It’s rare to come across a jazz cat who can recite John Coltrane’s tenor sax riffs with the same eloquence as a Rakim verse. Eddie Bayard is that cat who sees Jazz’s patronage over Hip Hop and reveres both as Black art.
Being born just a few months after Hip Hop, Bayard was raised by a jazz musician and was just a kid in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when legends like Dizzy Gillespie drank coffee with his father. He picked up the saxophone at 14 years old, around the same time It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy and Milestones by Mile Davis hit the streets.
He attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in 1993. He then attended The Ohio State University, and under the apprentiship of Pharez Whitted began a relationship that he himself calls “The EPMD of Jazz.”
Bayard has played alongside Jazz legends including, Betty Carter, Gary Barts, Benny Mauplin, David “Fathead” Newman, Nancy Wilson, Ralph Peterson, Wes Anderson. He has also worked with Dr. Dre, Chuck D and Bootsy Collins, to name a few. If you see Eddie playing live, you would notice the horn he plays with was a special gift from his good friend Wynton Marsalis.
He has been featured on albums by Azur Lawrence, The Movement, Pharez Whitted, Mark Lomax, Mike Wade and many more. In 2001, he started working with J Rawls and featured on several of his projects.
Known in the Jazz world as the next coming of John Coltrane, Bayard doesn’t mimic Trane in his performance, but studies the man, the era and the science behind what makes Jazz tick.
Bayard steps to the front of the band stand with his new album, Current Events, which seamlessly melds Jazz, Hip Hop and groove in an expression of his own unique love of Black music.
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