Lou Donaldson - Blues Walk

Blues is not only connected with black folks with guitars and whisky down in Mississippi singing about women and the devil, it's also a musical form that's fairly often used by jazz musicians. While I'm terribly lame at reviewing jazz records, I can't help myself but write a few words about some of them. In recent months I've been really into 50s and 60s jazz, especially hard bop and it's predecessor, bebop. Basically it was the music invented by black folks that white musicians couldn't steal from them or even understand by that time ;-)

I'm gonna start with tasty, bluesy and quite cheerful, easy to listen to album by alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson. It's called "Blues Walk" and the title rather accurately describes album contents.


It's a set of six tunes, a couple of uptempo tracks and at least two ballads. The sound is amazingly warm which makes it perfect background music - on the other hand playing is magnificent and solos kinda complex. My favorite tunes are Donaldson's own "Blues Walk" which became a classic, fast "Move" and two beautiful riffs in "Play Ray" (nananana ;)) and "Callin' All Cats".

The band consists of five members: Lou Donaldson on alto saxophone, Peck Morrison on bass, Dave Bailey on drums, Ray Barretto on congas (many say it's him who made this albums sound so different) and Herman Foster on piano, who played some nice solos.

That's a good album to start your jazz collection with if you're into blues and look for some brighter and lighter music to enjoy ;)