Stars In Town For Homecoming

Stars In Town For Homecoming

DETROIT REUNION

By Grant Martin

Some of the finest, most highly-respected musicians to come out of Detroit have chosen to return home this week to help celebrate the Motor City's birthday in grand style. These folks are giving us a very impressive beginning for what many hope will become an annual tradition. Detroit Homecoming 1976 is proud to present:

Donald Byrd and the Blackbyrds. Born and raised in the Motor City, Donald Byrd learned his first musical lessons from his father, who  was a Methodist minister as well as a musician. He graduated from Cass Technical High School and studied at Wayne State University before heading east to the Big Apple.

After studying at Manhattan School of Music, Byrd joined the Air Force, getting a couple of years' experience with the Armed Forces big bands. He came to the attention of the jazz world in 1955 upon joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, where he drew praise as a "soloist with a future" (in the words of jazz historian Leonard Feather). That future included work with drummer Max Roach in 1956, and as a member of bands assembled by the  likes of John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Lou Donaldson. He also worked with Pepper Adams, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and Thelonious Monk. 

In 1958 Donald Byrd played at festivals in France and Belgium, toured Sweden, and took part in several European films. Since then he has studied music in Africa and the Caribbean, finished his work on a degree in music education, and taught jazz at Howard University. He currently is a staff instructor at North Carolina State Central University.

While at Howard, Byrd put together a supporting  band made up of his most outstanding students. He and the Blackbyrds have scored with several jazz-oriented records, including Stepping Into Tomorrow and Paces and Spaces.

The Blackbyrds have also had success on their own with the top ten single "Walkin' in Rhythm," and the hit album City Life. The band is comprised of Kevin Toney, who is the leader and keyboard player and, like Byrd, a graduate of Cass Tech; Keith Killgo on drums; Joe Hall on bass; Orville Saunders, guitar; and Wesley Jackson on sax and flute. Along with Donald Byrd, they received a key to the City from Mayor Young at a benefit performance they gave last year for Cass Tech High.

Yusef Lateef started life in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in October 1920, as William Evans. He was an early convert to the Muslim religion and took his present name on joining that faith. Yusef studied at Detroit's Miller High School before joining Lucky Millinder's band in 1946. Three years later he was a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. When the Gillespie Orchestra folded the following year, Lateef returned to Detroit and studied flute, composition, and oboe at Wayne State under Ronald Odemark, first oboist with the Detroit Symphony. He formed his own group in 1955 and, apart from a spell with Cannonball Adderley, has been his own master ever since. Yusef is a strongly individualisme musician who has tried to bring about a rapproachment between the musics of jazz and the non-Western world. His compositions have used oriental scales, and he has featured such exotic instruments as the Chinese globular flute, the argol, the shannas, rebab, and earthboard. Lateef's primary asset, and the foundation for his other, more unusual skills, is his solid ability as a jazz improviser. His music ranges from Middle Eastern-influcnced lines to fundamental blues. Inspired by Dexter Gordon, Yusef Lateef plays almost every woodwind instrument conceivable; he is most widely known for his outstanding solo work on tenor saxophone, flute, and oboe.

His quintet will perform an original composition, "Detroit Suite," with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Kenny Burrell was born on July 31 , 1931 in Detroit. His ambition to become a tenor saxophone player was never realized because his family could not afford the instrument. Thus, in 1943, he decided to take up the less expensive guitar. With his brother Billy's help, he purchased a ten-dollar instrument and began studying it. Billy and another brother, Donald, also took up the guitar and by the late 40's, they had family sessions going at the Burrell house.

In 1947, Burrell landed his first full-time job as a musician with the Candy Johnson sextet. While working with several local Detroit groups in the late  40's, Burrell took part in endless after-hours sessions with brother Billy and visiting jazz dignitaries. 

By 1951 he was hired to work for Dizzy Gillespie's Band for a short time, then returned to the Motor City and continued playing with local groups. Kenny spent a -year-and-a-half  studying classical guitar at Wayne University and in 1955 left  Detroit to tour with the Oscar Peterson Trio as a replacement for ailing guitarist Herb Ellis.

During the next 20 years Kenny Burrell's name has become a house-hold word as he has continued recording and performing with many artists as well as with his own groups. Some of those artists include John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Smith, and Donald Byrd.

Multi-percussionist Roy Brooks made his return to Detroit a year ago, but he is still highly-regarded in jazz circles on both the east and west coasts. His earliest experiences with jazz were with pianist Alice McLeod Coltrane, saxophonist Charles McPherson, and trombonist George Bohannon while all of them were still in high school. He worked with Yusef Lateef and Barry Harris, recorded with The Four Tops and has his own jazz album released on one of the Motown labels.  

Brooks moved to New York to replace Detroiter Louis Hayes in Horace Silver's  legendary quintet, where he stayed for three years. He has played with Charles Mingus, Pharoah Sanders, James Moody, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Stitt, Jackie McLean, and Dexter Gordon.

Upon returning to Detroit Brooks founded the Aboriginal Percussion Center along with drummer Bert Myrick, and he currently is musical director for the new Music station hot spot in Greektown. Brooks has studied percussion throughout the world and plays a tremendous variety of instruments, including several he has invented himself.

Ron Carter, one of the best known bass players in jazz, grew up in a small black enclave just north of Eight Mile Road in Ferndale- the same neighborhood where The Spinners and Detroit attorney Kenneth Cockrel got their start. All seven of Ron's brothers and sisters studied music. He took up the cello at age 10, switched to bass while at Cass Tech, went on to gain a degree in music, and has played with Miles Davis, Chico Hamilton and on countless jazz and pop recording sessions. Ron now records as a leader for CTI Records.

Born in Detroit in 1930, Tommy Flanagan is one of two brilliant pianists to emerge from the Motor City in the fifties (the other is Barry Harris). Tommy has been very influential to many other Detroiters during the golden age of Be-Bop. His gifted flair for melody has led him to perform with many outstanding instrumentalists and soloists, including Coleman Hawkins & Roy Eldridge, Jim Hall, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett. Flanagan has been residing out in Los Angeles, California, since the late 1950's.

Barry Harris is one of Detroit's most well-liked and -respected pianists. One of the first locals to make an impact on the jazz world during the 1950's and early 60's, Barry is a perfectionist who demands much of himself. In a past Down Beat article, drummer Roy Brooks described the pianist as "an excellent musician, teacher, and philosopher. He's one of the few musicians who has really captured the essence of Bird's message- not only the rhythmic quality but the expression." Barry's strongest inspiration came from Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. Harris has performed and recorded with most of his peers, ncluding Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Yusef Lateef, and too many others to count.

Ray McKinney was born March 28, 1931 into a very musical family. At an early age, he showed an interest in cello at McMichael Junior High School and was later introduced to the bass by one of his older brothers, Harold McKinney. He learned to play by playing the bass line of Bach's "Two-Part Invention." Currently residing in California, Ray has performed with Max Roach, Red Garland, Barry Harris, Charles McPherson, and others. His major influence on bass was Ray Brown.

Major Holley grew up in yet another musical family in the Motor City, studied violin at age seven, pickup on the tuba, and served as a member of the Navy band for four years. He studied bass on getting out of the service and found work as a bassist with both Dexter Gordon and fellow Detroiter Wardeil Gray on the West Coast. He played briefly with the legendary  Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald and worked with Óscar Peterson in 1950. Holley toured South America with Woody Herman 's aggregation in 1958, and later played with the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims band.

Drummer Oliver Jackson, or "Bops Junior" as he is sometimes called, came up through Miller High School and played with Wardell Gray before finding utility in the piano trios of Alex Kallao, Dorothy Donegan, and Teddy Wilson. He joined Yusef Lateef in 1957 and migrated to the New York City jazz scene the following year.

Billy Mitchell was born in Kansas City in 1926, moved to Detroit as a youth, and attended Cass Technical High School. Playing tenor sax, he was an early associate of Lucky Thompson, Sonny Stitt, and Milt jackson and, after moving to New York, played with Jimmie Lunceford and Woody Herman. After returning to Detroit he assembled bands that included Detroiters Thad and Elvin Jones, Terri Pollard, and Tommy Flanagan. He was Dizzy Gillespie's musical director and toured the Middle East with Dizzy in 1956, leaving to join Count Basie the next year.

Pianist Roland Hanna's father was a preacher in a sanctified church, but his first musical studies were classical. Tommy Flanagan influenced him otherwise, and he started playing in bars and clubs in Detroit in the mid-40's. After work with Army bands, he studied at Julliard and later played with Benny Goodman at Newport and in Europe. He also played with Charles Mingus in New York City and has toured with his own group.

Vocalist Billy Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Washington, D.C.- although not a Detroiter, he lived here during the 30's while a singer and master of ceremonies in a Motor City nightclub. He worked with Earl Hines' legendary big band and was instrumental in adding Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan to that incredible aggregation, which tore up ballrooms all over America in the 40's. He later worked with people like Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Gene "the Jug" Ammons, Dexter Gordon, and Art Blakey. He, of course, has had innumerable hit ballads over the last thirty years, but he has always remained close to his jazz roots.