Byard pointed out that the use of humor did not mean that his music was not serious: "I might do it with humor, but it's still serious because I mean what I'm doing". He stated that his choice to play in a variety of styles was not imitatory or superficial: "I can't play one way all night; I wouldn't want to and I wouldn't want the public to hear me that way". One obituary writer noted that, "Nobody thinks it odd if a pianist underpins melody with stride patterns or a boogie bass. When Byard did that 30 years ago, distinctions were drawn more tightly". Music writer Dan Lander also stated that Byard's playing was ahead of its time, and added that it has influenced 21st-century pianists: Byard's grasp and integration of historical forms, his ability to embrace tradition and risk taking, was visionary, impacting on a new generation of jazz musicians who understood the history of jazz as a material to build on and work with, at the service of creating something new, rather than as an unmovable weight, fixing them to the past.