POP, JAZZ REVIEWS : BYRD BELOW PAR

It was the classic case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak as trumpeter Donald Byrd took to the stage at Marla’s Memory Lane on Friday night.

What promised to be an evening of bop--akin to that kind of jazz with which Byrd first aligned himself some 25 years ago with Art Blakey and Max Roach--turned, sadly, into an evening of first, “the chops ain’t there,” and, later, “Byrd ain’t there.”

Though the stated reason for Byrd’s leaving the stage midway through his quintet’s second tune was a “telephone call,” it was later reported that the 53-year-old trumpeter, recently returned from a grueling road trip, was feeling too ill to perform. (He canceled his Saturday night booking at the club.)

That Byrd even attempted to play Friday evening is testament to the man’s spirit, a spirit that must have been even further broken by his lackluster attempts at his opening selections.

Looking thin and weary, Byrd was barely able to muddle his way through Kenny Dorham’s “Blue Bossa” with short, breathless phrases poorly intoned. His faults were only more pronounced when Byrd switched to fluegelhorn for the gentle ballad “Old Folks.”

With the rhythm section of pianist Art Hillery, bassist Richard Reid and drummer Lawrence Marable, together with tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin, Byrd’s bop intentions were clear. And despite a generally muddy sound, the group did its part admirably, with Marable in the lead forging a particularly strong basis for the three solo voices.

Maupin showed his best stuff on “There Is No Greater Love,” giving a hard-driving, spirited rendering of the tune, while Hillery provided an evocative reading of George Gershwin’s “Summertime.”

The muses willing, Byrd soon will return in good health with chops able to take up the challenge of the jazz he has shown himself so capable of playing in the past.