Piénsalo dos veces

Donald Byrd

The death of legendary hard bop trumpeter and composer Donald Byrd last Monday has got me revisiting some of my favorite Byrd tunes, which either have been sampled by hip-hop artists or were collabos with the late Guru as part of the rapper's Jazzmatazz series. Heads like myself are more familiar with Byrd's jazz-funk/Mizell Brothers/Blackbyrds period than his hard bop period because the former was what beatmakers often loved to shape their tunes from. According to the liner notes of Blue Note's '90s Blue Break Beats series (a bunch of compilations that are a great introduction to the sounds of Byrd and other jazz legends), "The Byrd man is the most sampled of all Blue Note artists."

Producer J-Swift memorably sampled Byrd's 1967 track "Beale Street" in the Pharcyde's "Oh Shit," which kicks off one of my all-time favorite hip-hop albums from start to finish, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, an enjoyable (and self-deprecating, which was rare in hip-hop back then) masterwork that celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release late last year. But the Byrd track I'm fondest of is the gorgeous tune "Think Twice."

Back with another one of those Hot Rockin' beats

Featured during this month's A Fistful of Soundtracks mini-playlists is Quincy Jones' laid-back main title theme from the 1972 Donald E. Westlake adaptation The Hot Rock, a cue that's both supercool (like Jones' sampled-by-the-Pharcyde cover version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City") and an effective foreshadowing of how hapless Robert Redford's Dortmunder and his crew will be for much of the rest of the movie.

Long before his charttopping success as a producer for performers like Michael Jackson and James Ingram, the trumpeter/bandleader was a trailblazer as one of Hollywood's first African American film and TV composers (the original In the Heat of the Night, Ironside). I have an affinity for older caper movies like The Hot Rock and the funkdafied scores Jones wrote for several of those flicks. Every time a '60s or '70s Jones score is released on CD, like most recently, the score from another Westlake adaptation, 1968's The Split, it's an event at the Aquino castle. I wish more Jones scores got the same lavish treatment the Split score received from the Film Score Monthly label.


The Dixieland-style end title theme is the only cut from the Hot Rock soundtrack that's ever found its way to CD. Rhino added it to the "Gone Hollywood" portion of 2001's Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones box set. Unfortunately, the rest of the soundtrack, which was released by the Atlantic-distributed Prophesy label, remains out of print and can only be found on various mp3 blogs. The Hot Rock score's absence on disc is odd because it was one of Jones' favorite film music projects. He was so pleased with the results of his score that he wanted all the major jazz musicians who collaborated with him to receive on-screen credit. The long list of musicians at the Hot Rock scoring sessions who received credit included saxman Gerry Mulligan, trumpeter Clark Terry and drummer Grady Tate, whose militaristic-sounding solo at the beginning of the main title theme was sampled in Eminem's "Like Toy Soldiers" in 2004 (six years before "Like Toy Soldiers," Jurassic 5 sampled "Hot Rock Theme," a loungy and more upbeat version of the movie's main theme that the Don Elliott Voices recorded specially for the Prophesy album, in "Improvise").

Jones' Hot Rock theme makes me want to go steal a diamond.

"Passin' Me By"

They don't make rap videos like this anymore:



The rap video honeys were classier and a lot better looking back then. The Pharcyde's signature jam--the ultimate "shy guy anthem," as one YouTube commenter calls it--is one of my favorite songs. It's also a great summer song--that is if your summers are often on the angsty side (it was released as a single in March 1993, but was all over the music video channels during the spring and summer). The sample of Quincy Jones' cover of "Summer in the City" lends "Passin' Me By" that summery vibe.

"The only lying I would do is in the bed with you."