BLP 1591

Lou Donaldson - Lou Takes Off

Released - May 1958

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, December 15, 1957
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Sonny Clark, piano; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.4 Groovin' High
tk.5 Strollin' In
tk.6 Sputnik
tk.8 Dewey Square

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images / 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Sputnik	Lou Donaldson	15/12/1957
Dewey Square	Charlie Parker	15/12/1957
Side Two
Strollin' In	Lou Donaldson	15/12/1957
Groovin' High	Dizzy Gillespie	15/12/1957

Credits

Cover Photo:
Cover Design:
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	ROBERT LEVIN

Liner Notes

The alto saxophone, though its use in jazz has been secondary to the wider-ranged, more functional tenor, was a particularly impressible instrument in the hands of its most notable exponent, Charlie Parker. Bird’s all encompassing influence on virtually every instrument needs no discussion here, but there have been alto players who came to the fore during the Parker and post-Parker eras who, while they must acknowledge Bird as a strong influence, have roots in a pre-Parker period. One of them is Lou Donaldson, who was born in Badin, North Carolina on November 1, 1926 at approximately the same time the saxophone was first being integrated into jazz. Although he did not begin to study music with any degree of seriousness until fifteen years later, and then with the clarinet in high school bands, he was able to listen to and absorb the many diversified styles that were made prominent within the decade-and-a-half before Bird by Don Redman, Jimmy Dorsey, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Willie Smith, Louis Jordan, Pete Brown, etc.

“I’m a little older than most of the cats around today and a lot of the things people hear and think are new, I’ve heard before.”

The whole of Donaldson’s conception might be considered a thoughtful assimilation of all he has heard which, in turn, would be close to all that has been said on the alto since its inception. He is making a point of carrying on the short, but significant tradition of the alto, but wants to keep his approach a “simple” one.

“You know, you can get as much out of one note as you can out of really intricate harmonics. Jazz should be simple and you should be able to get what you can out of it, like Bird. He could just keep getting it out — getting things out of the simple things. Of course, that takes talent and a lot of cats don’t have it, so they have to experiment with more involved things. But that can’t be real jazz. Jazz is down and basic, and that’s the way it should be kept. What I want to get is a personal, identifiable style that’s in a Bird groove, but which takes in all of the characteristics and capabilities of the alto saxophone — rhythm, tone, melody . . . rhythm is the most important thing, I guess — Bird had so much rhythm in his playing. But there’s beautiful tone also, like Johnny Hodges, who can also play such pretty melodies. I want to take in all that, but not go too far out — and above all, stay myself, which is really the most important thing, no matter how sad some people may think you are.

Lou picked up the alto when he was inducted into the Navy in 1945 and, after his discharge, jobbed around Greensboro, North Carolina with local groups, before coming north where he underwent an extensive orientation in rhythm and blues from 1951 to ‘53. He feels that his experience in that medium has helped him considerably.

“You can learn a lot playing rhythm and blues that you could never learn in school. Like Coltrane and Griffin. They played a lot of that stuff and they can play jazz now with a lot of power, drive and depth.”

Within the past several years the bulk of Lou’s working hours have been spent in various New York rooms with people like Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and the late Clifford Brown. He is currently fronting his own unit at the Continental in Brooklyn, and has been gigging intermittently with Donald Byrd at the Café Bohemia. He has recorded extensively for Blue Note under his own name (BLP 1537, BLP 1545, BLP 1566), as well as with Art Blakey and Jimmy Smith.

Byrd, the twenty-six-year-old Detroit trumpeter, has become something of a Bing Crosby of jazz in point of his extensive representation on records. A sincere and serious young musician, he has continued his musical studies in spite of the already high regard he is held in by many of his colleagues, and has gradually developed his intonation and linear continuity to a point that is becoming more and more worthy of this regard. Byrd’s style has yet to solidify, in the sense that it has not yet become immediately identifiable as his own, but he is approaching a firm consolidation of the Gillespie and Davis methods and, in this respect, is following a pattern set down by Art Farmer and Kenny Dorham. Trombonist Curtis Fuller, two years Bird’s junior, is another Detroiter who received much acclaim when he first came to New York in early 1957. Fuller has been strongly impressed by Jay Jay Johnson, and is more than passingly involved with that innovator's approach, but gives signs of extending. rather than simply continuing, Johnson’s tradition. His own two Blue Note albums are BLP 1567 and BLP 1572. The rhythm section — Sonny Clark, George Joyner, and Art Taylor — is a strong, propulsive, and busy one. Clark is a Silver informed, bluesrooted pianist who is the leader of five of his own Blue Note dates (BLP 1570, BLP 1576, BLP 1579, BLP 1588, and BLP 1592). Taylor is considered to be among the finest and most sympathetic recording session drummers in contemporary jazz. Joyner, an outstanding rhythmic bassist, makes his Blue Note debut here. He has worked with John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Donald Byrd, among others.

"Sputnik" s a swift Donaldson line that is used as a springboard by the leader, Fuller, Byrd, Joyner, and Clark, in that order. Charlie Parker’s “Dewey Square” features solos by the three horns (Fuller, Donaldson, Byrd) and short statements by Joyner and Taylor before the close. Donaldson has a particular affinity for Bird’s tunes and plans to record more in the future. “Strollin’ In,” a lengthy, brightly-pulsating blues by Donaldson, has a lithe, dancing-effect bass intro that leads into a rocking theme and extended solos by Byrd, Fuller, Donaldson, Joyner (who shows his strong rhythmic facility and continuity), and Clark, who is joined by the horns and a subdued return to the theme before the fade-out ending. The standard-from- within-jazz, “Groovin’ High” by Dizzy Gillespie based on the chord changes of “Whispering,” has typically expressive solos by Donaldson, Byrd, Fuller, and Clark.

At thirty-two, Lou Donaldson, with a wife and two young daughters, has not let the many insecurities of his profession discourage his need and desire to communicate with his horn.

“I just wont to continue playing jazz and see what I can get across to the people.”

— ROBERT LEVIN

Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT LOU TAKES OFF

The album title and cover photo, the name of the first track — all are so typical of a moment in history, when American concerns were focused on the Soviet Union’s launch of the first man-made object to circle the earth. The format of Lou Takes Off might be considered indicative of the period as well, were Lou Donaldson not the man with his name on the album. You see, as a rule, Lou didn’t do blowing sessions.

Not that the saxophonist had avoided the format entirely. His only non-Blue Note recording of the period was on the 1955 Woofin’ and Tweetin’ date that launched Gene Ammons’s successful series of blowing sessions on Prestige, and earlier in 1957, Donaldson began one of his most productive collaborations (and the only one in which he would serve as sideman) on the jam-oriented A Date with Jimmy Smith. For his own projects, however, Donaldson was far more concerned with balanced programming, pacing, song selection, and melody. “I was the only one on those Jimmy Smith records who knew the melodies,” he noted in a 2002 interview. “The other guys could play the shit out of the music, but nobody else knew the melody.”

On his earlier 1957 visits to Van Gelder’s as a leader, Donaldson had insisted on recording with members of his working band. The excellent Swing and Soul, recorded six months before Lou Takes Off, added conga drummer Ray Barretto and established what would become Donaldson’s ensemble sound for the next several years. Yet here he is surrounded by a cast of Blue Note regulars (save for bassist Joyner, known in later years as Jamil Nasser) and stretching out, in the case of “Strollin’ ln” for nearly a quarter-hour, on extremely familiar material. Asked for an explanation 45 years later, Donaldson insisted “Blue Note didn’t like any of it at first, the conga drums or the new musicians.” Yet producer Alfred Lion may have had nothing more than variety in mind. This was the saxophonist’s third date as a leader in the calendar year, and a change of setting was not necessarily out of order.

For the most part, the results are admirable, if atypical Donaldson, with a strong focus on his bebop roots. “Sputnik” is a thinly disguised “What Is This Thing Called Love?” way up, that sustains itself surprisingly well over its ten-minute length. Credit is due the rhythm section, especially the relentless Art Taylor. Special attention should be paid to the solo by Curtis Fuller, whose studio appearances at the time may have even exceeded those of his ubiquitous band mates Taylor and Donald Byrd. Fuller’s joy and agility here call to mind one of the trombone’s, and Blue Note’s, great microgroove moments — J.J. Johnson burning over Art Blakey’s drums on the Miles Davis track “Tempus Fugit.”

There is more strong Taylor drumming on Charlie Parker’s “Dewey Square,” although Donaldson, who is on record as no fan of drummers, who phrased aggressively across bar lines, would no doubt disagree. Pianist Sonny Clark’s solo is interesting, beginning as it does with a chorus of his signature stuff before adopting a more assertive approach that recalls his friend, Hampton Hawes.

The lengthy blues, which is still going strong at the fade, finds Donaldson in a preaching mood, eschewing fireworks and extended double-time sequences for more concise phrases. The length of the solo does point out, however, that the saxophonist is an episodic improviser, with little concern for the continuity that is required to make such an extended outing truly dramatic and powerful. Nasser is much more effective in his declarative choruses, which are a change in themselves from the walking solos bassists contributed to most Donaldson sessions, while Byrd’s lyrical opening statement reveals what was a newly thoughtful side to the trumpeter’s approach.

“Groovin’ High,” the shortest of the album’s tracks, echoes the original Gillespie/Parker version in several spots, with honors going to the leader and Clark for their seriously playful statements.

And that was it for blowing sessions under Lou Donaldson’s name. While he would soon contribute to one of the greatest such efforts of all time, Jimmy Smith’s The Sermon, he would never again preside over such an informal encounter. His cause was no doubt aided by the huge popularity of his next Blue Note album, Blues Walk, which again featured the working Donaldson band plus Barretto. Success, after all, does have its privileges.

-Bob Blumenthal, 2008