A Blues Walk & A Visit to A Shrine
Perhaps CeeDee started a trend this week with his guest column. Here’s another from our friend Don-Lucky:
A ‘Blues Walk’ in NYC…
“Lou Donaldson at the Vanguard on Tuesday April 6th, 2010 was one of the best sets I’ve seen there in a while and well worth the long drive down to NYC from Ottawa. The first set began with Lou’s theme song Blues Walk and escalated through a series of standards and into Alligator Boogaloo from there. He was accompanied by Randy Johnston on guitar, Pat Bianchi on the organ, and Fukushi Tainaka on the drums… It didn’t stop there, Dr. Lonnie Smith dropped in to pay his respects for the second set, along with a quick cameo by Roy Hargrove, and a few vocals by singer Champion Fulton. Definitely worth the trip. Although Lonnie seems to think I owed him money from the last time he was in Canada. Don’t ask me why !
As for the rest of the trip, I did manage to drop in on Rudy Van Gelder at his fabled studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., on the way out Wednesday morning. That’s the studio in the picture above. Rudy wanted