Sax Expat: Don Byas
Con Chapman
University Press of Mississippi
Don Byas (1913–1972) may be lesser known than the counterparts he played with—Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others—but he was an enigma. He never stayed with a band for long, and eventually went solo partly to make more money and partly due to his inability to work with bandleaders.
Often drinking to excess, alcohol fueled his sometimes-erratic behavior on and off the bandstand. He went through at least thirteen different groups in fifteen years of professional play before leaving for Europe in 1946.
In Sax Expat: Don Byas, author Con Chapman argues that Byas’s relative obscurity arises from his choice to live in Europe, where he missed out on recording opportunities and exposure in the US that would have made him renowned and wealthier.