Artist:Donald Byrd & Doug Watkins
Song:Everything Happens To Me
Album:The Transition Sessions
This goes to show I never know what kind of rarities are going to turn up. Donald Byrd is a great trumpeter from Detroit. He started out as a member of The Jazz Messengers, recorded some great albums for Blue Note and then in the 70s morphed into fusion & funk with his group The Blackbyrds. Bassist Doug Watkins was also from Detroit and was also a member of The Jazz Messengers. He played on plenty of sessions in the 50s and died tragically in a car accident on Feb. 5, 1962 at age 27. The Transition Sessions is a 2CD comp released by Blue Note in 2002. It consists of albums recorded by Byrd & Watkins for Transition Records in 1955 before they went to Blue Note. They had been out of print for decades. Everything Happens To Me is from Donald Byrd's 1955 recording Byrd's Eye View. It might as well be a Jazz Messengers recording as Art Blakey, Horace Silver & Hank Mobley are all on it. The other recordings on this comp are Byrd Blows At Beacon Hill and Doug Watkins' debut Watkins At Large. This is a great find for Jazz Messenger fans. Here's a video of Donald Byrd playing Fontessa with Stan Getz in Germany in 1957.
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