Donald Byrd Quintet - Parisian Thoroughfare (1991 Japanese Polydor Mono Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: NM
Sleeve: EX
Obi: None

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Donald Byrd Quintet - Parisian Thoroughfare | Vinyl LP - 1991 Japanese Polydor SGD-52 (Gold of G.D. 100 Series, No. 52, Mono)

• Donald Byrd's quintet recorded live at L'Olympia in Paris on 22 October 1958, with Belgian saxophonist and flautist Bobby Jaspar, pianist Walter Davis Jr., bassist Doug Watkins and drummer Art Taylor; the program moves across Gillespie, Powell, Monk and Davis originals alongside one standard
• Among the strongest documents of Jaspar's playing on record — the Belgian-born saxophonist spent much of his career in Paris and New York but died from a heart attack in 1963, aged 37, leaving a small and sought-after discography
• The second of two albums drawn from the same Olympia concert; the set list opens with Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," works through Bud Powell's "Parisian Thoroughfare" and Monk's "52nd Street Theme," and closes with a second reading of "Salt Peanuts"
  

Donald Byrd brought a strong quintet to L'Olympia in Paris on 22 October 1958. Bobby Jaspar, the Belgian saxophonist and flautist who had spent the early part of the decade in Paris before moving to New York to work with J.J. Johnson and Miles Davis, took the tenor chair alongside Byrd's trumpet. Walter Davis Jr. — a hard bop pianist who spent several years with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers — was at the piano; Doug Watkins on bass and Art Taylor on drums completed the rhythm section. The material they chose runs from bebop staples to hard bop originals: Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," Bud Powell's "Parisian Thoroughfare," Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," Monk's "52nd Street Theme," Byrd's own "At This Time" (recorded elsewhere as "Off to the Races"), Davis's "Formidable," Gillespie and John Lewis's "Two-Bass Hit," and a second performance of "Salt Peanuts" to close. The program was spread across two albums; this is the second. The first appeared as Byrd in Paris Volume 1.

The recording is a document of a particular moment in jazz's transatlantic exchange. By 1958, the circuit of American musicians performing in Paris at clubs and concert halls like the Olympia was well established, and European audiences were among the most attentive the music had anywhere. Jaspar was not a visiting American but a European who had earned his place in New York jazz circles on his own terms — a distinction worth noting on a record made in his adopted city. He died in 1963, aged 37. Doug Watkins died in February 1962, in a car crash, aged 27.