VOL № C17 — October 2018
Fancy Free
Donald Byrd
COMING SOON: Fancy Free by Donald Byrd will be the October 2018 Classics Record of the Month. You're on the interest list and will be notified when it becomes available. Sign up to be notified by email when this album launches.
Fancy Free finds him catching the front edge of jazz’s shift toward fusion, with a much gentler and more approachable result than some of his peers produced. Its innovations lie in its source material: Fancy Free adapts the vernacular of funk and R&B more than it does that of rock, the inspiration for most jazz fusion records that are considered canon. Hindsight so often being 20/20, Byrd’s take on fusion — work that was then greeted skeptically — is looking more and more prescient.
“I’m not trying to be avant-garde or a hippie,” the then 37-year-old Byrd explained. “I’m me, and a lot of different things interest me at different times. And since I’m not pressing to be something other than myself, the sessions come out as relaxed as I can make them. As this one did.”
LP 1 / Side A
| 1 Fancy Free 11.50 |
| 2 I Love The Girl 8.35 |
LP 1 / Side B
| 1 The Uptowner 9.05 |
| 2 The Weasil 9.50 |
