Wendell Byrd

[Charles Duinn]

If anyone has photos or articles of the late Wendell Byrd the B3 Hammond organ player from Pittsburgh, Pa., please send me a copy via email to [e-mail].

The Wendell Byrd that I am speaking of played the organ with his feet and his signature song was Ebb Tide. Wendell had two other brothers, Perry and Jerry Byrd.
His brother, Jerry Byrd played the guitar with Freddie Cole and his trio for about 20 years.

[Charles Duinn]

If anyone has photos or articles of Wendell Byrd please email me at [e-mail]

[Ronald L Wingfield]

I Played guitar with wendell at the LOFT LOUNGE on Homewood AVE, in Pittsburgh, I don't have any pictures, but i have lots of personal information. Ronny Wingfield.

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

Charles,

Your discussion is a very important one for this network and I hope others weigh in on it. I grew up with the Byrd brothers and we were all close as family. Jerry and I were in kindergarten together and we started our professional musical careers in the same band, playing our first night club together in 1954 and joining the musicians union together at 15 years of age. Actually Jerry was a few months my elder and had just turned 16 the week before. Since I was the bandleader, I just let them assume that he was the younger of us.

Perry was a wonderful baritone singer who preferred to sing religious music which made their father, Rev. Byrd very happy. Rev. Byrd was never too thrilled about Wendell and Jerry playing all that jazz. Jerry got his first guitar in 5th grade and the first song he learned was "Home on the Range" by Gene Autry. When Wendell was about 12 or 13 he studied piano from a teacher who lived on the hill behind our house. We could hear his lessons while we were out playing cowboys or throwing ball. I'll never forget the first concert he play at our house for the family. He played and sang "Bald Head" by Professor Longhair and we laughed all day. I didn't learn until 20 years later where he got that song and that Professor Longhair's real name was Henry Rowland Byrd. Somehow much of the R & B we heard on the radio in the 40s - early 50s was New Orleans R & B (Fats Domino, etc.)

I have about an hour of Wendell's playing on tape in my archive. He formed the Wendell Byrd Quartet in 1971 featuring Jerry - guitar, Tom Soisson - drums and me on trombone. We played the Crawford Grill, the Hurricane, the Florentine, Checkers in Market Square and a few other rooms in the Burgh. I really wish I had a tape of his classic version of Ebb Tide. No one on earth ever played it better than that. And most people would not believe that he played like he did backward and with his feet like you said but it's all true.

Perry died, I believe, even before Wendell was killed.

Jerry left Freddie Cole and moved to Thailand last year. I'm hoping to get him to join us here on the network. There is a picture of Wendell & Jerry in the Teenie Harris Collection playing at the Crawford Grill as part of the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Quartet.

Jerry and I were mentored by the great Judge Warren Watson when he was a law student. He always returned to the well when he was in town. (see below)