Jaki Byard – Sunshine of My Soul

High Note 7169

The original keyboard chameleon, Jaki Byard was one of the first jazz-associated pianists to supersede stylistic boundaries behind the bench. Later players like James Booker and Misha Mengelberg owe him a sizeable, if largely subconscious debt, though public opinion toward Byard’s skills waxed and waned throughout his career. The Seventies were a particularly uneven, if ambitious time. Tenures with Mingus and Booker Ervin were behind him and Byard turned his efforts toward securing gigs for his big band, The Apollo Stompers. Solo recitals were also a regular part of his repertoire and this set, taped in the summer of ’78 at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, documents the bulk of one such engagement. Fidelity is unexpectedly crisp and inviting and Byard sounds in a mirthful mood, personal demons at bay for the moment.

The title may borrow from an influential Prestige date from a decade earlier, but the songbook spans Byard’s career to date and is stocked with originals along with a smattering of covers. “Tribute to the Ticklers” and “Boogie Woogie In and Out” composed in honor of the rogue’s gallery of stride and swing practitioners who were among his earliest influences. Each piece encompasses nearly four minutes of blurred-fingers legerdemain, Byard skipping blithely from antique cakewalk progressions to a splintered free form exit on the latter track. Mingus gets the nod via the medley “Fables of Faubus/Peggy’s Blue Skylight” and Byard’s takes picayunish pleasure in deconstructing the former theme, transforming it in the final minutes into a jaunty barrelhouse blues at odds with the tune’s intrinsic cynicism.

“Excerpts from “Songs of Proverbs”” and “Emil” come from longer suite-sized manuscripts though Byard essays both as discrete-standing entities brimming with bright chordal acrobatics. Pop falls within the all-inclusive province of his voracious digits too. Faithful versions of “Spinning Wheel” and “Two Different Worlds” aren’t played for satire, the former in particular making for surprisingly fertile improvisatory soil, alternating between stern minimalism and jocular melodicism. The ballad “Hazy Eve” rolls out in a gentle barrage of rippling arpeggios while “Besame Mucho” indulges one of Byard’s most lengthy forays, the tune’s Latin roots writ large over a canvas almost orchestral in scope and rendered epic in the process. Byard’s fortunes would continue to seesaw over the next few decades, spiraling to a stupefying finale with his tragic murder in 1999. This is a snapshot from a happier time, when his effusive imagination was in full bloom in front of an adoring audience.

~ Derek Taylor