The Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams Quintet
The following piece is adapted from my final project in college which was done in place of a senior recital thanks to the pandemic. In fact, it was originally written as a video essay, but the music excerpts would never pass the YouTube censors, so it never had a platform. I have gone through to heavily revise it for this format.
The content of the writing is a narrative based on the discography of a short lived band led and financed primarily by a young Donald Byrd and featuring a slightly less young Pepper Adams, both of whom were eastbound transplants on the New York scene from Detroit, Michigan.
There are very many YouTube embeds included here. In case some day far they cease to function, I tired to built in a sufficient amount of context for you to still be able to track down the recordings to participate in the listening experience. Sometimes I only intend for you to drop in briefly to get a feel, but obviously you are welcome to take this as a very wordy suggested listened playlist as well.
Introduction: Meet the Band
“It was a starvation band, but it was a good one.”
September 21st, 1961, trumpeter Donald Byrd and saxophonist Pepper Adams enter the studio as co-leaders for the last time. The resultant album would be titled Royal Flush, a capstone on ten months of steady recording and touring.
This event marked the conclusion of a short three years of a rotating-cast jazz outfit which billed as The Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet. Today, it is remembered (and often forgotten) as one of the highest-quality conglomerates of its time, a period defined by some of the greatest jazz groups in history. It is also true that its two leaders couldn’t be more different as individual players, which makes the way they complement each other all the more remarkable. Take a listen and feel the energy.
What you hear above, My Girl Shirl comes from an album which Pepper’s biographer Gary Carner says is “the best example of the band at the height of its power”, the two-disc set At the Half Note Café, Volumes 1 and 2. Recorded live November 11th, 1960, the late to mid-point of the band’s life, it is an incredible landmark featuring arguably the definitive version of the quintet to which all other iterations may be compared. It features Laymon Jackson on bass, Lex Humphries on drums and most notably pianist Duke Pearson whose writing and arranging, second only to Donald Byrd’s, was featured the most prominently in the band’s book.
Of course, as I said, this was not a steady working group, at least not until that last ten month period and, like so many bands, it saw quite frequent personnel changes, sparse working opportunities, and generated very little revenue.
“It was a starvation band, but it was a good one,” said Pepper Adams. This can be attributed to the one constant, that being that dynamic duo frontline. Take one away and it’s not the same. Add to it and you get a similar effect, as we will later hear.
As an example, here’s another tune from At the Half Note Café, a Donald Byrd original called Soulful Kiddy.
Now, from ten months earlier in January of 1960, here’s the same tune, same rhythm section (save for the bassist), but most importantly sans Pepper Adams who is replaced by tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley.
While the Byrd in Flight take is great in its own way, it is a whole different thing.
The same can also be said the other way around you keep Pepper, swap out Donald. Let’s take the opportunity to back up just prior to the initiation of Donald and Pepper’s group together.
1958: Beginnings
On March 25th, 1958, a month and a half after the very first Byrd-Adams Quintet gig, Pepper co-led a one-off quintet date with trombonist Jimmy Knepper that made use of members of early Byrd-Adams rhythm sections, those being Wynton Kelly on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. Take a listen to Pepper’s upbeat shuffle titled Beaubien.
A few weeks later, the same group, but Bobby Timmons on piano and Byrd instead of Knepper, would go on to record for Riverside the debut Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet album, 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot. We can hear at this point how the group was still finding its sound. Perhaps the track most reminiscent of what would eventually come to define the group’s sound is Pepper’s arrangement of a traditional tune, Hastings Street Bounce, also a shuffle.
Despite the fact that these two records share over 50% of their personnel, it can be challenging to draw the aural connection between the two groups. But, I think it’s hard to deny that the roots of what would become Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams are evident on Pepper-Knepper. Or, is it perhaps that the Byrd-Adams Quintet is just merely an exponent of roots that were already there in the sound of Detroit? I lean toward the latter.
A few months l later in December, the pianist on Pepper-Knepper, Wynton Kelly, would go on to record on the second Byrd-Adams album for Blue Note entitled Off to the Races which tacked alto saxophonist Jackie McLean to make a sextet. Interestingly, the title track is a Donald Byrd tune from 10 to 4, previously The Long Two/Four, now called, of course, Off to the Races. Here’s the recording from 10 to 4 in April.
And here is the take from Off to the Races in December of 1958.
The whole thing now feels much different, what with a new rhythm section and the addition of a third horn. Not only that, the 10 to 4 recording covers only the last set thanks to a mishap wherein the whole session had to be scrapped due to technical faux pa. The session had been booked as Riverside’s first live stereo late, however a loose microphone lead caused the total lack of one of the stereo channels. So, after almost certainly more than one round of drinks, the band hastily performed the music which is heard on the album. The still-greater shame of it is that whatever acetates of the previous sets were cut were destroyed.
1959: Continuation
On Donald Byrd’s contract with Blue Note, the band would be cajoled into recording as a sextet three times in a row beginning with Off to the Races. The only record they cut in 1959, in May, was Byrd in Hand with Charlie Rouse which used the same rhythm section from Off to the Races save for piano once again, with Walter Davis Jr. in place of Wynton Kelly now. This session took a much harder edge, with more angular writing and a number of straight eighths arrangements that definitely set it apart from the typical Byrd-Adams sound. Here’s Devil Whip.
1960: Locked In
We now come around to where we began our adventure. After a sizeable time gap of a year and a half, the group would finally record again in late 1960 on Veteran’s Day, November 11th. At the Half Note venue in SoHo, the band would perform a set that is widely regarded as their definitive sound. This was the two-volume At the Half Note Cafe album set. It cannot be overstated how excellent this iteration of the band was. As proof, take a listen to Duke Pearson’s Jeannine.
Off the heels of At the Half Note, Donald and Pepper would surge into their final and busiest period together, starting with a new studio date less than two weeks later in November of 1960. The date was highly promising. For the first time since 10 to 4 and the 5 Spot, Pepper would receive top billing and lead the date, taking the opportunity to program two of his own compositions, something he had not done with Donald before and would not do again.
As previously mentioned, Donald and Pepper had a shared upbringing in Detroit, despite their working relationship only coming to fruition once they had both arrived in New York. For this one, they would pay tribute to their shared ancestry in Detroit and feature another all-Detroit rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Kenny Burrell, Louis Hayes (under an assumed name due to contract conflicts with Riverside), and Paul Chambers. In reflection of its personnel, the album was titled Motor City Scene.
Sadly, the final product does not manage to surpass the sum of its parts. The label, Bethlehem, was working with presumably limited resources, apparent in the shoddy audio quality of the final master. On top of this, the engineer(s) decidedly flattened in post the dramatic dynamics Pepper had arranged, siphoning a hefty amount of the ensemble’s expressivity. Bethlehem within two years would be absorbed by King Records, ceasing further promotion and production on the album.
In spite of its unfortunate fate, there persists some wonderful music on Motor City Scene. It opens with a lovely ballad feature for Donald Byrd on the Hoagy Carmichael standard Stardust. The two Pepper Adams originals are a blues called Philson and a funky dual straight-eighths and swing affair called Libeccio, both written for the date. Here’s some of the latter.
Ultimately, Motor City Scene turned out as much more of a mutter than the proclamation it ought to have been.
1961: Coming to a Close
As we near the end of our discussion, we return to the continuation of the band heard on At the Half Note. Donald and Pepper’s next record together was done for another small label called Warwick which, just like Bethlehem, would dissipate soon after.
Throughout January and February 1961, a new variation on the band recorded in a series of session which would released initially as Out of this World before multiple subsequent rereleases under other names. It is characterized by a huge, spacy reverb that unfortunately muddies the group’s tight sound, but gives way to a stylized, “otherworldly” ambiance, enabled further by the addition of vibraphone, played by Teddy Charles. Here’s the title track, an arrangement of the standard by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
The following month, in March, the band was broadcast on live television, but the recording has not surfaced. In fact, no video exists of the group performing.
Out of this World also featured a couple of key pieces of repertoire for the band, those being Henry Mancini’s Theme from Mr. Lucky, also heard on the At the Half Note Café date but not released until a CD reissue in 2004, the other being Johnny Mercer’s I’m an Old Cowhand, featured in the 1936 film Rhythm on the Range with Bing Crosby.
And here’s the take from the Out of this World session.
The band would carry that number forward, but at a much brighter clip, to their next session in April for Blue Note. Unfortunately, it would go unreleased until 1979 (here is an excellent review). The album is titled Chant (after the Duke Pearson tune). Below is the title track.
Chant saw the return of Detroit bassist Doug Watkins (a few months from his early passing) who had last joined them on record on 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot. This is also the first record with their gigging drummer of 10 months Teddy Robinson who, appropriately, sounds exceptionally at-home.
Soon after, Duke Pearson would fill Herbie’s bench for one last time on May 2nd for The Cat Walk. This included At the Half Note Café’s bassist Laymon Jackson as well, with Philly Joe Jones who had only played with Donald and Pepper a small handful of times on the odd club date. All told, The Cat Walk is, like most all their work in their final year, one of the band’s greatest, in no small part for Duke Pearson’s written contributions including one of the hits of the band’s discography, a surging Donald Byrd-Duke Pearson collaboration called Each Time I Think of You that sports a ripping solo by Pepper Adams.
The second to last recording of band is a bootleg club date from June 1961 in St. Louis after a few months of steady touring, released in 1981 as Jorgie’s Hip-Intertainment Volume One and rereleased in 2012 as the much less kitschy Complete Live at Jorgie’s which included one additional tune, rhythm section only. (By the way, Volume 2, if you were curious, is a Wes Montgomery album recorded a few weeks later.)
At this point, it was back to their late rhythm section of Herbie Hancock and Teddy Robinson. The bass chair would be up for grabs for the rest of their time due supposedly to the firing of Laymon Jackson by Donald Byrd prior to the Chant session, despite his brief return on The Cat Walk. Perhaps the contract had already been signed?
The opening number is far from tight playing, and the sound quality is rather poor, but by the time the band warms up at gets to Hush, Pepper delivers an absolutely poppin’ jump blues solo.
Live at Jorgie’s includes three tunes that would appear on the band’s final record soon after.
Three months later on September 21st, 1961, Donald Byrd and Pepper Adams would head into the studio in Englewood Cliffs with Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren, and Teddy Robinson for their final record together. This would result in Royal Flush, the culmination of months of busy touring with a mostly steady group and a well-established set of repertoire. To hear two versions of a Donald Byrd tune called 6 M’s, check out the take from Live at Jorgie’s in June followed by the much more laid-back rendition from Royal Flush. Note the further developed arrangement including a slightly embellished head and a second head chorus with baritone in harmony.
This record also featured a contribution by Herbie called Requiem, his first recorded composition. After this, the band would tour for two more months before finally playing a Kansas City club which would shut down the night of the show, for which the band was never paid. I have to imagine they practically limped back to New York City.
Conclusion: Donald Beyond
All told, the venture left Donald Byrd broke. It was, however, only the beginning of his story. A great lover of art, much like his fellow frontlineman of ‘58-’61, Donald would go on (much unlike said bandmate) to amass great wealth through adept business practice and musical exploration that took him beyond the jazz realm, allowing him to invest in, among many assets, original art pieces. He became a sagely figure to multiple generations of Black American music lovers and students for the remainder of his life.
Before moving on altogether, Donald and Pepper did record together one last time, a whole six years later in 1967. The Creeper was Donald’s last acoustic album before going on to explore the electronic realm, never to return to jazz (for which his career seemed only to bloom). It included Sonny Red on alto sax and a totally different kind of rhythm section and set list than anything he had done with Pepper back in the day. A 25 year old Chick Corea appears. It was not released until 1981. It’s a really interesting album, to be sure, but it’s got nothing to do with what Donald and Pepper were doing at the beginning of the decade. That legacy is left in the records.
To close, please enjoy possibly my favorite arrangement from the band’s repertoire, Theme from ‘Mr. Lucky’ written by Henri Mancini for the Peter Gunn-adjacent noir television series which ran during the band’s life. This one is the 1961 Out of this World session, for which I have a lot of nostalgia. There is another which was only released on CD reissue of Live at the Half Note. Dig that one up too.
Thank you for making it all the way to the bottom. This was highly enjoyable, and I look forward to the possibility of doing more elaborations in this format with other groups and periods. Please leave your suggestions in the inquiry box if you have them. Of course, there is more to say about this group as well, but for the sake of diversity we’ll save that for a later time.
“You know, it’s funny... when you’re making money, people don’t think you’re playing jazz. Now when you’re not making money, people think that you’re a good jazz musician.”
Stay well.
