BLP 4081

Stanley Turrentine - Dearly Beloved

Released - January 1962

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 8, 1961
Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Shirley Scott as Little Miss Cott, organ; Roy Brooks, drums.

tk.2 Yesterdays
tk.4 My Shining Hour
tk.5 Troubles Of The World
tk.12 Wee Hour Theme
tk.14 Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You
tk.15 Dearly Beloved
tk.17 Baia

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Baia	Ary Barroso	08 June 1961
Wee Hour Theme	Stanley Turrentine	08 June 1961
My Shining Hour	Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer	08 June 1961
Side Two
Troubles of the World	Traditional	08 June 1961
Dearly Beloved	Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer	08 June 1961
Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You	Marvin Fisher, Jack Segal	08 June 1961

Liner Notes

AS IT has often been said before, rapport, between and among musicians, is one of the most important factors in the playing of jazz with a genuine feeling. When that spirit starts moving around the bandstand or recording studio, it becomes a tangible thing that you can reach out and touch.

It is obvious that in this session, Stanley Turrentine and Little Miss Cott (contractual obligations prevent us from revealing her real name) really have something going. It is akin to a musical love affair. Out of this atmosphere, there can come only a warm, groovy kind of music that succeeds in duplicating the mood of the layers inside the listener.

In the wrong hands, the combination of tenor saxophone and Hammond organ can become one of the most banal sounds in American music. The way Turrentine and Miss Cott blend their instruments precludes any chance of this happening. She knows how to unlock the warmth and richness of sound that the organ holds within its many combinations. Her accompaniment for Stanley is like a deep carpet on which he is free to weave his own colorful designs. In solo, she has the tenderness at the right times, and when she has to, she can drive with power.

Turrentine, who first came to the attention of the jazz public when he played with Max Roach in 1959—60, has had nothing but good notices since launching his recording career as leader and prominent side man for Blue Note. John S. Wilson, a man who is not loose with his praise, said of him in a Down Beat record review: "He is extremely impressive . Stanley blossoms out as one of the major tenor men."

What is really significant is that Turrentine, record by record, gets better and better. He breathes assurance with every note he plays and the music flows out in the relaxed manner this self-confidence has fathered. Although Stanley has been influenced by several tenor men (only the best, I assure you, like Ben Webster, Don Byas, Sonny Rollins), there is no mistaking him for anyone else when he steps up and starts wailing. He has found his own sound, an individual jazz speaking voice, as the third member of the trio that walks like a quartet (Little Miss Cott's feet take care of the role usually played by a string bass) is the little dynamo, Roy Brooks, the power station of the Horace Silver Quintet since September 1959. Brooks is perhaps the most exciting young drummer in jazz. For bristling energy and sheer intensity, he is unequaled. As this set shows, he is also a Fine brush man and can implement a quiet mood with either brushes or sticks.

"Baia," the Latin standard by Ary Barroso, starts the set. After alternating jazz and Latin rhythm in the theme statement, it moves into rocking 4/4 with a blues flavor that belies its 16-bar structure.

Turrentine's tenor is completely immersed in the blue liquid of Miss Con's sound on his own languorous blues, "Wee Hour Theme." This one is a powerful love potion. Look out!

"My Shining Hour" swings with increasing intensity as it proceeds. This Harold Arlen song, like so many of his others, lends itself well to a jazz interpretation. John Coltrane is the only other jazzman who has recorded it recently and he may have been the first.

"Troubles of the World" is a spiritual. It is not in a modern-day, gospel-funk vein here, but played simply and directly with reverence. Turrentine's plaintive statement of the minor-key theme, with several of the organ's voices behind him, is very moving.

If any song deserved the "evergreen" label, it is Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays," It seems to continually renew itself. Good performances don't hurt it, either, and this one makes "Yesterdays" a welcome part of today. An interesting comparison of one man playing the same tune under different conditions can be made by playing this version alongside the "Yesterdays" on Turrentine's Up At Minton's (Blue Note 4069).

A less-seldom played Kern tune is the album's title song. "Dearly Beloved" is swung rather than balladized at the tempo it was first written. Everyone smokes here as Brooks comes in for a round of fours after the principals solo.

The set ends (as it began) with a Latin beat. The tune itself is not Latin in origin like "Baia," but the rhythmic treatment in back of the melody casts it in that direction. "Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You" is a song that should be more widely played. (Tina Brooks did it on his True Blue, Blue Note 4041.) The way Turrentine and Miss Cott tenderly swing it, is a delightful closer.

Although this album serves very well as mood music, it can't be categorized that simply. There are things happening on many levels. A combination of several fine musicians brought about a combination of several fine results.

The cover photo sums it up in another way. In Dearly Beloved, everything came up roses.

— IRA GITLER

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DEARLY BELOVED

This album marked Stanley Turrentine's first anniversary as a leader on Blue Note, and the back of the original LP cover displayed, gallery-like, the fruits of his initial year: his opener Look Out! the mellow Blue Hour conclave with the Three Sounds, Comin' Your Way (pictured but unreleased for over a decade), and the live two-volume Up at Minton's. All four featured rhythm sections built around piano, even though Turrentine's sound and blues-centered concept seemed to demand pairing with a Hammond B-3 organ. Blue Note knew this well, as the saxophonist's efforts with Jimmy Smith on the session that produced Midnight Special and Back at the Chicken Shack had inspired Turrentine's signing in the first place. When Dearly Beloved appeared on the heels of Midnight Special(recorded in April 1960 but not issued until the following year), the world got another perspective on Turrentine soul.

Dearly Beloved is also a more specific milestone, Blue Note's share of the front end of one of the most active and consistent, and personal, partnerships of the decade. Turrentine and Shirley Scott, who, as husband and wife for most of the Sixties were both life partners and co-workers, first entered Rudy Van Gelder's studio together six days earlier to record Hip Soul for Prestige. Scott was the more familiar name at the time, having been featured with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis between 1956 and '60 and as leader on Prestige since 1958. Relations between competing independent jazz labels at the time were not always collegial, which explains why Hip Soul credits one Stan Turner on tenor, and why Blue Note went through similar half-hearted subterfuge by crediting the organist here as Little Miss Cott. By their next joint studio venture, noms de disque had been abandoned. Scott and Turrentine, under one or the other's name, went on to produce a string of satisfying recordings that would ultimately yield 15 titles on four labels (Impulse! and Atlantic also got involved) over a span of more than seven years.

While one could argue as to whether the present set is the best of the lot, and it is certainly in the race, there is no denying that its instrumentation is unusual in the both the pair's and Scott's overall discography. While economics dictated that she provide her own bass lines on gigs, the vast majority of Scott's recordings as both leader and accompanist include one or another of New York's yeoman bassists. Here she provides bass lines throughout, a true rarity. Scott was no match for Jimmy Smith in this regard, but she knew how to make her bass lines feed into the taut energy of her touch, beat, and sense of texture. Her footwork can be heard to particularly good advantage on "My Shining Hour."

The bassist is not missed anywhere on this excellent program, where the couple requires only the stimulating services of Roy Brooks (also featured on Hip Soul) to form a potent unit. The trio's compatibility is immediately confirmed on "Baia," where the groove is more uptown USA than Brazil, and the following "Wee Hour Theme," a blues with an Ike Quebec echo and a conversational, dynamically broad organ/tenor blend that suggests a compact Count Basie band. Single were still being released in 1961 , and these opening tracks were paired on a undoubtedly received heavy rotation on the era's more soulful jukeboxes.

Ira Gitler contributed a memorable original set of notes. He finds more than one way to suggest that the present organ/tenor hookup was more than musical, commends Turrentine's preference for less frequently played standards, cites the similarities in tastes of the leader and John Coltrane, and suggests a fruitful comparison of the present "Yesterdays" with the one included on Up at Minton's. The Coltrane affinity is only reinforced when one considers that Prestige also had a Coltrane version of "Baia" in the vaults when Gitler wrote these notes (albeit under the alternate spelling "Bahia, " which is also how the Ary Barrroso was designated when Scott recorded it with Jaws), not to mention the inclusion or "Trane's Blues" and "Out of this World" on Scott's Hip Soul album, and Turrentine's "Syeeda's Song Flute" solo with Art Taylor on A. T. Delight. Regarding "Yesterdays," this studio take yields nothing in relaxed, extended invention to its live counterpart, and contains one of Scott's more memorable solos. Her comping and the overall groove is similarly exceptional on the title track. And do not overlook another classic pair, photographer Francis Wolff and designer Reid Miles, whose contributions represent one of Blue Notes best forays into full-color cover art.

—Bob Blumenthal, 2008