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BYRD / NOT A BYRD
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About Byrd / Not A Byrd
"The Bird Groups"
The Birds
Baby Bird
Tony Bird
The Blackbyrds
The Byrd Family
Bobby Byrd
Billy Byrd
Charlie Byrd
Donald Byrd
Elmer Byrd
Gary Byrd
Jerry Byrd
Joe "Gene" Byrd
Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies
Senator Robert Byrd
Roeland "Roy" Byrd
Steve Byrd
Tracy Byrd
William Byrd
About Byrd / Not A Byrd
In the course of researching the Byrds one invariably stumbles on various musicians with similar names who have nothing whatsoever to do with the band. It turns out there are quite a few of them! If you're like me, your curiosity is piqued whenever you run across these names in record guides, catalogs, book indexes, or search engines. So I decided to collect all those red herrings here, on a page that could only be called... Byrd / Not A Byrd!
Supplementary interesting tidbits about the poorly documented will be cheerfully accepted, as will additional candidates for inclusion.
This term refers to the trend among many of the black vocal groups of the '50s to adopt a "bird" name. Examples include the Orioles, the Ravens, the Cardinals, the Flamingos, the Penguins, and the Robins.
The Birds
Byrds buffs may remember that when the band first visited England, they were served with an injunction by a British R&B combo called "The Birds." The Birds released four singles on Decca between 1964 and 1966 before breaking up. Their bassist, Kim Gardner, joined the incendiary combo Creation, but only after their two greatest moments, "Making Time" and "Painter Man."
The guitarist in the Birds was none other than Ron Wood, who joined up with
another former fowl, ex-Yardbird Jeff Beck, to form the Jeff Beck Group
in 1967. Wood did a brief stint with the last version of Creation in '68,
and then returned to the Jeff Beck Group. When that group dissolved in acrimony, Wood and
vocalist Rod Stewart teamed up with Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane and Kenney
Jones -- a decidedly more fun bunch -- and the Small Faces became the Faces. Wood, of course, joined
the Rolling Stones in 1975, after the departure of Mick Taylor.Baby Bird
In the great tradition of Billy Fury and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, Baby Bird is one of those acts who are fairly well-known in the UK but draw blank stares from even the most serious music fans Stateside. Until recently, the act was a one-man enterprise consisting of one Steven Jones, no relation to the Sex Pistol. Jones released four lo-fi homebrew psychedelic pop CDs on his own label in '95 and '96. He was signed to a major label in '96 and released Ugly/Beautiful (Echo, 1996).
Tony Bird
Tony Bird was a 15-year-old in January of '67 when his band The Game released a single called "The Addicted Man," whose drug-related subject matter was deemed so shocking that the BBC cut the seven minutes of the Juke Box Jury TV show on which the single aired, to the unanimous disapprobation of the eminent jurists. In the late '70s, CBS signed Bird as a solo act under his own name. He released two albums, in '76 and '78.
The Blackbyrds
The guys in this R&B act were students of jazz musician Donald Byrd. They became first his backing group, then his proteges when they struck out on their own. Initially a jazzy R&B combo, they hit right away with "Walking in Rhythm." After a couple well-regarded albums in this vein, they gradually faded into the pack of boring disco acts.
The Byrd Family
The Byrd Family are a bluegrass group in the old family style.
Bobby Byrd
James Brown got his start when Bobby Byrd invited him to join the group that would become the Famous Flames in late 1952. In time Byrd would become Brown's keyboardist, vocalist, factotum, and musical director, serving with him through several incarnations of the Flames and the JBs. The two finally broke up their partnership in 1973. Byrd released over 40 singles under his own name between 1963 and 1976, many of them produced by Brown.
Billy Byrd
Country musician Billy Byrd was born in 1920 and could play anything with strings. He attracted notice when he joined Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours in 1949, where he stayed through the '50s. He also played with Red Foley, Webb Pierce and Little Jimmy Dickens. With Hank Garland, he designed Gibson's Byrdland guitar in 1950. He continued to record through the mid-'70s, and released a number of solo LPs in the early '60s.
Charlie Byrd
Guitarist Charlie Byrd played both classical and jazz guitar, and in his early years played with both Django Reinhardt and Andres Segovia. Later he was known for applying classical guitar techniques in jazz settings. He was an exponent of Latin jazz in the '60s, on his own albums and with Stan Getz on Jazz Samba (Verve, 1962).
Donald Byrd
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II was one of the most distinguished hard bop trumpeters (and an ace on the flugelhorn as well) in the '50s and '60s, when he worked with such luminaries as Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, Red Garland, John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon. Between studying composition, teaching music, and earning a law degree, Byrd found time to release albums under his own name from the '50s on. In the '70s, Byrd recorded a number of jazz fusion albums with a group of his students who were billed as The Blackbyrds. This group spun off into a hit R&B act in the '70s.
Elmer Byrd
Elmer Byrd is a Hurricane Records recording artist who is billed as "the Banjoman from Turkey Creek, West Virginia." He plays old-time music on the banjo, clawhammer style.
Gary Byrd
Gary Byrd was a popular R&B deejay at WUFO in Buffalo and WWRL in New York City during the '70s. I believe this is the same Gary Byrd who wrote the lyrics to "Village Ghetto Land" and "Black Man" on Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life (Tamla, 1976).
Jerry Byrd
Born in 1920, Jerry Byrd had two musical careers: one as a country steel guitarist and another simultaneous career playing Hawaiian guitar. He became well-known in country music as a member of Red Foley's band and a solo artist in the late '40s and early '50s. He soon began to alternate his country releases with albums of Hawaiian music. In 1968, he gave up country music for good, moved to Hawaii, and devoted himself exclusively to the music of his new home. Jerry Byrd's steel guitar work inspired Sneaky Pete Kleinow to take up that instrument in his teens.
Joe Byrd aka Gene Byrd
Joe "Gene" Byrd is a bassist who played in the bands of his brother Charlie Byrd since the early '60s.
Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies
Joe Byrd was a student of "serious" music who dropped out of UCLA in the mid-'60s to organize "happenings." With the Field Hippies, he released The American Metaphysical Circus (Columbia, 1969), an album that fused rock with experimental electronic music. By the mid-'70s, Byrd had degenerated into a proto-New Age synth player, who released synthesizer versions of Christmas carols and folk songs on various albums for Takoma.
Senator Robert Byrd
The Honorable senior Senator from the state of West Virginia, Robert C. Byrd, had a second career as a fiddler. Byrd, born in 1917, had played in various square dance bands from his teens, and once he entered politics, he used his fiddling skills to attract attention and win votes. The man once known as "Fiddlin' Bob Byrd" was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1952 and the Senate in 1958, but he never lost his interest in making music.
In 1978, when Byrd was Majority Leader in the Senate, he found time to
record an album called U.S. Senator Robert Byrd: Mountain Fiddler (County, 1978). Byrd was accompanied by Country Gentlemen Doyle Lawson, James Bailey, and Spider Gilliam. Most of the LP consists of old-timey mountain music. Coincidentally, Byrd covers "Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die," a Zeke Manners song that later appeared on Chris Hillman's Morning Sky (Sugar Hill, 1982). Byrd and friends also perform "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," a song to which Hillman and Roger McGuinn contribute backing vocals on Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. Two (Universal/MCA, 1989).There is an official Senator Robert Byrd Homepage.Roeland "Roy" Byrd aka "Professor Longhair"
Henry Roeland Byrd (1918-1980) more or less invented the boogie-woogie piano style closely associated with his hometown of New Orleans, and popularized by the likes of Fats Domino, Huey "Piano" Smith and Dr. John. He is best known under the name "Professor Longhair," but released songs under the names "Roy Byrd" (for Mercury in 1950) and "Roland Byrd" (for Atlantic in 1951). Although his chart successes were relatively few, his songs (like "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," "Baldhead," and "Tipitina") became New Orleans anthems. In time he was recognized for his pioneering piano work, and became the dean of the city's annual Jazz and Heritage Festival all through the 1970s. In 1991, 'Fess was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Steve Byrd
Guitarist Steve Byrd was in a band called Zzebra and backed up one Sonja Kristina before joining Gillan in 1978. As you might guess, Gillan was a vehicle for ex-Deep Purple vocalist / ex-Jesus Christ Superstar himself, Ian Gillan.
Tracy Byrd
Tracy Byrd is one of the few country musicians with a respect for country roots who were able to achieve some popular success in the early '90s. Not surprisingly, he was signed to MCA under Tony Brown, an alumnus of Emmylou Harris's Hot Band. Byrd made number one with his third single, "Holdin' Heaven," and has released a number of succesful albums and singles since. MCA Nashville has an official Tracy Byrd site.
William Byrd
William Byrd was a British composer who lived from 1543 to 1623. He composed secular music for voice and for instruments, but is best remembered for his religious choral music. Fans of eerie coincidence will be pleased to hear that Byrd succeeded Robert Parsons as organist at the Lincoln Cathedral.
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