DONALD BYRD — Stepping Into Tomorrow (review)

DONALD BYRD — Stepping Into Tomorrow album cover Album · 1974 · Funk Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
Well in a way, this album title could be prophetic of Byrd’s overall artistic metamorphosis and evolution. From a standard jazz of the 50’s & 60’s, he had jumped on the JR/F bandwagon a little later than most, but he probably peaked much higher with the fantastic Ethiopian Knights, who is one of the wildest albums of that genre. With SIT, we find ourselves a few years down the line, and Byrd chose to keep advancing and by late 74, he’d gone to a wide-spectrummed fusion that encompasses mainly-instrumental jazz-rock, funk, soul-jazz and a few more jazzy-related styles. Indeed if a good deal of the tracks have vocals, they’re generally not intrusive or over-abundant and mixed relatively low in the overall scheme.

The album doesn’t really have a defined musical directions other than being “jazz” in the wider meaning of the term, and in some weird announces the future 80’s stuff, but in a positive manner. Looking at the line-up of the album, you won’t find much jazz musos, the vast majority of the participants probably gravitating in the soul-funk realm and you can hear it also in the songwriting… in its huge majority being from keyboardist Larry Mizell. The songs hover between JR/F (the title track, Makin’ It), soft MOR/soul-funk pieces (Nation, Together and the atrociously over-sweetish RnR Again ), to a frankly funky-jazz as the excellent Think Twice and You Are the World and the mainly soft-jazz I Love The Girl.

While SIT comes nowhere close to Ethiopian Knights‘ excellence, it is definitely worthy of the fusuionhead’s attention, because among the soul-funk stuff are hidden a few JR/F gems that you wouldn’t want to miss on.
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