Lou Donaldson / Bobby Hutcerson - LIVE!!!

Definitely the most exciting event (for me) of the festival was the chance to see Lou Donaldson and Bobby Hutcherson live at the Crystal Ballroom. This double billed event (with the exception of McCoy Tyner on the previous weekend) was the biggest highlight of earlier generation Blue Note artists.

Artistic Director of PDX Jazz, Bill Royston, introduced Lou Donaldson as he entered the stage with his organ quartet. A fine establishment of musicians consisting of Lou, the organ, drums and guitar. This was as close as one is going to get as to seeing a band with the same nature as say Grant Green or Jimmy Smith. Before playing their initial theme Lou introduced the band and started again with his humorous rants. "Today you are going to see jazz, not fusion, not confusion, but jazz," he would say, "not snoop doggie dog or 50 Cent who aint worth a quarter."

For me the highlight of his set was when he played Ray Noble's composition Cherokee. While Donaldson played the melody and every harmonizing note around it, the group vamped the chords in support. I never quite heard it that way and it was one of the best interpretations of the tune that I have listened to. He also sang a couple blues pieces. One about a woman who drank a lot of whiskey and the other -- if I'm remembering the lyrics corectly -- about dreams and then reality having an ironic twist in opposition to the dreams. Both with clever puns and silly rhymes to match Lou's personality.

Before Bobby Hutcherson took the stage Howard Mandel came up to introduce him. Hutcherson didn't look too hot as he has been suffering from emphysema. Regardless of that, after a couple of compositions he certainly had gotten into the mode. Rather than the more technical, bebop and soul jazz stylings of Lou's set (and there wasn't anything non-technical about Hutcherson's), his was more physical and throught provoking. Definitely allowing the audience to have a more transcendent experience. The highlight for me was when Hutcherson played Coltrane's Spiritual. Seeing a legend who had recording amazing albums for Blue Note play one of my favorite Coltrane compositions was an exceptional delight. And he played it good, really good.

It was a great festival this year. It's hard to say if it was better than last years giving my awesome experience with my favorite, Ornette Coleman; but I guess you can't compare the two. Alls I know is that festivals with headliners like this are going to become more and more rare. I also have to give a shout out to the Operations Director of PDX Jazz, Brad Nelson, who was gracious enough to supply me with a couple of tickets to this event.

Conversation with Lou Donaldson

The second talk I attended for the 2009 Portland Jazz Festival was a conversation with Lou Donaldson at the PCPA Art Bar. It was moderated by Larry Appelbaum of JazzTimes for a piece called "Before and After." Appelbaum described this to the audience as a blind fold test where tracks were played and Lou was meant to discuss them and share his wealth of knowledge. Out of the 11 songs displayed, he was able to identify, I'd say at least nine of the horn players on them. Being 82 years old and the oldest living Blue Note artist, he had quite the opinion to share about each tune -- old and new, positive and negative.

Rather than talk about each song played and Donaldson's input I'll just share his personality and some of his knowledge (I'll let the article in JazzTimes elaborate further about the tracks). First of all, Donaldson doesn't look anything like 82 years old, he could pass for an early 70s, perhaps even late, late 60s. He's been on the scene since his military days playing clarinet for the Navy Band in Chicago during the 1940s. That's when he first heard Bird and was inspired to toss his clarinet into the water and stick to alto. "I'm a Parker man, everything else is just sax playing," he said as he further discussed Parker's tone and how he would move around the chords. I was surprised to hear some of Donaldson's opinions on a lot of other musicians of his era. Most of them quite low, but you couldn't help to not judge him -- even though he was trashing some of my favorites like Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy -- This man has been around and his expressions of these artists are more authentic and sincere than mine or any jazz critic.

For example, Lou stated you can't play jazz unless you can play the blues. I'd say that's a fair assessment. However, when asked about Coltrane he said Coltrane could never play the blues. Right there he just proclaimed Coltrane couldn't play jazz. But who cares! It's Lou Donaldson and his thoughts were absolutely brilliant. Another example is he said Monk was a terrible performer. That he was a genius bop composer but couldn't play greatly -- another pretty wild fact to state. Again, if this was a random local at the pub telling me this I would argue them into the ground, but Lou Donaldson was there. He knew these guys. He recorded hit records on Blue Note. So one has to take these words with sheer credibility.

I did get some homework from this talk. When talking about Hank Crawford, Donaldson noted his favorite album of his was Misty. And when asked what his top five all time favorite records were, Lou was hesitant to list them, but did mention Flying Home by Illinois Jacquet as the greatest he had ever heard, but not in his top five. These are added to my list of records to get.

Post about the concert next.