"We had Rochester, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, down south and out west we played about 20 clubs twice a year. "I was in clubs nobody was working but me, what I call 'ghetto clubs' in black neighborhoods, a circuit from New York to California," he said. So he worked the phones along with a like-minded guitarist and another guy moonlighting from a booking agency and built his own itinerary. His early recordings and musical associations were with seminal boppers such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk, but Donaldson, who was born and raised in rural North Carolina, didn't want to stay put in the city. Like almost every altoist who emerged in the 1950s, Donaldson's style is indebted to the torrid bebop flights of Charlie Parker. He's been a road warrior for more than half a century, and constantly putting himself in front of an audience has shaped the way he sounds. Even as he spoke of Madonna and Mary J., he was packing his bags to play a jazz cruise, then take his quartet to Chicago for four nights before arriving in Minneapolis to play the Dakota Jazz Club on Monday and Tuesday. I don't have to work if I don't want to," Donaldson said by phone from his New York City apartment.īut there's never been any question about Lou Donaldson going to work. I'm not bragging, but I've made some money off it. "There's about 15 or 20 acts that have done it but Madonna is the big one, her and Mary J. He doesn't know which Madonna song sampled his music - triggering the royalty checks he gets now - or, for that matter, which tune she sampled. The 81-year-old alto saxophonist has never met the Material Girl, nor heard much of her music. Lou Donaldson has a sugar mama, and her name is Madonna.