Donald Byrd, jazz trumpeter, educator

DOVER, Del. - Donald Byrd, 80, a leading hard-bop trumpeter of the 1950s who collaborated on dozens of albums with top artists of his time and later enjoyed commercial success with such hit jazz-funk-fusion albums as 1973's Black Byrd, died Monday in Delaware, said Haley Funeral Directors of Southfield, Mich., which is handling arrangements. No other details on his death were available.

Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II, who was also a pioneer in jazz education, attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, played in military bands in the Air Force, and moved to New York in 1955. The trumpeter rose to national prominence when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers later that year, filling the seat in the bebop group held by his idol Clifford Brown.

He soon became one of the most in-demand trumpeters on the New York scene, playing with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk. He also began his recording career by leading sessions for Savoy and other labels.

In 1958, he signed an exclusive recording contract with the Blue Note label and formed a band with a fellow Detroit native, the baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams. making their label debut with the 1959 album Off to the Races. The band became one of the leading exponents of the hard-bop style, which evolved from bebop and blended elements of R&B, soul, and gospel music. A 1961 album, Free Form, brought attention to a promising young pianist, Herbie Hancock.

In the 1960s, Mr. Byrd, who had received his master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music, turned his attention to jazz education. He studied in Paris with the composer Nadia Boulanger, became the first person to teach jazz at Rutgers University, and started the jazz studies department at Howard University.

In 1982, Mr. Byrd, who also had a law degree, received his doctorate from Teachers College of Columbia University. Mr. Byrd, a longtime resident of Teaneck, N.J., was a distinguished scholar at William Paterson University and twice served as an artist-in-residence at Delaware State University in Dover.

Byrd didn't have much training in mathematics, but created a groundbreaking curriculum called Music + Math = Art, in which he transformed notes into numbers to simultaneously teach music and math.

"I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music," he told The Star-Ledger newspaper of Newark, N.J., "from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop."

In the late '80s and early '90s, he returned to playing hard-bop on several albums for the Landmark label, which also featured saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Joe Henderson.

He performed on Guru's 1993 jazz-rap album Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1, and his recordings were sampled on more than 100 hip-hop songs by such performers as Black Moon, Nas, Ludacris, and A Tribe Called Quest.

In 2000, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Byrd as a Jazz Master, the nation's highest jazz honor.