Donald Byrd: Places & Spaces (Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Classic Vinyl Series reissue is mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes, on 180g vinyl with a printed inner sleeve copied from the original. It reached No. 6 on Billboard's R&B albums chart, and "Change (Makes You Want to Hustle)" went to No. 2 on the disco singles chart.

This edition

• Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany
• Lyrics included
• Stereo mix

About the album

It takes a certain confidence to open a Blue Note album with a song about the Hustle, and in 1975 Donald Byrd had plenty to spare. Working again with producers Larry and Fonce Mizell, he cut Places and Spaces at the Sound Factory in Los Angeles that summer, and the result is jazz-funk at its silkiest, with sweeping strings and rubbery bass doing a lot of the talking while Byrd's trumpet floats over the top.

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine hears it sitting halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire. Chuck Rainey plays bass, Harvey Mason drums and Larry Dunn adds synthesizer, and everything flows, from "Wind Parade" and the title track to "Dominoes" (another R&B chart single) and a breezy take on the Temptations' "Just My Imagination."

Thirty-five minutes, no wasted notes, and a perfect record for a Sunday morning or a Friday night. "You and Music" turned up on the WorldWide FM station in Grand Theft Auto V almost four decades later, which is a fairly long way to travel for a flugelhorn.

Also at Kops: more Donald Byrd on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 3596800), a reissue of the 1975 album.