Joseph Byrd

Joseph Byrd

This article is about the musician. For the Cherokee chief, see Joe Byrd (Cherokee chief).

Joseph Byrd (almost no one except Columbia Records ever called him "Joe") (born December 19, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky, raised Tucson, Arizona) was the leader of The United States of America, a notable rock band from the 1960's, as well as the psychedelic group Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, of cult fame through their release The American Metaphysical Circus.

Early Musical Career

As a teenager, Byrd played in a series of pop and country bands, later vibraphone in jazz ensembles, while a student at the University of Arizona. He won a fellowship to get an M.A. at Stanford, and relocated to New York in 1959, drawn by the avant-garde, becoming a significant part of the FLUXUS experiments that were emerging at that time. There he continued composing, and earned some international interest for his use of vocal and instrumental sound in early "minimal" compositions. Byrd also studied with legendary avant garde composer John Cage, and was, according to Byrd, his last student. Another former Cage student, Yoko Ono, offered her New York loft to Byrd for the first public performance of his compositions. Byrd's 1962 Carnegie Hall recital was reviewed in prominent publications including The New York Times. He also worked as arranger and record producer, and as an assistant to composer and music critic Virgil Thomson. It was in New York that he met Dorothy Moskowitz.

Byrd returned with Moskowitz to the West Coast, accepting a teaching assistant position at UCLA (moving into a beachfront commune populated by musicians, artists, and Indian musicians), where he studied music history, acoustics, psychology of music, and Indian music. At UCLA he formed the New Music Workshop with jazz trumpeter Don Ellis and others, where the first West Coast experiments in what would come to be called "performance art" and "concept art" would develop." These interests led to more composition and his leaving the university in the summer of 1966 to create music full-time and produce "happenings." The collaborations also introduced Don Ellis to the ring modulator, which Ellis subsequently used in the groundbreaking jazz recording Electric Bath in 1967.

The United States Of America

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The United States of America (1968)

It was at that point that Byrd broke with tradition, and determined to combine performance art, electronic sound, and radical politics into a single whole, together with rock music. To perform his new songs, Byrd recruited Moskowitz from New York (where she had moved following their separation) to sing and write for his new band, as he had brought on bassist Rand Forbes, electric violinist Gordon Marron, and drummer Craig Woodson to form The United States Of America. Their self-titled LP, produced by David Rubinson (who had been known to Byrd and Moskowitz prior), was recorded for Columbia Records in late 1967. It was released to critical acclaim in early 1968, but failed to find much commercial success in its original release, as referenced by Byrd in a 2002 story [1], and Dorothy Moskowitz in a 2003 interview [2]. The band did a single tour of the U.S. East Coast, followed by a number of performances in the Southwest U.S., with a record of mixed success, including shows with The Troggs, Velvet Underground and at Bill Graham's Fillmore East, but rapidly came apart after over creative and other differences within the group after a short period of time. Eventually the group split into two pieces, with Byrd leaving to pursue an evolution of the music with a new ensemble of largely studio musicians in 1968, and Moskowitz eventually joining Country Joe McDonald.

The American Metaphysical Circus

The American Metaphysical Circus (1969)

Byrd went on to release, as Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, The American Metaphysical Circus, in 1969. A very complex record for its very psychedelic time, featuring some of the earliest recorded extensive use of synthesizers in rock music, it was released on the classical-oriented Columbia Masterworks label - making it quite possibly the only rock album to ever be released on a classical music label (the Masterworks catalog of that period also included the soundtrack for the film The Owl and the Pussycat featuring music by the jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat & Tears). The record rapidly achieved a cult following among listeners of psychedelic rock, sometimes compared to records by groups such as Pink Floyd. Byrd estimated in 2002 in conjunction with a filing in the infamous Napster music copyright case that likely over 100,000 copies of The American Metaphysical Circus alone had been sold, yet he had never received a penny of royalties from Columbia/CBS/Sony [3]. Its sales were in fact sufficient to keep it in the Masterworks catalog for approximately twenty years, followed by CD (1996) and LP (1999) reissues. Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies never performed live.

Additional Information

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A Christmas Yet To Come (1975)

In 1975, Byrd released a record of synthesized Christmas Carols, A Christmas Yet to Come (Takoma C-1046) and in 1976, Yankee Transcendoodle (Takoma C-1051) an LP of synthesized patriotic music in conjunction with the United States Bicentennial. The irony of the latter release, in particular, in comparison to Byrd's musical broadside against President Lyndon Johnson on The American Metaphysical Circus less than a decade earlier, is a topic for consideration.

Byrd also did considerable research into the history of American popular music, culminating in LPs "Sentimental Songs of the Mid-19th Century," by the American Music Consort (Joseph Byrd, Director - Takoma A-1048 - 1976) and the 6-sided LP set "Popular Music In Jacksonian America" (Musical Heritage Society MHS834651 - 1982).

He also has scored a number of films, including Agnès Varda's 1969 "Lions Love", Bruce Clark's 1971 "The Ski Bum" with Charlotte Rampling and Zalman King, and Robert Altman's ill-fated "H.E.A.L.T.H.", which was orignally shot in 1979, but had its U.S. release delayed until 1982 because of a shakeup in the management of 20th Century Fox.

Joseph Byrd arranged and produced Ry Cooder's critically-acclaimed 1978 Jazz album, and provided an arrangement and electronic music for "Crucifixion" from the 1967 Phil Ochs record Pleasures of the Harbor. Byrd also wrote commercially for advertising and television, including a theme for the "CBS Evening News".

He presently lives in northern California, where he teaches music history, theory, and songwriting at College of the Redwoods, where in the 1970's he taught some of the first college-level courses in American popular music.

In the present day, Byrd's fan base in the U.S. is likely exceeded by his following in Europe, particularly the UK, where he has been cited as a spiritual mentor to such important contemporary British bands as Radiohead, Broadcast, and Portishead.

Byrd has recently been active working in collaboration with the Norwegian improvisation group Spunk and UK sound art unit Dreams of Tall Buildings. For White Elephant, a collaboration between these three parties, he created a graphic score to be performed by Spunk alongside electroacoustic sounds by Dreams of Tall Buildings. White Elephant was premiered at Sonic Arts Network's Expo festival in Manchester, UK on 24 June 2006.

External Links & Sources

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Yankee Transcendoodle (1976)

• Salon.com 2002 Interview with Joe Byrd on Napster case
• Follow-up letter on Salon.com referencing the Byrd Interview
• 2004 Interview with Joseph Byrd on CloudsAndClocks.net
• 2003 Interview with Dorothy Moskowitz
• Article by Richie Unterberger including interviews with Dorothy Moskowitz of the United States of America and record producer David Rubinson
• Spunk Web site on "White Elephant"
• PDF file of sample graphical score from White Elephant
• MySpace site for The American Metaphysical Circus