Lou Donaldson at the Kennedy Center 11/28/00

by Alan Greenblatt

So many jazz musicians these days try to establish their credibility by saying they played with Miles, Monk, Blakey, whoever. I always wonder whether this means they actually shared a stage with the departed giant in question or just happened to play as part of the same three-day festival one time.

Lou Donaldson, who has played with all those post-war jazz greats, resisted many invitations to name drop last night at the Kennedy Center, where he was the guest at the taping of Billy Taylor's public radio program. Both Taylor and audience members kept asking Donaldson to talk about musicians other than himself, but Donaldson just said, "Yeah, I knew him," in his high voice and then told some more interesting story about someone's brother Bubba or how he first started playing saxophone to get out of harder duties in the Navy.

Taylor opened the program with lovely renditions of "I Love You" and "But Not for Me," but the show really got going when Donaldson came on stage and started blowing "Stella by Starlight," his playing full of vinegar. Donaldson plays alto and did a lovely sort of imitation of the early, sweet alto players like Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges on "Getting Sentimental Over You," throwing in a few bebop embellishments. He did straightforward bebop on "Wee" and "Ornithology."

Donaldson is a terrific player, full of melody and humor. You can see why Taylor and the others wanted him to talk about bigger names; Donaldson is not a major figure -- jazz history would not be much different had he never come along -- but he offered a welcome reminder of how a powerful soloist with real feeling for the blues can command a stage.

It's unfortunate that Taylor did not encourage Donaldson to explore any music that was made within 40 years of the present. Donaldson had his greatest success playing funky or soul jazz. Last night, he kept talking about the importance of laying down a good beat to be popular, noting he's made more money from having been sampled by the likes of Ice Cube than from the original recordings. (Throughout the evening, Donaldson spoke about music as a rewarding career but a rip-off, yet without any bitterness.)

Taylor has a drummer, Winard Harper, who would have been sympathetic to Donaldson's rhythmic needs. Playing bebop, Harper illustrated the old point about how drummers of that era owed a lot to tap dancers. Bass player Chip Jackson was fine in support and more aggressive than normal in his solos, where he strummed like he wished he were playing guitar.