Lou Donaldson interview

Lou Donaldson interview from 1981. Seeing Donaldson with Dr. Lonnie Smith on B-3 in january of 2002 was great fun, even if the music wasn't all that interesting. He really knew how to warm up a cold winter's night. Interview highlights:

Yeah, I’m way away from that commercial period in the ‘seventies. Well, at that time two of my kids were in college; so it was a different situation then. I needed a whole lot of bread. But they’ve completed it now—and I’m back to normal
(...)
People have seemed to shy away from the avant garde movement, and they’re coming back to the mainstream . . . straight–ahead jazz, whatever you want to call it.
(...)
See, everybody liked everybody—that’s all you need, to play jazz. That’s a funny thing; it’s different from any other type of music. If you’ve got the feeling between the drums, piano and rhythm, and the horns—that’s it. In fact, you don’t even have to like ‘em; you can hate ‘em, but you like the way they play.

I’ve heard of bands where guys didn’t even speak to each other for fifteen to twenty years; but they liked the way they played—so they played.
(..)
Most everything of intrinsic value in jazz left with bebop—that ended it. From then up to now, it’s nothing—it’s just a waste of time, really. They’ve tried to categorise jazz into something that it’s not. Spontaneous improvisation can be done with any type of music, not just jazz, but what they’re trying to do now—they’ve got ‘harmonic improvisation’ now. They’re concentrating on it in schools, and most of the young musicians are playing that way—and the essence of jazz is gone. You know, the bluesy feeling, and the soul, and the feeling in the rhythm—that’s gone. It even pains me to hear some groups now—some of the top, highly–rated people. It’s really sickening to hear it, because they don’t have the basic ingredients. Like taking the sugar out of cake—it’s got a lot of dough there, nothing else.

I had a young fellow ask me: “Man, why did they rate Lester Young so great? He doesn’t seem to be playing anything.” I said: “Well, my friend. . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. You would have to have lived back in that time, to understand what I’m telling you. It’s not a matter of how many harmonic changes you can play. You’ve got to realise that Lester Young was given two–and three–bar solos, and he had to get something in there, within two or three bars—and that’s really hard to do.” You didn’t have time to stretch out; you had to play what you were going to play, and play it quick. See, in those bands like he played in, it wasn’t a matter of how much a guy could execute a facility—it was just his concept of the music and what was done. And if you didn’t play to suit those bandleaders, that was your last solo. Some guys sat in those bands twenty years, and never got one solo—the bandleader didn’t like their concept. They had to accept it, if they wanted a job.

All they call jazz today is: soloing, knowledge of harmonics and facility on the instrument. Those things are very important—only if you’ve got the other ingredients to go with ‘em.
(...)
See, a lot of people don’t know that Coltrane was not a great bebop player. He was there all the time, but he never did really capture the bebop feeling in his soloing. Well, he was a hard worker; he practised a lot, and he got a lot of stuff together—but it has nothing to do with jazz. Not really. When you play harmonics, and play through the changes of blues, that’s really not playing blues. Some guys play one note and play blues; if you don’t believe it, you listen to some old records—those cats played at best, four notes, and they played a whole blues chorus. And it sounds good too.
(...)
Believe me, I have yet to meet one A. and R. man who knows anything at all about music—let alone jazz. They just don’t know anything about music, period. You could play a wrong note, play in the wrong key, anything—they’d never know. But the reason Blue Note was successful is that they had two guys who really loved jazz. When they’d get in the studio, they’d start the tape, you’d play what you were playing; when it was over, they’d pay you and you’d leave. They wouldn’t come up there in the middle of a song, and say: “Wait a minute—that doesn’t sound right. Do this, do that,” because they didn’t know what to tell you to do, anyway. So, by not getting in your way, they were very successful.
(...)
My name was on albums like “Sophisticated Lou”, “Sassy Soul Strut”, “Pretty Things”—and they earned me a lot of money.

What would happen there: they’d record it, and I just overdubbed it. A lot of times, I never saw the musicians; I don’t even know who was on the dates, unless you tell me. Because it was a drag to me, anyway. They’d say: “Why don’t you come and rehearse with the group?” and I’d say: “Not really—because if I do, I’d most likely have the arranger change all the music. So just put it on tape and I’ll come and play it. I’m not going to play it but once, anyway.” I never played ‘em more than once; I listened to it one time, and then I’d cut it—that was it. Because it was nothing to play—everything else was already there.

...But see, with that commercially packaged kind of stuff, you can’t do that; there’s nothing spontaneous about those records. It’s just one of those things, man. But fortunately, it didn’t hurt me at all; financially, it worked out fine.