Lou Donaldson - Cosmos
Released - 1971
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, July 16, 1971
Ed Williams, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax, electric alto sax; Leon Spencer Jr., organ, electric piano; Melvin Sparks, guitar; Jerry Jemmott, electric bass; Idris Muhammad, drums; Ray Armando, congas; Mildred Brown, Rosalyn Brown, Naomi Thomas, vocals; Jimmy Briggs, vocal arranger.
8136 The Caterpillar
8137 I Want To Make It With You
8138 If There's Hell Down Below
8139 Caracas
8140 I'll Be There
8141 When You're Smiling
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| The Caterpillar | Lou Donaldson | July 16 1971 |
| Make It with You | David Gates | July 16 1971 |
| If There's Hell Below (We're All Going To Go) | Curtis Mayfield | July 16 1971 |
| Side Two | ||
| Caracas | Lou Donaldson | July 16 1971 |
| I'll Be There | Berry Gordy, Bob West, Hal Davis, Willie Hutch | July 16 1971 |
| When You're Smiling | Joe Goodwin, Larry Shay, Mark Fisher | July 16 1971 |
Liner Notes
75th Anniversary Reissue Notes
By 1971, Lou Donaldson knew the winning formula for making jazz records that sell. He'd finetuned his alto-trumpet-organ-guitar-drums quintets to create a soulful groove on everything from standards to pop tunes to originals. With "Cosmos", Lou introduced some changes to this formula. He expanded the band adding electric bass and congas and he played most of the album using an electric saxophone which has a drastically different sound than a normal alto sax. The biggest change was adding voices in the form of a female vocal trio Essence with vocal arrangements by Jimmy Briggs.
Lou's lead-off original "The Caterpillar" proved popular on radio and jukeboxes (and many years later with club DJs as did his version of Curtis Mayfield's "If There's Hell Below (We're All Going To Go)" ) It's interesting to note that he also chose to revive his tune "Caracas" which he had first recorded for Blue Note in 1954!
Using voices in a jazz context had inspired a wide range of artists from Donald Byrd to Freddie Roach to Max Roach to Andrew Hill with mixed results, but none of them pursued it beyond one or two album projects. For Lou, this was his one and only use of voices.
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