1959 · Album
The Artist Selects
Recorded Mid-to-late 1950s (compilation of earlier sessions) · Blue Note · Produced by Alfred Lion
Donaldson Picks His Own Favorites
Lou Donaldson curating his own highlights is a reminder of just how varied his Blue Note years were.
Compilation albums where the artist does the selecting can go either way — sometimes they reveal genuine self-awareness, sometimes they just repackage the obvious hits. Lou Donaldson's The Artist Selects (1959) lands closer to the former. Drawing from his Blue Note recordings of the mid-to-late 1950s, Donaldson essentially hands listeners a guided tour through his early career, and the choices feel honest rather than calculated. What you get is a snapshot of a saxophonist who had absorbed Charlie Parker deeply but was already pushing toward something warmer, more blues-drenched, and more directly connected to African American church and R&B traditions than bebop orthodoxy strictly required.
Musically, Donaldson's alto tone is the thing to focus on here — round, slightly husky, and always swinging without strain. The selections pull from small-group dates that typically featured hard bop rhythm sections, and the overall feel is relaxed confidence rather than showboating. Donaldson was never the kind of player who buried you in complexity for its own sake. He wanted to communicate, and these tracks reflect that priority consistently. If you already own the individual albums these tracks come from, this set adds little new. But as an entry point, it works well.
For a listener coming to Donaldson fresh, this is actually a reasonable place to start before diving into dedicated albums like his better-known Blue Note sessions. It demonstrates his range without overwhelming — you hear the blues feeling, the bop vocabulary, and the easy swing that would later carry him into soul-jazz territory in the 1960s. Not a definitive statement, but a solid and useful one.
Where next?
More by Lou Donaldson
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