Donald Byrd was a restless creative spirit. Emerging in the 1950s as one of the hard bop era’s great virtuoso trumpeters, Byrd sought fresh horizons in the 60s as jazz began to lose commercial ground to pop and rock. He fused jazz with gospel music with the intrepid 1964 album A New Perspective and six years later released Electric Byrd, whose spacey, meandering, modal-style soundscapes revealed Byrd taking a similar stylistic path to Miles Davis during his epoch-defining Bitches Brew period. In 1972, Byrd changed direction again, joining forces with keyboardist and producer Larry Mizell for Black Byrd, a chart-busting jazz-funk manifesto that prompted purists to accuse the trumpeter of selling out and sacrificing his artistic principles for commercial gain. Undeterred, Byrd rode the adverse criticism and in the wake of the game-changing Black Byrd continued his alliance with Mizell for five more albums. One of the best was their third collaboration, 1975’s Stepping Into Tomorrow, a jazz-funk masterpiece that gained a second life years later via hip-hop producers.
Listen to Donald Byrd’s Stepping Into Tomorrow now.
The son of a Methodist minister, Donaldson Toussaint L’Ouverture Byrd II was born in Detroit in 1932. A juvenile trumpet prodigy, Byrd gained a master’s degree in music at the Manhattan School of Music. From there, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1956. Byrd joined Blue Note Records in late 1958, debuting with the hard bop classic Off To The Races. He remained with Blue Note for the next 18 years as the label navigated its way through the hard bop and free jazz eras into the rise of jazz-fusion and disco-funk.
By 1975, when he recorded Stepping Into Tomorrow, Byrd was among the best-selling artists in Blue Note’s history. Black Byrd, which stormed to No. 2 on the US R&B Albums chart also made No. 38 on The Billboard 200. His follow-up LP, 1974’s Street Lady was a big smash as well, and its success encouraged the trumpeter to return to the studio with Mizell in late 1974 to record what became Stepping Into Tomorrow.
Byrd and Mizell used the same format that had defined their previous two collaborations: Pop-style song structures with vocal choruses and very little jazz improvisation. Many of the musicians who had played on Byrd’s previous two Mizell-helmed albums returned for Stepping Into Tomorrow: trumpeter/vocalist Fonce Mizell, pianist Jerry Peters, guitarist David T. Walker, bassist Chuck Rainey, and drummer Harvey Mason, all seasoned session musicians with R&B rather than jazz affiliations.
The album is best remembered for “Think Twice,” an airy, undulating groove featuring soulful vocalist Kay Heath, which was later famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest and Erykah Badu. Popular, too, is the futuristic jazz-funk opener, “Stepping Into Tomorrow” – elements of which were recycled by Madlib and Us3 – spotlighting Gary Bartz’s free-flowing alto sax opposite Byrd’s trumpet. Harder funk came in the shape of the pulsating “Makin’ It” featuring Byrd and Bartz’s intertwined horns and the tense “You Are The World” powered by wah-wah guitar. In contrast, the blissed-out “Design A Nation,” the doo-wop-tinged “Rock And Roll Again” and Byrd-penned finale, “I Love The Girl,” lit up by an improvised trumpet solo, offered variations in mood, tempo, and texture.
Despite failing to yield a hit single on its release in March 1975, Stepping Into Tomorrow captured a huge listening audience, rising to No. 7 on the US R&B Albums chart during an 18-week run. It also tasted substantial crossover success on The Billboard 200, stalling at No. 42. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of hip-hop, acid jazz, and crate-digging culture, the album was revered as a jazz-funk touchstone. Today, many years later, it remains an enduring monument to Donald Byrd’s visionary genius and his talent for taking jazz into the future.
