Given the reception of the near sell-out crowd at the Dakota last night, it is hard to understand why nearly 50 years have passed since Donaldson’s last visit to the Twin Cities. From the opening “Blues Walk” (“our theme song”) to the closing “Bye Bye Blackbird” (“music from Miles Davis when he was playing jazz”), Donaldson and the quartet burned brightly, intelligently, and with no apologies for 80+ minutes of bop, blues, and swing. The leader’s tone was sweet and steady throughout, with an occasional sideways quote (such as the lick from “Rhapsody in Blue” tossed into the greased lightning romp through Charlie Parker’s “We”); and his vocals on the bluesy “Just a Dream” were laced with humor and even a not-so-subtle dig at our President’s foreign policy (“and not one weapon of mass destruction can I find”). On what he described as one of the “all-time greatest ballads” (“Over the Rainbow”), he covered the alto’s full range and brought it home with a dazzling cadenza.