About

Donald Byrd gained his greatest fame in the 1970s when he recorded commercially successful funk albums, but he was at the height of his swinging powers back in 1961 when he created Royal Flush. One of the great trumpeters to emerge from the 1950s, Byrd helped to define hard bop. His band with Pepper Adams and the young Herbie Hancock (at the beginning of his career) was at its hottest throughout Royal Flush, a hard-hitting blowing session.

The music ranges from bluesy bop to harmonically complex pieces that point towards the future of jazz. The music is timeless, heated, and exhilarating, and it has never had better sound better than on this memorable reissue. Royal Flush features Donald Byrd at the peak of his powers.

Like all Music Matters Jazz releases, this audiophile vinyl reissue is mastered from the original analog tape and pressed on 180g virgin vinyl at RTI in Camarillo, CA. The highest quality gatefold cover features original session photography on the inside. – Press Release

“The opener, Byrd's "Hush," sets the tone for the entire session, which emphasizes uncommon restraint, nuance and subtlety without for an instant losing its soul. An infectious, gospel-inflected blues in C, "Hush" opens with a rhythmic structural pattern that is maintained through each of the solos: eight bars of stop time (in the manner of the Harlem Globetrotters' "Sweet Georgia Brown"), followed by a four-bar shuffle-rhythm trailer. Byrd's minimalist, alternately sly and plaintive solo serves to set the stage for the laconic statements of Pepper Adams' baritone sax and Hancock's piano which, contrary to expectations, reveals not the slightest trace of overplaying on what must have felt like a momentous occasion for the recent college graduate.” – All About Jazz

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