, like his old compeer, drummer Alan Dawson, to work at home.) It has also provided a well-spring of inspiration for a whole area of Byard compositions named in honor of family members.

Byard’s unique musical genius made him at home with Willie “The Lion” as with Eric Dolphy, allowed him to draw from Ives and Ellington, “Fats” and “Bird,” Nat Cole and Art Tatum. He is a musician of no school, whose genius, like Whitman’s encompasses multitudes, spans generations, and expresses uncompromising romanticism. A rare individual, on his instrument and in life, Byard perceives and digs, quite naturally, the diversity of personality in those around him, and frequently celebrates it in composition. Byard has thus expressed his affection and appreciation for his family, and extended family: “Diane’s Melody” for his second daughter (Serge Chaloff, Capitol); “Ode to Charlie Parker” (Dolphy/Carter, Prestige); “Darryl” for his eldest grandson (a trombone whoop-up for his big band of New England Conservatory students, The Apollo Stompers); “To Bob Vatel of Paris” and “Blues for Jennie” for a couple of Wallerphiles; “Tribute to Jimmy Slide” for a wonderful Boston-bred tap-dancer (Byard Solo, Muse MR 5007).

Byard has said recently of his recorded output: “All my sessions are records of my attempts to document music as it is, through its different ages. These are my portraits of musical and personal history.” If Jaki Byard is a portrait painter, this then could be called his Family Album, as it contains five sections of The Family Suite and a piece to his wife.

The Familiy Suite is a series of sketches of several members of the Byard family. Here Byard shows us only the first and latest wall of the portrait gallery. Chronologically arranged with a misty, ancestral introduction, portraits of his and his wife Louise’s mothers’ families, and those of his youngest grandchildren. When Byard’s grandchildren have kiddies, he’ll add an ell, or maybe mural the ceiling.

Jaki adds some verbal highlights to the portraits, which seem to emerge from all but the opening track.

“Just Rollin’ Along”: Tight snare rolls and Major Holley’s unique jaw-and-saw kick in this easy-going pacesetter. “I used this as a theme,” says Jaki, “when my quarter with Joe Farrell played at Lennie’s-on-the-Turnpike, up in Peabody, Massachusetts back in 1964. It has never been recorded full-length before, and a lot of people asked m to do it.” The rollicking block chords and willing tremolos that Byard strikes might make some want to count his fingers.

“Mood Indigo/Chelsea Bridge”: “Dedicate this one,” asks Jaki, “to the Fellows who gave me the Duke Ellington Fellowship award at Yale in 1977. For this album I felt like doing a cross-section of my own tunes, but I wanted to include this medley as a tribute to Duke and his alter ego, Billy Strayhorn. Ellington was one of my greatest inspirations, socially and harmonically. He’d ignore mistakes band members made, and make people feel generally very comfortable in his presence. He was also steeped in the knowledge of impressionistic music.” Jaki’s blood affinity for Duke comes out with this deft, lush pairing, played with great feeling. Ellington himself was aware of it; he called in Jaki to cover piano during his final illness.

“L.H. Gatewalk Rag”: Major Jolley unbags his tuba for this lighthearted rag that runs on different speeds and colors. Jaki gives programmatic background: “I wrote this in 1975 for the Springfield Symphony at the request of their conductor, Robert Gutter. They were doing some movie themes, and they planned a surprise for the audience halfway through the concert. The orchestra went into a stride, see, and they showed a short of Laurel and Hardy playing clarinet and French Horn. They asked me for some ragtime, but instead of taking an old one, I composed a new one, orchestration and all.” The cackles halfway herald the arrivals of the villains for the rent!

“Ballad for Louise”: This thoughtful study is one of many compositions Byard has dedicated to his wife, Louise (Romano) of Everett, Massachusetts. Warren Smith plays the melody tenderly on vibes, with Byard’s oblique obbligato on huffy tenor, then goes it solo and closes with a slick glissando. The mood created is a very different one, for example, than the jolly, extroverted one that Byard’s New England Conservatory student band, The Apollo Stompers, achieves on another piece to Louise, “One Note To My Wife.” This ode to prayerlike gratitude is footnoted by Jaki: “Any interracial marriage is hard for society to accept, but ours was and has been accepted by our families for thirty years. To me this is one of the greatest acts of God.”

“Prelude #16″ (Time Machine): Byard rarely dabbles with electronics, but here he laces his alto sax with metallic echo, which he plays in unison with piano while Holley boys high harmonics. The effect is eerie and drifting; “It’s a time machine,” explains Jaki, “that goes way back beyond the life of our families, back to all our family, Adam and Eve.”

“Gaeta”: Gorgeous swags of arpeggios pass by in a stately 3/8 as Byard celebrates the splendor of the impressionistic era surrounding Louise’s Italian family. Gaeta is her mother’s maiden name.

“Garr”: A stately, modal 6/8, still impressionistic but with some bluesy fair and a good deal of vigor draws for us Byard’s own mother, herself a pianist, nee Garr. J.R. Mitchell, a drummer whom Byard knew in Boston, until recently a teaching colleague for Jaki’s at Northeastern just down the block on Huntington Ave from NEC and now filling the drum chair of the New York Branch of the Apollo Stompers, provides tasty-cross rhythms.

Here we skip Jaki’s generations and that of his three children, Denise, Diane and Jerald.

“Emil”: Pounding tympani and slashing cymbal introduce Emil as a compelling soul.

FB: Is he wild and wooly?

JB: Damn right!

FB: He carries on a conversation readily, asks a lot of questions

JB: yeah, he’s learning piano at present, and he talks a lot.

Pounding latinesque block chords and octave runs well and fade.

“John Arthur”: A funky, whimsical kid. Good-natured stride. Monkey-see, monkey-do. “We call him Tagalong,” says Jaki. “He’s the youngest, and he tries to keep up with everyone.” As regards kids faced with this kind of music, Byard avers, “They love it. They’re exposed to the contemporary stuff and they’re in tune with those lyrics, but rhythmically, this is where they’re at. This is what they’ll listen to longer than anything else.”

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Copyrights and masters owned by their respective owners. I’m posting many of my out-of-print record productions from the 1970s. If any of them are re-released, or the copyright owners object, I’ll delete the posts.