liontime This record is a lot of fun; it's extremely listenable for the first few plays and its undeniably catchy at many times. However, after the first few euphoric listens, the shimmer wears away and the record starts to fall flat. Lansana's Priestess is the star track undoubtedly and is ultimately the only essential song on the album.

Street Lady is pretty easily described as jazz disco and Lansana's Priestess is a great example of the two opposed genres melding together into something fresh and exciting. The guitar is funky and crisp, the flute and synthesizer are pastoral and Donald Byrd does a fair bit of improvisation. However, the record as a whole is a bit mind numbing and an unfortunate harbinger of bloodless over produced jazz pop of the later 70's. Don't mistake this for harsh criticism, it is meant only to be honest. As a background or party album, it's tremendous. But it's not an album that warrants repeated intensive listening.

Play this album for your friends or while working out. It's got a lot of pep and won't drag anyone's mood down.

js Just as psychedelics had swept through the world of rock-n-roll in the 60s, it also eventually influenced the world of jazz too, albeit a few years later. This mixture of jazz fusion and psychedelia sometimes resulted in some interesting music, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock in particular were able to use electronic effects to enhance their early 70s albums, but then there were albums by other artists that were proof that all the electro gizmos in the world could not save mediocre music. In fact, if the artist was leaning too heavily on the electronic effects to save his album, that only made such effects all the more cheezy and annoying, which brings us to Donald Byrd’s unfortunate “Electric Byrd”. The album title alone lets you know that they are hoping the word ‘electric’ will help sell the album.

Donald Byrd came on strong in the late 50s as a rising star in the world of hard bop. He cut records with some of the best, including Quincy Jones, Phil Woods, Herbie Hancock, Pepper Adams and many more. As the earning power of jazz began to dwindle, Byrd spent the rest of his career involved more in RnB, dance, pop and fusion, whatever helped pay the bills. So it came to pass in 1970 that Miles Davis got a huge promotional push from Columbia for his “Bitches Brew” album, and the dollars came rolling in. Not to be outdone, Byrd bought himself an echo machine, plugged in his trumpet and recorded “Electric Byrd“, but he forgot an important step, writing some memorable material that’s worth recording.

The opening track on “Electric Byrd” is probably the best track on the album. Here we have a laid back African groove that sounds like a cross between Sun Ra and Lonnie Liston Smith, and the effects are not too overbearing. It’s the second, and closing track on this side where things go very wrong. Here we have Ron Carter walking the bass over a simple two chord blues vamp. This is the kind of music musicians play late at night when they are too tired to play a real song. Also, walking the bass is a great technique, but it sounds like a total anachronism against all the needless psychedelic effects. In among the ‘go nowhere solo noodling’, some sax player starts shrieking, but it seems more out of boredom and frustration than inspiration. The drummer tries to go into double time, but its too late, the others have nodded off, or just don’t care anymore.

Side two opens with echoed trumpet screams that sound like a direct rip of “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”. This track recovers for a bit with a nice Latin melody and groove from Airto, but then someone starts messing with the echo on the electric piano and the rhythm gets swamped with sludgy echo syrup. Closing track, “The Dude”, cans all the effects and goes for a decent funky soul jazz riff in a style that Byrd will be picking up soon after he ditches all the psychedelic crap. Its an okay track, but it seems like an odd fit with the other three cuts, possibly it was originally meant for a different album.

There are some okay moments on here, particularly opener “Estavanico”, but much of the rest of this album is best appreciated as hippie kitsch from an age of not-so-innocent indulgence.

Rokukai It's more of the same r&bish jazz from the pen of Donald Byrd and the production team of Larry and Fonce Mizell.

Individually, the material on this record is OK. Collectively, the songs have little spark. Of course the musicianship is outstanding, but there is little territory tread here that Byrd hadn't trode. The melodies aren't particularly memorable and there is a large amount of filler. Compared to Street Lady, Black Byrd, Places and Spaces, and even Caricatures this music is boring. The second side is dispensable--unless your dentist office wants it.

This is a two star record for me, but I'll bump it up half a star because "Think Twice" is an all time Byrd classic and another half a star because it's Donald Byrd teamed with the Mizell Brothers, the funkiest men in the room.

darkprinceofjazz I was thumbing through my Blue Note Vinyl collection the other day, and I ran across a sealed copy of Donald Byrd's A new Perspective, I don't even remember buying it, so I went ahead and broke the seal, It turned out to be a Mid 70's reissue Blue Note, the dark blue label with the black lower case b, I didn't even realize this was his chorus album, I have heard "Cristo Redentor", but not the rest of the music, I am a fan of Max Roach's It's Time and Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice, Those albums have an avant garde feel and seem much more interesting to me, In fact, throughout this album, I felt as if the chorus got in the way a bit, I kept wishing the music would heat up a bit more, it never really does, If I was going to recommend a Donald Byrd starting point, this wouldn't be it, a rather average "not bad" overall effort in my opinion, I would much rather listen to any of the Byrd albums with Pepper Adams instead.

js Donald Byrd’s career followed a trajectory similar to other artists who came up in the 60s, starting with hard bop and then moving through fusion, funk jazz and finally disco jazz. “Caricatures” is a little too funky for disco, but a little too disco to be funk jazz, an album in transition, it falls right between these two trends in 70s jazz. Heavily influenced by Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking “Man-Child” album, the funk on “Caricatures” is tight and clean with an emphasis on a crisp compressed sound with lots of carefully placed orchestrated small interlocking rhythm parts. The difference being that Herbie quite wisely avoided the cliché disco-lite repeating vocal choruses that make “Caricatures” sound a lot more commercial and weakens what could have been a decent funk jazz album. If you don’t mind the vocals, then this is a nice funky dance album with lots of great solos from Byrd as well as an all-star cast of saxophone players.

There are a couple cuts where Byrd limits the singers and channels some of the great fusion he created in the early 70s. “Science Function” is a great piece of future-funk psychedelia with lots of analog synthesizer leads and a driving wah wah guitar. “Onward Til Morning” has a nice orchestrated melody and excellent sax leads, possibly from Gary Bartz or Ernie Watts. Overall this is a decent retro 70s slick party record with a highly polished sound, excellent musicianship and great solos spread liberally throughout.