Donald Byrd Live: Cookin' With Blue Note At Montreux 2022

1. Black Byrd
2. You've Got It Bad Girl
3. The East
4. Introductions
5. Kwame
6. Poco-mania

In July 1973, Blue Note Records headed to Montreux, Switzerland to showcase several of the label's stars at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Live albums all titled 'Live: Cookin' with Blue Note at Montreux' followed from Bobby Hutcherson, Ronnie Foster, Bobbi Humphrey, and Marlena Shaw, but one of the performances by Donald Byrd remained unreleased in the Blue Note vaults. Nearly 50 years later, that recording of the great trumpeter's dynamic set will be officially released for the first time ever on what would have been Byrd's 90th birthday: December 9, 2022. That summer, Byrd was fresh off the release of his hit crossover fusion album Black Byrd, the first of his innovative and incredibly successful studio collaborations with producer Larry Mizell. But in a live setting the band had a rawer, harder edge, as this searing set attests.