By Barry Singer
Lou Donaldson, an alto saxophonist who became a bedrock of the jazz scene and whose soulful, blues-steeped presence in the music endured undiminished for three-quarters of a century, died Saturday. He was 98.
His death was announced by his family. The announcement did not say where he died.
A mainstay of the Blue Note record label at the height of its influence and power, Donaldson recorded constantly as a leader and a sideman beginning in 1952. He was a leading voice of the more elemental style that came to be called “hard bop,” an evolution out of the bebop revolution wrought by his inspiration on the alto sax, Charlie Parker. The National Endowment for the Arts named Donaldson a Jazz Master in 2012.
A player of impeccable technique, plangent tone, taste and refinement, Sweet Poppa Lou, as he was long known, nevertheless prized the raw gospel of Black church music and the gutbucket sound of rhythm and blues in his improvisations. The blues was at the heart of his sound: His album “Blues Walk,” released in 1958, is regarded as a jazz masterwork, and its title tune, which he wrote, became a jazz standard.
Donaldson also proved to be an acute talent scout for Blue Note’s owners, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, bringing to their attention young trumpet giant Clifford Brown and, later, young guitar virtuoso Grant Green.
Donaldson’s years at Blue Note yielded an extraordinarily diverse catalog of recordings, including seminal collaborations with organist Jimmy Smith, beginning in 1957. Their work together helped pioneer a new jazz genre with unexpected crossover popularity: the organ-sax combo. In 1967, Donaldson added to the mix a rising guitar virtuoso named George Benson for a Blue Note session under Donaldson’s own name, alongside the great Hammond B3 organ player Lonnie Smith.
That session generated the LP “Alligator Boogaloo,” which became a crossover hit: Its funky title track cracked the Billboard Hot 100, a rarity for a jazz record label in the 1960s. Donaldson’s sales throughout this period were exceptional for a jazz musician.
Louis Andrew Donaldson Jr. was born Nov. 1, 1926, in Badin, North Carolina, about 50 miles northeast of Charlotte. His father was an AME Zion minister; his mother, Lucy (Wallace) Donaldson, was an amateur musician and a first grade teacher. The second of four children, Louis received a strong foundation in Black history and the essentials of Black music from his mother, who also became the family’s principal breadwinner after his father was incapacitated by a stroke.
Despite having severe asthma, Louis took up the clarinet, receiving lessons from his mother. The diaphragm breathing the clarinet required seemed to help rather than hurt his respiratory problems, he later wrote.
He entered North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro in 1942 as a 15-year-old freshman and immediately joined its estimable school band while majoring in prelaw. An athletic, powerfully built bantamweight, he also played semipro baseball until he nearly broke a finger and realized the injury could ruin his ability to play his instrument. It ended his baseball aspirations.
Drafted into the Navy in 1945, his asthma notwithstanding, Donaldson was sent for basic training to Camp Robert Smalls in Waukegan, Illinois. Its proximity to Chicago, only 40 miles away, allowed him to venture out for club crawls through the city’s renowned jazz scene. One night he discovered Charlie Parker.
In 1949, at the urging of touring jazzmen such as saxophonist Illinois Jacquet and drummer Jo Jones, who had heard him play as they passed through North Carolina, Donaldson moved to New York City. In September 1950, in Harlem, he married his sweetheart from down home, Maker Neal Turner. Their marriage lasted 56 years, until her death in 2006, and produced two daughters, Lydia Tutt-Jones, who died in 1994, and E. Carol Webster. (Information on survivors was not immediately available.)
Playing regular gigs in Harlem’s abundant jazz venues and jamming after hours at celebrated spots like Minton’s Playhouse, Donaldson was approached one night at Minton’s by Alfred Lion. “You think you might want to record for Blue Note Records?” Donaldson recalled Lion asking him. “We’re looking for somebody that plays like Charlie Parker.”
“Well,” Donaldson replied, “That’s the way I play.”
Donaldson’s first session for the label, in April 1952, was led by vibraphonist Milt Jackson and included a rhythm section comprising pianist John Lewis, drummer Kenny Clarke and bassist Percy Heath — the four of them on the verge of becoming the Modern Jazz Quartet. Donaldson then recorded with the same unit, with Lewis replaced by Thelonious Monk, as the Thelonious Monk Quintet. Donaldson cut his first session as a leader — with Silver on piano, Gene Ramey on bass and Art Taylor on drums — that June as part of Blue Note’s “New Faces — New Sounds” series.
Donaldson’s remunerative late-1960s adventures with organ-based funk suited his sultry, grooving saxophone style. As jazz fusion became electrified, though, he maintained a classicist’s mantra: “No fusion, no confusion.”
He continued to record for Blue Note on and off until 1980, long after the label had been sold, and many of his riffs found new life in hip-hop, sampled by Kanye West, Pete Rock and other rappers.
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