If you've ever heard Donald Byrd's Black Byrd (1973) and wondered what made it sound so different from the rest of the Blue Note catalog, the answer is Larry Mizell and his brother Fonce. The two of them came out of the Motown orbit — they'd written and produced for Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and The Jackson 5 — and they brought all of that pop-funk sensibility into jazz production at exactly the right moment. Blue Note was looking for a way to stay commercially alive, and the Mizells gave them one.

What the brothers did wasn't just slap a funk beat under a saxophone. They built full sonic architectures: string arrangements, synthesizers, electric bass grooves, vocal hooks, all sitting underneath the jazz improvisation rather than fighting it. Listen to Black Byrd (1973) or Street Lady (1974) and you hear how carefully everything is placed. The rhythm is loose enough to feel organic but tight enough to move you. It sounds expensive without feeling cold.

Larry handled much of the compositional and arrangement work while Fonce managed more of the business side, though the two were deeply collaborative. Their approach drew criticism from jazz purists at the time — Blue Note's own catalog suddenly had records that were getting played in discos and on R&B radio, which was not exactly what Rudy Van Gelder's studio was designed for. But the Mizells weren't confused about what they were doing. They were jazz fans making jazz records that could reach a wider room.

Beyond Byrd, they worked with Johnny Hammond on Gears (1975), which is one of the more underappreciated records from that whole era — looser and jazzier than the Byrd albums, with more space for the soloists to stretch. They also produced Bobbi Humphrey's Blacks and Blues (1973), which has its own dedicated following among people who dig that lush, spacious 70s groove. The common thread across all of it is a real sense of care: these records are arranged, not assembled.

The Mizell Brothers' work fell out of fashion quickly as the decade turned, and jazz moved back toward acoustic seriousness in the 1980s. But producers and DJs rediscovered these records in the 1990s, sampling them heavily and reintroducing them to younger ears. Today they sit in a comfortable spot somewhere between jazz and funk that a lot of people find irresistible on first listen. If you've never gone down this particular rabbit hole, Black Byrd (1973) is the entry point — but don't stop there.