Thursday, September 11, 2025

Donald Byrd - A New Perspective (On a New Perspective) (1964) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

I'm not that into serious jazz, and that's still the case. But this is a guest post by Mike Solof, so here's a rare jazz album for this blog.

Donald Byrd released the album "A New Perspective" in 1964. As I write this in September 2025, it's one of about four of the best rated albums he did, according to the crowd-sourced reviews on rateyourmusic.com. However, it's also a controversial album. If you read some of those reviews, people tend to love it or hate it. That's because Byrd had the idea of overdubbing wordless gospel-styled vocals over the band's jazz improvisations. It's those vocals that divide people on the album. It so happens Mike just wanted to hear the instrumentation without those vocals, and he realized the technology now exists to wipe them away. So that's just what he did.

If it so happens you prefer the album with the vocals, no problem, just listen to the official version instead. 

There's more information in the PDF he's included in the download file, including profiles of the other jazz musicians who played on this. 

By the way, just to be clear, the real album title is just "A New Perspective," but Mike added the "On a New Perspective" part. 

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Elijah (Donald Byrd)
02 Beast of Burden (Donald Byrd)
03 Cristo Redentor (Donald Byrd)
04 The Black Disciple (Donald Byrd)
05 Chant (Donald Byrd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EYCdshNR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fCC4xpWqz9U0JI6/file 

The cover photo is the same as the original, with a couple of key changes. One, Mike asked me to add the word "no" before "voices," so I did, squeezing the other words a bit to make room. And the original was mostly in black and white (everything but the lettering), but Mike wanted it colorized, so I did that too, using the Kolorize program. 

3 comments:

  1. That Mike guy sure sounds demanding. I hope he thanks you for all your hard work.

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  2. Thanks, but I'll take the original. Cristo Redentor is one of the essential jazz tracks. Sadly, Donald Byrd took things into a more jazz funk direction as he moved into the 1970s and 80s. He got more sales, but a lot of the spirit of his music suffered for it and he took an esteemed jazz label, Blue Note, down with him. But it recovered under Don Was and has recorded albums by Norah Jones, Van Morrison, and even released a Frank Sinatra concert from the 1950s.

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    Replies
    1. I had never heard it before and loved it when it was playing in the background of the Dexter Show. The Voices caught me off guard though...so I had to see what it was like without them... M

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