"Years ago the game was vicious, cutthroat. Can you imagine Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Don Byas, and Ben Webster on the same little jam session? And guess who won the fight? That's what it was--a saxophone duel. Don Byas walked off with everything." -- Sonny Stitt

When he left for Europe in the fall of 1946 with the Don Redman band, Don Byas' reputation was at its peak. Admired by the modernists at Minton's no less than by the swing-styled players of his own generation on 52nd Street, he was celebrated as a tireless, original and influential saxophonist. His solo on Basie's "Harvard Blues" had created a stir in 1941 and he followed it with a remarkable series of recordings for small labels. In his romantic approach to "Laura," he had something of a hit.

He stayed in Europe, becoming the first in a continuously expanding family of expatriate jazzmen, and although the great Don Byas was much in demand by the jazz-appreciative Europeans, he was largely forgotten back home. Few of his records were available here and without personal appearances it is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a following. He returned to the U.S. once, in the summer of 1970, received little of the money or adulation he might have expected, and returned to Holland where he died in August 1972 of lung cancer. He was 59. Read complete bio from hardbop.tripod.com.

Don Byas discography