BLP 4201

Stanley Turrentine - Joyride

Released - 1965

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 14, 1965
Ernie Royal, Snooky Young, trumpet; Clark Terry, trumpet, flugelhorn; Jimmy Cleveland, J.J. Johnson, Tony Studd, trombone; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute, alto flute, clarinet, piccolo; Phil Woods, alto sax, clarinet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Robert Ashton, tenor sax, clarinet; Budd Johnson, tenor, soprano sax, clarinet, bass clarinet; Danny Bank, baritone sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Grady Tate, drums; Oliver Nelson, arranger, conductor.

1563 tk.2 Bayou
1567 tk.16 I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone
1566 tk.23 Little Sheri
1565 tk.28 A Taste Of Honey
1569 tk.30 River's Invitation
1564 tk.34 Mattie T.

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
River's Invitation	Percy Mayfield	April 14 1965
I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone	Buddy Johnson	April 14 1965
Little Sheri	Stanley Turrentine	April 14 1965
Side Two
Mattie T.	Stanley Turrentine	April 14 1965
Bayou	Jimmy Smith	April 14 1965
A Taste of Honey	Ric Marlow, Robert Scott	April 14 1965

Liner Notes

This album marks an auspicious turning point in the career of Stanley Turrentine: his first record date backed by a fine, funky, swinging big band.

Not too many years have — five, to be exact — passed since we heard the first of what turned out to be a long and rewarding series of small combo albums under Turrentine's leadership. But in the interim he has acquired so many more devoted followers that the impact of that original session was comparatively small. In view of this, perhaps a brief recapitulation of the basic facts of Stanley's career is called for.

He was born April 5, 1934, in Pittsburgh. His first music teacher was another saxophonist by the name of Turrentine, first name Thomas. This, of course, was Stanley's father, who in the late 1930s played for a while with the Savoy Sultans, the same band that featured as its bassist the father of Grachan Moncur III.

As some traits of his current performances might lead you to suspect, Stanley has had some gutty rhythm and blues training; in fact, in his first professional job he played alongside Ray Charles in the Lowell Fulson band. This was in 1951 / when Stanley was fresh out of high school. His other credits include a stint with the late Tadd Dameron in Cleveland in 1953—54 (with brother Tommy Turrentine, Jr. on trumpet); Earl Bostic's band; Uncle Sam's All Stars (more specifically, the 158th Army Band); and then, soon after his return to civilian life, the gig that proved decisive in launching him on the jazz scene: a year with the Max Roach combo, which took him on to New York, record dates, and the present status level of respect and admiration in which he is held by fellow musicians.

In his years with Blue Note, Stanley has been heard in a rich variety of settings: with the Three Sounds, with Les McCann, with Mrs. Turrentine (Shirley Scott) at the organ, and with a fine rhythm section (Horace Parlan, George Tucker, and Al Harewood) that provided his backing on several of the early albums.

The big band context, it seems to me, was the next logical move. Glance through the pages of jazz history and you will find that sooner or later (more often sooner), all the truly important tenor men used a large ensemble as the resilient cushion for their horns. Coleman Hawkins came out of the Fletcher Henderson band; Lester Young out of Count Basie's; Ben Webster and Don Byas, traces of whom can still be discerned in the Turrentine style, had years of big band experience to their credit.

The use of a big accompanying group, far from burying the artist on center stage or inhibiting the chances for swinging, tends to provide him with a stimulus because of the richer range of tone color, the contrasts in volume, and the diversity of moods that can be achieved. And to give these qualities the broadest possible dimensions there could hardly have been a more suitable candidate for the position of arranger/conductor than Oliver Nelson.

"Oliver was a wonderful choice to work on this album with me," says Stanley. "I've known him personally for just a couple of years, but I knew of him by reputation, and from his records, for quite a while before that.

"What makes him valuable, among other things, is his consistency. He does a lot of recording, but whoever he happens to be dealing with, you can tell that he has figured out each individual's personal groove, and has written accordingly.

"That's what he did for me, and I couldn't have been happier with the arrangements. He did a superb job."

A few background details may be in order at this point. Nelson is about the same age as Stanley and, like him, is both a saxophonist and a composer. Born in St. Louis June 4, 1932, of a musical family, he began studying the saxophone at the age of eleven after five years of piano. He started out professionally very young, playing in the Jeter Pillars band at 15 and the George Hudson band at 16.

He was in New York in 1950 as a member of the big band led for a while by Louis Jordan, and it was then that I recall first meeting him, though there was to be a very long gap until the next encounter. After a couple of years in the Marines with the Third Division band, he studied extensively in the areas of classical music, composition, and theory, at Washington University from 1954—57 and Lincoln U. from 1957-58.

Nelson's background is extraordinary. In addition to working with the bands listed above, and with others led by Erskine Hawkins, Louis Bellson, et al., he has held a number of jobs outside music. When things weren't quite as active as they are today, he ran a streetcar and drove a bus in St. Louis. If they ever get tough again, he can take a job in the fields of taxidermy and embalming, in both of which he is reported to be an expert; but somehow, especially after listening to these sides, I doubt seriously that the necessity will ever arise.

In recent years, though still playing saxophone from time to time, Nelson has earned a reputation in New York as a skilled creator of polychromatic settings for a number of leading soloists and singers.

One important point should be stressed in an evaluation of the setting that Nelson provided here for Stanley Turrentine„ It is not a "pick-up band" in the accepted sense of the term. Nelson has worked so much with a big band in the past year or two — in the recording studios and occasionally in person — that he has a regular group of men on whom he calls tor all his dates. Most of the brass and reed men, as well as the rhythm section members, have worked together in previous Nelson-conducted albums. (It is interesting to note that coincidentally, almost all the brass men worked with the Basie band at one time or another, and almost all the saxophonists are Benny Goodman alumni.)

In writing his charts for this orchestra, Nelson did an attractive and sensitive job of carrying out Blue Note's objective namely, to provide Turrentine with a basically simple and funky background, neither too commercial" nor too self-consciously sophisticated.

"River's Invitation" is a sensational opening track. Perhaps it not mere chance that when I first typed the title, I put "Inspiration" instead of 'Invitation." This theme is, of course, one of the compositions of the great blues-singing favorite — Percy Mayfield. While not underestimating the importance of Herbie Hancock's blues-rich piano and the sympathetic role of Grady Tate's drums, I feel sure that the solo played by Stanley here, from start to finish, represents a compelling illustration of how effectively a sensitive instrumentalist and brilliantly textured writing can be meshed for optimum effect. Notice particularly the economy of Stanley's statements in the first chorus or two, made possible by the coordination of the orchestral context. Then when Stanley gets to the blowing passages, the warmth and excitement of his work is strengthened by the build from rhythm backing to brass punching and reed interjections. The intensity and drive of this track must be heard to be believed; truly it is Stanley's finest hour and, in my opinion, probably the best demonstration to-date on records of his musical and commercial potential.

"I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone" will evoke memories for those of you who have been around long enough to know the name of the writer, Buddy Johnson, pianist and leader of a great Savoy Ballroom band in the 1940s and '50s. (No relation to the Budd Johnson who plays in Nelson's reed section here.) Muted brass sets off a more relaxed mood, with Ellington touches toward the end, in a splendid example of Stanley's coaxing, persuasive ballad style.

'Little Sheri" is a simple, engaging tune that Stanley named for his daughter. Its tender message was delivered before, in his first album (Look Out!, Blue Note 4039), with just rhythm section accompaniment. In the new version, the key and tempo are the same, but the theme is introduced by unison flutes (Danny Bank and Jerry Dodgion before Stanley moves in. Both he and Herbie Hancock are impressive in their solos, as is Grady Tate in his underlining of the ensembles.

"Mattie T.," another Turrentine original, is noteworthy for the bite and brilliance of the brass, and for its indication of the ingenious use Stanley can make of a two-note phrase, a repeat figure, a bent note. Aside from "River's Invitation" this is his best solo in the album. The tune, Stanley says, was dedicated to his grandmother ("...and Mattie is also my sister's middle name.")

"Bayou," a composition by Jimmy Smith, was first recorded by Jimmy's original trio in an album back around 1956 (Blue Note 1514). It is a spare, quietly melancholy song for which the use of the sax section's doubles again lends vivid color and a dash of drama in Nelson's score. Note the discretely effective part played by Bob Cranshaw's bass.

Bobby Scott's "A Taste of Honey," a fast waltz with wild bursts of brass, brings the proceedings to a brilliant conclusion.

The amalgamation of these two imposing talents, Turrentine and Nelson, brings a new dimension to the former's career and adds another important credit to the list of accomplishments of the latter. By a curious coincidence, I recall, Don De Micheal of Down Beat mentioned both men in his review of the very first Turrentine Quartet album in 1960.

"Turrentine," he wrote, "is of that growing group of tenor men (Oliver Nelson is another) who, while cognizant of the advances of John Coltrane, play more directly and with a fuller tone warmer is another way to put it. Turrentine's playing is passionate (with) wonderful time conception."

These attributes, apparent on the occasion of his maiden voyage five years ago, are now brought into even sharper focus as Stanley Turrentine embarks on his unprecedented big band Joyride — one that will involve you as an admiring and thoroughly comfortable passenger.

- LEONARD FEATHER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT JOYRIDE

Strange as it may seem, Joyride has to be the album representing the single most radical departure in Blue Note's storied history. More than the sessions by Monk and the other modernists the label introduced in the 1940s, or the embrace of free innovators Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor that would occur shortly after the present music was recorded, this classic collection that placed Stanley Turrentine's tenor saxophone in a big band context was a departure from the Blue Note norm.

Spontaneity had been a hallmark of the music Alfred Lion produced from his first solo and duo piano sessions, and ensemble intimacy from the Port of Harlem, Swingtet, and Blue Note Jazzmen sides that soon followed. Projects that required contractors and the assembling of a large studio band were left to others until Donald Byrd's November '64 album I'm Tryin' to Get Home; but even there the motivation had been more an expansion of the combo-plus-vocal-choir concept of Byrd's earlier A New Perspective than an attempt to create a big-sound, big-budget program for a star soloist. On Joyride, both the sound of the band that arranger Oliver Nelson assembled for Turrentine and the emphasis on blues/pop material were intended to expand the saxophonist's fan base and attract the mass audience that musicians such as Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith were then building with similar projects. If the present album did not equal the breakthroughs these other jazz populists achieved, it did contain a notable hit in the track "River's Invitation, " and ensured that Turrentine need not return to an exclusive diet of quartet and quintet recordings.

That Nelson's arrangements deserve a significant share of the credit is hardly surprising. It was Nelson, after all, who effectively wrote the book on jazz/pop crossover efforts of the period such as with his writing for Smith's 1962 Verve debut, Bashin', particularly the hit track "Walk on the Wild Side"; and it was Nelson who sustained the trend in subsequent projects for the organist and Montgomery, including the guitarist's Tequila and the Smith/Montgomery Dynamic Duo encounters. The piecework nature of such projects and their commercial slant, which made the results sound like the '60s equivalent of smooth jazz next to the period's more ambitious statements, has distorted the image Nelson (who died far ahead of his time in 1975 at age 43) has carried into posterity. While clearly facile, Nelson was also a lucid and forward-thinking musician with a great feeling for the individuality of his diverse collaborators, which is why fellow saxophonists Eric Dolphy (on The Blues and the Abstract Truth and other Nelson small group projects), Cannonball Adderley (on Domination, made less than two weeks after the present music), and Turrentine all sound like Nelson's natural partners.

Flexibility was part of the job description if you were a working musician in New York at the time Joyride was recorded, and the cast assembled here has both the temperment and the technique that the cost and time constraints of such projects demanded. While all deserve to be celebrated, special mention must be given to Herbie Hancock and Grady Tate. Hancock had seen a creative corner turned in the history of the Miles Davis quintet when he recorded E.S.P. with the trumpeter three months earlier, and he would return to Van Gelder's for his own Maiden Voyage within the month; yet he locks in immediately to the more basic, emotionally direct spirit of this music. If any single musician had a lock on the feeling albums of this type were supposed to generate, it was Tate, who quickly became Nelson's — and many others' — first-call drummer after arriving in New York. Tate sounded wonderful in small band settings as well, but he truly has no peers on a session like this one.

Choosing to emphasize material with blues and R&B connections made for a coherent mood throughout, and that mood is sustained with the two bonus tracks that were included in the 1985 CD reissue of this album. Lou Donaldson's "Gravy Train," like Smith's "Bayou," brings its own Blue Note connections, and stems from the alto saxophonist's 1961 album of the same name. The most interesting track in hindsight may be "Mattie T.," which anticipates the "Sugar" groove Turrentine struck on his CTI album of the same name in 1970. Little need be added regarding Turrentine's performance, as the saxophonist does not make a false move throughout. His fervent sound and attack were made for such instrumental star turns as his producer and arranger provided here, and there would be many similar rides in Turrentine's future.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2005