2. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Nica’s Dream” (The Jazz Messengers; Columbia, 1956)
By the time Byrd took the trumpet chair in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1956—the chair once occupied by Brown—he was more firmly his own man. His sound on “Nica’s Dream” is more pungent, more legato; his style is inclined toward daredevilry but tempers that impulse with careful detailing of his lines. Horace Silver, playing piano on the date, clearly thought highly of some of the details in Byrd’s solo—he paraphrases them in his own improvisation. Well before the trumpeter solos, though, he’s displayed his high-polish beauty in his lead articulation (tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley provides counterpoint) of Silver’s melody, with the slightly smoky cast that would soon become an inescapable component of the pianist’s personal musical vision. As it would be for generations of musicians to follow, the Jazz Messengers was Byrd’s finishing school, his real coming-out party.
