Donald Byrd - Ethiopian Knights (Blue Note 80 Vinyl Reissue Series 180g Vinyl LP)

Donald Byrd - Ethiopian Knights | Vinyl LP - 2019 Blue Note 80 Vinyl Reissue Series (BST 84380, all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray, 180g pressing at Optimal Media)

• Byrd's transitional masterpiece, recorded in Los Angeles with Jazz Crusaders members Joe Sample and Wilton Felder alongside Harold Land, Bobby Hutcherson and three electric guitarists, bridging his hard bop years and the full funk of Black Byrd
• Two extended jams over fifteen minutes apiece, bookending the short, tender ballad "Jamie", all three compositions by Byrd
• Blue Note 80 Vinyl Reissue Series, mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media in Germany, with Norman Seeff photography

By 1971, Donald Byrd had spent more than a decade on Blue Note making hard bop records at Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey. Ethiopian Knights was recorded in Los Angeles at A&M Studios, and everything about it signals a break. The personnel is drawn partly from the Jazz Crusaders (Joe Sample on organ, Wilton Felder on electric bass) and partly from Bobby Hutcherson's recent sessions, and the rhythm section plays with an on-the-one heaviness closer to Sly Stone or early Parliament than to anything on Byrd's 1960s records. "The Emperor" opens Side A with instruments layering in one by one: Felder's bass, Ed Greene's drums, Greg Poree and Don Peake's interlocking guitars, then Sample's organ and William Henderson's Fender Rhodes. The groove locks and stays locked for nearly sixteen minutes while Byrd, Harold Land and Thurman Green blow over the top. Hutcherson's vibraphone sits between the horns and the keyboards, adding brightness without disrupting the density. "Jamie" follows at four minutes as the album's only concession to brevity, a gentle ballad where Byrd plays with a lyrical warmth that connects directly to his earlier work.

Side B is "The Little Rasti", seventeen minutes and forty-four seconds with David T. Walker replacing Peake and Poree on guitar. Walker's playing shifts the texture, his tone cleaner and more fluid, with a touch of the session work he was simultaneously bringing to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder records. The piece moves through several phases, the rhythm section maintaining the groove while the solos stretch and the dynamics rise and fall. Land's tenor is grounded and intense throughout, and Green's trombone adds weight to the three-horn front line without overwhelming it. George Butler produced, Henry Lewy engineered the session at A&M, and Rudy Van Gelder remixed at his Englewood Cliffs studio.

This Blue Note 80 edition was mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media in Germany. Art direction and photography by Norman Seeff, album design by Dave Bhang, liner notes by Bill Quinn.