Sunny Side Up, the beloved 1960 recording from saxophonist Lou Donaldson, is joining the Blue Note Classic Series. The record, which brings the jazz recording back to vinyl on stereo, all-analog 180g black vinyl, is the latest entry into the series spotlighting some of the best albums in Blue Note’s impressive repertoire.
Released a few years into Donaldson’s time with Blue Note, Sunny Side Up helped herald the saxophonist’s arrival as a band leader. After years for sideman for the likes of Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson, had fully come into his own by 1960. Sunny Side Up features a mix of classic standards, like the Gershwin brothers’ “The Man I Love” and Hammerstein and Romberg’s “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise,” as well as the folk song “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” and a number of originals from Donaldson, including “The Truth” and “Goose Grease.”
Sunny Side Up came during a particularly successful and prolific period in Donaldson’s career, where he would switch up some of the instrumentation on his albums fairly often and would record the tracks that played the best to audiences in the clubs. “What I used to do, I used to play… If I was going to make a date, two weeks before I made it, I’d play the tunes in the club to see what kind of response I got, and the ones I didn’t get a response to, I didn’t record, and I was home free,” Donaldson said years later during interview with the Smithsonian. “Because everything I made during that time, sold.”
On this record, Donaldson is joined by trumpeter Bill Hardman, pianist Horace Parlan, bassists Sam Jones and Laymon Jackson, and drummer Al Harewood. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey—home to many classic jazz records of the era—Sunny Side Up is considered an important release from the bebop genre, and one of the most vital recordings in the Blue Note Library.
