Carlos Wesley "Don" Byas was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, associated with swing and bebop.
29 Facts About Don Byas
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Don Byas played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, and led his own band.
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Don Byas lived in Europe for the last 26 years of his life.
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Don Byas's mother played the piano, and his father, the clarinet.
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Don Byas started to perform in local orchestras at the age of 17, with Bennie Moten, Terrence Holder and Walter Page.
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Don Byas switched to the tenor saxophone after he moved to the West Coast, and played with several Los Angeles bands.
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Don Byas worked in Lionel Hampton's band at the Paradise Club in 1935, along with the reed player and arranger Eddie Barefield and trombonist Tyree Glenn.
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Don Byas played with Buck Clayton, Lorenzo Flennoy and Charlie Echols.
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In 1937, Don Byas moved to New York to work with the Eddie Mallory band, accompanying Mallory's wife, the singer Ethel Waters, on tour, and at the Cotton Club.
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Don Byas had a brief stint with arranger Don Redman's band in 1938 and later from 1939 to 1940.
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Don Byas played with the bands of such leaders as Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk, Edgar Hayes and Benny Carter.
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Don Byas spent about a year in Kirk's band, recording with him between March 1939 and January 1940, including a short solo on "You Set Me on Fire".
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Don Byas participated in sessions with the pianist Pete Johnson, trumpeter Hot Lips Page, and singer Big Joe Turner.
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Don Byas recorded "Harvard Blues" with the Basie orchestra on November 17,1941, on Jimmy Rushing's vocal version of George Frazier's tune.
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Don Byas was part of a small group session on July 24,1942, with Buck Clayton, Count Basie, and his rhythm section recording "Royal Garden Blues" and "Sugar Blues".
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Don Byas played in small bands in New York clubs, including the Coleman Hawkins orchestra, and he associated with beboppers such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, George Wallington, Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach at the Onyx Club from early 1944.
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Don Byas recorded with the latter under Hawkins on what is said to be the first bebop issue, "Woody 'n You", on February 16 and 22,1944.
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Don Byas was second-place winner in tenor sax of the Esquire All-American Awards in January 1946, and in February, he recorded again with Gillespie on "52nd Street Theme" and "Night in Tunisia".
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Don Byas recorded for the Swing and Blue Star labels in 1947, working with Eddie Barclay.
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Don Byas played with Bill Coleman in early 1949; touring that autumn with Buck Clayton.
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From 1948 onward, Don Byas became a familiar figure not only around the Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris, but on the Riviera, where he could be seen in Saint-Tropez sporting a mask, tenor sax, flippers and an underwater spear-gun.
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Don Byas collaborated again with Andy Kirk and recorded together on Vogue in 1953.
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Don Byas recorded with Mary Lou Williams in 1953 and Beryl Booker in 1954.
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Don Byas moved to the Netherlands in the early 1950s; in 1955, he married Johanna "Jopie" Eksteen.
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Don Byas worked extensively in Europe, often with touring American musicians.
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Don Byas recorded with fado singer Amalia Rodrigues during his time in Europe.
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Don Byas did not visit the US until 1970, appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival.
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Don Byas died in Amsterdam in 1972 from lung cancer at the age of 59.
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Don Byas was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997.