You Call It Madness
LP Black and Blue 33.003
I have about five or six favorites among tenor sax players, and Don Byas (1912–1972) is one of them. He had big band experience from Lionel Hampton’s, Don Redman’s, Andy Kirk’s, and Count Basie’s great orchestras. In 1944, he played early bebop on 52nd Street with Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford. This session is from 1945, whereafter he sailed for Europe with Redman and spent a lot of time there in France and the Netherlands during the following years.
I like his way of embracing and rhythmically exposing a beautiful melody, then developing it further with ornamented phrasing in the Coleman Hawkins school. And his control and variation of his sound as well.
Joe Thomas is given eight bars of trumpet solo, and he is a good inventive companion to Byas.
John Guarnieri, piano, Billy Taylor, bass, and Cozy Cole complete the quintet.