Search - Lou Donaldson :: Relaxing at Sea Live on the Qe2

The title tells the tale. Alto saxist Lou Donaldson led this band aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 in November 1999, en route to England as part of the 19th annual "Floating Jazz Festival." If you've heard Donaldson before, then you've heard a good deal of his work here. He solos in the same ripe and slightly pinched tone, using many of the melodies and interpolations that have marked his happy-go-lucky music since the 1950s. (That's not a complaint--his playing has humor and the blues, and tight bop phrases--but rather a reminder that what you've heard before is what you'll get again.) And the repertoire does indeed find him "relaxing" into comfortable grooves and familiar favorites--although few 74-year-olds relax with this much energy. Whatever Donaldson's intent may have been, the rest of the band didn't treat their ocean voyage as a vacation. They burn from the get-go, contributing fiery accompaniments and tough, splendid solos that reinvigorate "Harlem Nocturne," three Charlie Parker tunes (including the rarely heard "Marmaduke"), and "The Midnight Creeper," a funk gem written by Dr. Lonnie Smith, who plays the Hammond B-3 organ in this quartet. Smith fills his solos with things that most organists use only as seasoning: unexpected accents, percussive episodes, and swirling swaths of tonal color that cast an almost surrealistic light on organ jazz. Randy Johnston's guitar solos have a vivid intensity that will make most listeners wonder why they haven't heard more of him; drummer Danny Burger never flags; and Nicholas Payton sits in for two tunes as well, and blows the roof off the ship. --Neil Tesser