Trumpeter Donald Byrd played hard bop with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins in the 1950s, then made Black Byrd, the best-selling album in Blue Note history, in 1973, all while earning a Juris Doctor in 1976 and a PhD in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1982. Born in Detroit in 1932 to a strict Methodist minister father and a jazz-loving mother, he attended Cass Technical High School, gigged with Lionel Hampton before graduating, served in the Air Force, and studied at Wayne State and the Manhattan School of Music before replacing Clifford Brown in the Messengers.

This deep dive argues the through line of his career was education and mentorship: letting a young Herbie Hancock sleep on a hide-a-bed in his Bronx apartment, featuring him on the 1961 album Royal Flush, a ...