The sixth annual Portland Jazz Festival gets under way Friday, and as this year’s fest coincides with the 70th birthday of legendary New York City jazz label Blue Note Records, WW talked separately with two generations of the label’s most exciting players.
Saxophone player Lou Donaldson, now 82, rose to prominence with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1954, and had many successful outings as a bandleader of bebop, soul jazz and downright funkiness during his combined 18 years of Blue Note activity.
Joe Lovano is among the most heralded jazz musicians of his generation, finding freedom on European labels in the early ’80s and moving to Blue Note as a bandleader in 1990. Symphonica, the 56-year-old saxophonist’s 20th album for the label, was nominated for (and subsequently robbed of) two Grammys on Sunday night.
ON SIGNING WITH BLUE NOTE:
Lou Donaldson: Well, at that time [the early ’50s], we didn’t realize it was a big deal. But it was great. The two guys that owned it were just like brothers and fathers to me. When Blue Note was sold to a big conglomerate [in 1965], they had AR men and they wanted us to cover a lot of the popular tunes. If somebody got a big hit—James Brown or somebody—they wanted us to cover it. And we did it, and it was fun to us. We laughed about it, because the music was so much more simple than what we played [laughs]. But the way the guys play today, like 50 Cent and Puff Daddy, you can’t cover those songs.
Joe Lovano: I had been recording for quite a few European labels as a leader since the mid-’80s, and [Blue Note president-CEO] Bruce Lundvall heard me play at a club called Sweet Basil in New York. It has been a thrill to have the trust and confidence that Bruce Lundvall has given me through the years to produce my own recordings and to develop a catalog that really represents who I am as a player.
ON PRACTICE MAKING PERFECT:
Joe Lovano: I’m not the kind of player that practices and then plays what I’ve practiced with whoever I’m playing with. I try to develop the art of improvising and be free to create music with people. You’re inspired by your heroes your whole life, but it’s very important to develop within the community that you live in. Playing with John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, Kenny Werner and so many others in my life—we play and we might not see each other for a period, and when we get back together it’s like where we left off. It’s beautiful.
Lou Donaldson: I just don’t have any interest in touching my horn. I’m trying to forget a whole lot of stuff so I can be more popular. Because the way we played, that music is not coming back, you know? We played some dynamic music. It’s too fast and too far ahead for the average person in the street. So we have to kind of temper it down and fix it up so we can get people to buy the records. I still hold tones, stuff like that, keep my embouchure together. But I don’t sit up and play old songs.
ON SCHOOLING VS. ON-THE-JOB TRAINING:
Lou Donaldson: Most of the musicians I see coming from music schools and stuff, they’re just wasting time. They have to have a special club to play in because if they play in a regular club they’re fired after one or two songs, you know? And back then when I played they’d be fired after one song. In fact, they might not even get through one song. We played in the ghetto. So those people, after working eight hours a day and coming out with their girlfriends and wives, they didn’t want no education music, you know? They didn’t want to understand what you were playing; they just listened to how it sounds, and if it didn’t affect them and get them to jumping, they didn’t like it. You got to figure out the situation, you know. It’s like anything in life, not only music. You’ve got to do that on a regular job. Supervisor might not like a smart kid, because he knows eventually that kid is gonna take his job. So you gotta act careful, don’t overstep your bounds.
Joe Lovano: I’m kind of in the middle generation. And now I’m teaching a lot, I have a chair at jazz performance at Berklee in Boston. So when I’m not touring I go there and do a day of three performance situations. And we talk about this a lot, ’cause a lot of the younger players practice in the practice room, they have jam sessions in a closed environment. People in Lou’s generation, and also in mine, we came up playing jam sessions for people in clubs. It was always about playing for people. That’s the big difference, I think. The younger players today, that realize that and really get out away from the practice-room situation and try to develop out in front of people—they’re going to communicate better, and actually, they’re going to develop a better sound and more of a repertoire. They’re not going to have to look into a book to tell them what to play. In Lou’s era there were clubs on every corner where people were playing jazz. You always had your horn and you always would sit in and meet new people and play with them, and play for an audience. I grew up like that too, but the younger cats are different. They’re playing for each other in a closed environment, and then all of a sudden they’re out on a big stage and they still have that closed-environment attitude onstage and they’re not communicating as much with the crowd.
ON WHAT MAKES FOR GREAT JAZZ:
Lou Donaldson: [When] the feeling and the concept and the understanding is there, that’s what makes the music. A lotta people think it’s harmonics and technique, and yeah, well, that’s got a lot to do with it, but that’s not what makes the music. The other stuff’s what makes it. The other ingredient that you can’t see, that’s what makes it. Compatibility, that’s all I call it. And believe me, sometimes I go to a club and I hear a group playing and I don’t even think the guys know each other [laughs].
Joe Lovano: I love listening to Sonny Rollins through the years and to all of the things that he’s doing today, you know? It’s beautiful. I feel the love in Sonny’s music or Ornette Coleman’s music today. For me, I feel it in their tone. You feel it in the sound and it’s not a mechanical thing. Guys that play with a real technical sound don’t impress me at all. The ones that impress me are guys who have a beautiful sound in their touch and in their playing, no matter what instrument they’re on.
ON THE GIANTS OF FREE JAZZ:
Lou Donaldson: We called that unemployment music [laughs]. Coltrane’s manager used to call me up all the time wanting me to get him some gigs in the clubs where I was playing. And I figured out the clubs where he could make it without them throwing him out, and I’d recommend him for that.
Joe Lovano: I sat in with Ornette Coleman this last July in Europe, and man, it was one of the most inspiring, beautiful moments I’ve ever had. The thing about the music is that if you’re really in there with it, it carries you into tomorrow, always. And when Lou Donaldson is playing, he exudes that love and joy. That’s what keeps him playing and expressing his ideas. When he blows through his horn and hears his sound, that carries him right along.
SEE THEM: Joe Lovano plays with his Us5 quartet Saturday, Feb. 14, and two shows Sunday, Feb. 15: one with his wife, Judi Silvano, and one with McCoy Tyner. Lou Donaldson plays Saturday, Feb. 21. Both also have scheduled speaking engagements. For show times, locations, prices and info, go to pdxjazz.com or see our music calendar.
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