BLP 4039

Stanley Turrentine - Look Out!

Released - September 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 18, 1960
Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Horace Parlan, piano; George Tucker, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.4 Return Engagement
tk.5 Little Sheri
tk.7 Look Out
tk.11 Journey Into Melody
tk.15 Minor Chant
tk.22 Tiny Capers

Session Photos

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

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Look Out	Stanley Turrentine	18/06/1960
Journey into Melody	Robert Farnon	18/06/1960
Return Engagement	Horace Parlan	18/06/1960
Side Two
Little Sheri	Stanley Turrentine	18/06/1960
Tiny Capers	Clifford Brown	18/06/1960
Minor Chant	Stanley Turrentine	18/06/1960

Liner Notes

IN recent years we have had contingents of young musicians from Detroit, Memphis, and Indianapolis exert their influence on the national jazz scene. Now it is Pittsburgh's turn. Thanks to Mary Lou Williams, Erroll Garner, Dodo Marmarosa, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Joe Harris, the Smoky City has been more than well represented in jazz for a long time. But I'm referring to some of the recent arrivals: the Turrentine brothers and Horace Parian, to be specific.

The Turrentine brother under scrutiny here is Stanley, born in "Steelville" on April 5, 1934. His father, Thomas Turrentine, played saxophone with Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans at one time, but gave up a promising career in music so that he could be at home with his children. If jazz lost one Turrentine, it has gained two, and possibly three, as a result. Trumpeter Thomas Jr., six years older than Stanley, was with Billy Eckstine's band briefly in the '40s, and has been heard more recently with his brother in Max Roach's group. A younger brother, Marvin (16), is studying drums.

Stanley began his instruction on the tenor sax at the age of 13 with his father as the teacher. After high school, in 1951, he got his first professional job with the blues band of Lowell Fulson. Ray Charles was the featured pianist and vocalist. "Some things he did would bring me to tears right on the bandstand, they were so moving," remembers Stan.

On leaving Fulson, Stan returned to Pittsburgh and studied for two years with Carl Arter, presently the president of A. F. M. local 471. In 1953, he moved to Cleveland with brother Tommy and both worked with Tadd Dameron. The following year, Stan replaced John Coltrane in Earl Bostic's band. Tommy joined six weeks later. Also with the band at different times during this period were Blue Mitchell, George Tucker, and G. T. Hogan. The year 1956 found him back in Pittsburgh for a short time, up to Bangor, Maine for a summer resort gig, and by December, a member of the 158th Army Band.

After being discharged, two years later, Stan again returned to Pittsburgh. In March, 1959, he joined Max Roach and remained with the drummer's combo until after an engagement

at New York's Jazz Gallery in May of 1960. Now he is living and playing in Philadelphia, where he plans to pursue further studies in harmony and theory with an eye toward expanding his writing activities.

Stan's original influences were Don Byas and Ben Webster; among the younger giants he prefers Sonny Rollins. While his playing is modern in line, its very sound is an older one. The result is an effective fusion of several elements resulting in a full, graceful tenor style that is masculine but not harsh; with a warmth that does not consume itself, but diffuses evenly throughout all his work.

The rhythm section is one that has been a permanent part of Lou Donaldson's group in 1960. This explains the reason for the acute rapport that exists among the individual players.

Stan has known Horace Parian since high school although they attended different ones in Pittsburgh. In the mid-fifties, they did some playing together before Horace left for New York and subsequent recognition as a member of the Charlie Mingus Jazz Workshop. The story of how Horace took up piano as a therapeutic device, after a childhood bout with polio had left his right hand paralyzed, has been told before. Amazing as his accomplishments are in the light of this, the final judgment of musical achievement is in how it sounds. Horace needs no "ifs" or "althoughs" to prop up his playing. His blues-rooted style is also, as Leonard Feather pointed out in the notes to his trio album (Movin' & Groovin' Blue Note 4028), ". . . economical . . . with a touch and sense of time that ensures continuous swinging."

George Tucker is one of the rapidly rising young bassists in jazz. Strength with sensitivity is a combination that makes any rhythm player a standout. George has both qualities. Although born in Florida, he has been a New Yorker since 1948.

Al Harewood is a Brooklyn boy who has been heard with Jay and Kai and Gigi Gryce, among others. You always are aware of his presence but he never intrudes. Like Tucker, he concentrates on swinging and accomplishes his purpose.

"Look Out!" is a blues by Turrentine that gets into a good groove from the beginning and never looks to either side. "I like a straight-ahead rhythm section that plays for you," says Stan. This one does just that. Stan and Horace are the beneficiaries in their solo stints.

"Journey into Melody," by British composer Robert Farnan, is an extremely pretty ballad which I'm sure will be as new to most of you as it was to me. Stan became familiar with it through its use as the theme song for a radio show called "Tonight at 8" on station WWSW in Pittsburgh.

"Return Engagement" by Parian is up-tempo, but its attractive chord changes are given their full due by Stan. The swing is light but with a firm underpinning.

"Little Sheri" is Stan's dedication to his daughter. Its minor mood finds him funky with an underlying tenderness. Parian explores the tender side with his chordal technique.

Clifford Brown is remembered in "Tiny Capers." This is the first recording of it since the late trumpet great first did it. It has a joyous quality that Stan captures well.

"Minor Chant," another minor-key original by Turrentine, rounds out the set. Stan also recorded this tune as a sideman with Jimmy Smith for Blue Note. The "straight-ahead" rhythm section is swinging as much as at the beginning of the set, and bassist Tucker has a plucked solo for good measure.

This is another in the long series of Blue Note firsts - the presentation of new musicians who go on to make a mark in jazz. They have been right so often in the past, it is difficult to question their judgment. Stanley Turrentine's album is not a place one could start.

"Look out!" in jazz parlance, is a warning, but it is in the affirmative.

- IRA GITLER

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT LOOK OUT!

The exclamation point is the common coin of album titles, and usually a sign that a program of music is being oversold. The entire title of Stanley Turrentine's first Blue Note album can be considered an exclamation point, but nothing was being unjustly inflated in this instance. What we have here is the stunning beginning of a legendary career.

Turrentine's early history, well covered in Ira Gitler's original notes, included crucial rhythm and blues experience and Army service, but to this point only little more than a year in jazz's major leagues. His 14 months with Max Roach had provided ample proof of his virtuosity (no band of the era played as much truly uptempo music as Roach's) and the opportunity to record, not only with the drummer's quintet for EmArcy but also under his own name and the leadership of brother Tommy on the Time label. Shortly after those early 1960 sessions, the saxophonist began to record for Blue Note. His initial label appearance, on an April 3 session led by trumpeter Dizzy Reece, went unrelesed for four decades (it can now be found on the Reece CD Comin' On); but producer Alfred Lion was clearly impressed with Turentine's work. Three weeks later, Turrentine was the saxophonist on the Jimmy Smith session that produced Midnight Special and Back at the Chicken Shack, where several hortatary tenor solos contributed to the classic status of both albums and made Turrentine's own Blue Note contract an inevitability.

Look Out! captures the intensity heard on the Smith tracks, with an added emphasis on the blend of classic tenor and modernist strains that made Turrentine so unique. Few of his contemporaries were as adept at blending a taste for offbeat material with a knack for enlivening melodies and sustaining grooves that satisfied a mass audience. As Turrentine readily admitted, his earliest gigs were crucial in this latter regard. "When I was in Lowell Fulson's band with Ray Charles," he recalled in 1995, "we toured the South and played in all of these tobacco warehouses. That's where I really learned about the blues." The experience also' left Turrentine with a sound that, despite his Pittsburgh origins, might allow him to pass as part of the "Texas tenor" lineage.

The program is a perfect example of the range Turrentine commanded throughout his career. The originals include two of his greatest lines. "Minor Chant," with static harmonic elements suggesting the newly popular modal approach, was also recorded with Jimmy Smith and is included on Chicken Shack. The more contemplative "Little Sheri" is not to confused with the blues waltz "Sheri" from Turrentine's Time album. "Little Sheri" became one of his signature songs, and was reprised on his first big band album, Joyride, in 1965. "Look Out!" is very close in feeling to the blues "Let's Groove" that opens the Time date. Both were intended to establish Turrentine's blues bona fides, and both succeed. The remainder of the original program explores other areas, with "Journey into Melody" containing the unusual harmonic colors one might expect from a Wayne Shorter tune a few years down the road, and "Tiny Capers" illuminating what Benny Golson recently identified as Clifford Brown's variations on the melody of James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout."" Turrentine was the first to cover each tune, and remains the only jazz artist to-date to have recorded the Farnon ballad. The same rhythm section had recorded Horace Parlan's infectious "Return Engagement" two months earlier for the pianist's Us Three.

That Parlan sessions was the first of ten occasions on Blue Note to feature this impressive trio, which, with Booker Ervin on tenor, worked an extended engagement at the legendary Minton's Playhouse under the name the Playhouse Four. That band was documented on Ervin's Candid album That's It! (another exclamation point well earned), where Parlan appeared for contractual reasons as Felix Krull. The trio recorded with Turrentine on four more occasions, and each was memorable — none more so than the live two-volume Up At Minton's with Grant Green on board.

Of the three bonus tracks, "Little Sheri" is a second, shorter take that was issued as a 45", while "Tin Tin Deo" and "Yesterdays" are qualitatively consistent with the rest of the program but were omitted due to time limitations. It is worth noting that Lion chose to keep the most familiar numbers in the can, thereby creating one of the label's most striking programs for a young artist; and that, while Turrentine would also go on to record as the solo horn with two other working trios — the Three Sounds and Les McCann Ltd. — Look Out! remains the standard among the saxophonist's quartet discography.

- Bob Blumenthal, 2007