For my money – and that should actually mean a lot, since I’m perpetually broke – I’ll take any of the three solo Thelonius Sphere Monk dates (1957’s Thelonious Himself, 1959’s Thelonious Alone in San Francisco, 1964’s Solo Monk) over pretty much any jazz record. But specifically I’d rather toss those discs on than pretty much any other solo piano disc that I’ve run into thus far. And while that hasn’t changed with my discovery of Jaki Byard’s 1981 To Them – To Us, it did make me reconsider things a bit. Byard doesn’t have that same sense of the surreal surrounding him – it might crop up every once in a while. Even without it, though, the pianist turns in a thoughtful performance behind the keys.

Prior to leading a slew of dates through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s, Byard worked in some big bands – and even with Maynard Ferguson – prior to landing himself in the Mingus group working alongside Eric Dolphy. Those groups from the early ‘60s weren’t as experimental as Coltrane, per se, but Mingus certainly demanded a great deal from the players that he surrounded himself with. As a result of performing in that group – in addition to the fact that Byard no doubt learned a bit about composition – he was afforded the opportunity to record a series of dates with some of the most forward thinking jazzbos of the time.

Working alongside Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Booker Ervin still left the pianist time to work out some dates during the ‘60s even if his performances on other’s albums from the time period over-shadow the rest of Byard’s output. The end of that decade and the beginning of the ‘70s found the pianist leading a session almost every year until ’77 or so. And by that time, as the tastes in jazz shifted and became verbose at best, Byard still decided to incorporate any and all earlier styles of the music in his playing.

The resultant solo date from ’81 might not be the most gripping piece of piano music ever set down, but when “Tin Roof Blues” turns up a few tracks into the disc, the historicity of the endeavor seems ever broadened. It isn’t quite rag time, although, the bounce is there. It’s just playful piano music being performed by a craftsmen who has all of music at his disposal.

As figured before, this doesn’t get into the spazz out zone that some of Monk’s work could be seen sitting in. It does, though, have those moments and curiously enough some of ‘em are posted at the opening of the album. The title track on To Them – To Us isn’t all weirdness, but the last two minutes or so could easily have been embraced by Thelonious twenty years prior to the recording of this disc. Much the same could be said for the following “BL plus WH equals 88.” Undoubtedly, there’s some meaning behind that title, but what matters more is that it’s superbly played and executed by one of the more talented and criminally ignored pianists of jazz.