well, I am a musician. And you can listen to bop to learn the basics about the music. But as a contemporary musician I have the urge to create, and bop is more the music you play just for fun, we have 2 times the week opener band (sometimes led by my group) and than jam with young music students who study jazz in Viena. That´s when I play some of those old tunes, and have fun. But it is just this....FUN.  For inspiration, and above all for praying and meditating about that beautiful life I have, I love the music of those you mentioned. It gives me another feeling, it lifts me up..... And it spurs my own creativity. What I write is not written as a line for jam vehicle like would have been my earlier efforts "Bebop Airlines" based on "Poor Butterfly", stuff like that, but it ain´t it. You play it for a jam, but to play it as my music....bores me !  yeah superior to sideman, sometimes. But when he had Fats, or Diz, or Miles after his first learning period....when he had learned to fly himself....they are as much worth listening to like Bird. Bud, Monk, Mingus, Pettiford,  Roach, Klook, Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Howard McGhee inferior ? Never.  Well clear, if you seek pleasure, that kind of music ain´t for you and be glad that there is enough music for you to have the pleaser you seek. Maybe Hardbop, Horace, Blakey Jazz Messengers, maybe the Blue Note and Prestige recordings, there is tons of it that you will like.  In my case, I am not sure if I can definite that in musical terms. Music has to move to to feelings I never had before, make me happy in another dimension than pleasure, makes me burst into tears......I am a very very emotional person....

Saw him live yesterday, so today . . . Mdou Moctar -- Funeral for Justice

Speaking of Lou Donaldson in 1953, there’s a bootleg recording of a New York live performance with Horace Silver on piano—it’s a really great, Parker-esque performance. That said, I get the feeling that Lou returned to the Parker style in his later years anyway (like on “Forgotten Man” from Timeless). That said, personally, I prefer the rich tone Lou had during his Soul Jazz days. Opinions are probably divided on his use of Varitone, though... I still listen to the live album "The Scorpion" quite often.

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Of course it is all a matter of personal taste.  At the time period that Lou Donaldson recorded with Clifford and with Blakey, he was among my favorite alto players. Ten years and more later, there were numerous alto players I greatly enjoyed while Lou had slipped far down the list of my favorites.