Jaki Byard

Foolin' Myself is a trio session Jaki Byard recorded in New York on August 25, 1988, with bassist Ralph Hamperian and drummer Richard Allen, released by Soul Note in 1989. By then Byard was a teacher as much as a performer. He had joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory in the early 1970s and led his own big band, the Apollo Stompers, with members from Boston and New York. His reputation went back to the early 1960s, when he played in Charles Mingus's Jazz Workshop, toured Europe with it in 1964 alongside Eric Dolphy, and recorded under his own name for Prestige.

The date was recorded at Sound Ideas Studios by Jon Rosenberg, with Kevin Thomas assisting and Giovanni Bonandrini producing, and mastered by Gennaro Carone at PhonoComp in Tribiano; Lloyd Anderson wrote the liner notes. Five of the seven pieces are Byard's. Suite 27: Waterfall, Highways, Skyways, Waterways opens the record in about five minutes, its title naming four scenes, and Oslo To Kristiansund To Malmö follows, a three-minute piece titled after a route through Norway and Sweden. Searchlight No. 2 is the longest track at over nine minutes, and Stage I / Stage II is in two linked parts. Hamperian contributes Breath, at eight and a half minutes, and the title song by Jack Lawrence and Peter Tinturin is kept under four. Byard's Land Of Love closes the album.

This is the Soul Note CD 121125-2, which Discogs dates to 1989, the year the album first came out.