Donald Byrd - Royal Flush (2024 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series Vinyl LP)

Donald Byrd - Royal Flush | 180g Vinyl LP - Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series (BST 84101)

Byrd had been on the Blue Note roster since 1958 and was playing some of the best hard bop being recorded anywhere when he brought this quintet into Van Gelder's studio. The front line pairing of his trumpet and Adams's baritone saxophone was five years deep by this point. They sit at opposite ends of the brass spectrum, and the harmonies between them have a texture you don't get from trumpet and tenor. "Hush" opens the album on a bluesy groove where both horns state the melody together before splitting into solos. "I'm A Fool To Want You" is the ballad reading, Byrd's tone warm and intimate with Adams sitting out entirely. "Jorgie's" closes side A with the longest track, Byrd and Adams trading ideas over Hancock's comping while Higgins's drumming keeps the rhythm conversational without losing its drive.

Side B is where the album gets more interesting. "Shangri-La" has stop-start rhythms and harmonic shifts that sit outside conventional hard bop structures. "6 M's" keeps the complexity going. Then "Requiem," the closing track, is Hancock's composition and his first to appear on record. It's modal, slower, with a gospel undertone in the piano chords and plaintive brass lines from Byrd and Adams that give way to a bowed bass solo from Warren. You can hear where Hancock's writing is heading. Within two years Byrd would recommend Hancock to Miles Davis, and within six years Hancock would record Speak Like A Child for Blue Note with a compositional ambition that traces directly back to this session.

This is the Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series reissue, mastered and lacquer cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media in Germany.