Turtle Walk

Recorded on August 28, 1969 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, the session featured Lou Donaldson on alto saxophone alongside Lonnie Smith on organ, Melvin Sparks on guitar, and Leo Morris (Idris Muhammad) on drums, forming the core working band behind Donaldson's funk-oriented Blue Note recordings of the period. Released on Blue Note Records as part of the album 'Everything I Play Is Funky', the track exemplified Donaldson's embrace of a stripped-down, groove-centred approach that positioned the label's jazz artists within the soul and funk market of the late 1960s. The track has been extensively sampled by hip-hop producers and remains one of the most crate-dug recordings on the Blue Note catalogue, with its organ-driven groove and Donaldson's alto saxophone lines providing source material across multiple decades of sample-based music.