Jaki Byard

The debut recording from one of jazz music's most revered pianists!

"Byard is absolutely brilliant...highly recommended." - All Music

Originally recorded in 1960, briefly released in Japan in the early ’70s, it wasn’t until 1988 that Jaki Byard’s solo debut, Blues For Smoke, was widely released. Even then it was more of a secret handshake among fans than the catalog cornerstone it should have always been. Now, Candid has finally created the definitive edition of this lost masterpiece for all to experience.

Byard backed generations of jazz icons, including Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Roland Kirk, and Quincy Jones. As a bandleader and soloist, he went on to build his own catalog of iconic recordings across three decades while establishing himself as an educator and mentor to the next generation of artists, most notably, Grayson Hugh, Fred Hersch, and Jason Moran. Blues For Smoke is where it all began.

Recorded as a solo-piano showcase for Byard’s incredible gifts as a player, composer, and jazz historian, the exquisitely engineered session is given new life by Bernie Grundman’s sensitive remastering. With this release, Candid is hoping to make Jaki Byard’s very first album the rosetta-stone of jazz piano it was intended to be.

When the Washington Post reviewed this album, they got so much right about Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues and Nancy Harrow herself: “She sings for the sheer fun of it - not to be glamorous, not to knock our musicians, but just because she’s got a feeling she wants to get across. Repeated hearings bear this out - her long, strong phrases; the ironic power of her understated emotions; the stripped, supple timbre of her voice, straight as a clipper’s keel. And I say we’ve got a rare thing here - a woman who has made grand what’s common to us all. I think that’s what they call art.”

After this album, Harrow went on a 12-year hiatus to raise her children (one of which is Galaxie 500’s Damon Krukowski) before re-emerging to even greater acclaim on the jazz scene. This reissue finally gives her debut the shot it always deserved to find its way into the collections of aficionados and casual listeners alike