BN-LA-394-H2

Stanley Turrentine

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 21, 1963
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Shirley Scott, organ; Earl May, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.9 Cherry Point
tk.25 One O'Clock Jump

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 24, 1964
Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Shirley Scott, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Otis Finch, drums.

1291 tk.28 Trouble (No. 2)

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 17, 1967
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Joe Farrell, tenor sax, flute; Pepper Adams, baritone sax, clarinet; Kenny Barron, piano; Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Duke Pearson, arranger.

1839 tk.4 She's A Carioca
1840 tk.9 Samba Do Aviao
1843 tk.24 Night Song

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 23, 1967
Joe Shepley, Marvin Stamm, trumpet, flugelhorn; Garnett Brown, Julian Priester, trombone; Al Gibbons, alto sax, flute, bass clarinet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Joe Farrell, tenor sax, flute; Mario Rivera, baritone sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Ray Lucas, drums; Duke Pearson, arranger.

1910 tk.4 Better Luck Next Time
1911 tk.11 Bonita
1913 tk.16 Flying Jumbo

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 15 & May 27, 1968
Jimmy Nottingham, Snooky Young, flugelhorn; Benny Powell, bass trombone; Jim Buffington, French horn; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Hank Jones, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; George Duvivier, bass; Grady Tate, drums; overdubbed 14 piece strings, Thad Jones, arranger.

2092 tk.18 Smile

A&R Studios, NYC, October 1, 1968
Burt Collins, flugelhorn; Jimmy Cleveland, trombone; Dick Berg, Jim Buffington, French horn; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute, clarinet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Jerome Richardson, tenor sax, flute, clarinet; Hank Jones, piano; Barry Galbraith, guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass, electric bass; Mel Lewis, drums; Thad Jones, arranger; 10 strings overdubbed on, including Gene Orloff, violin.

4025 Little Green Apples

A&R Studios, NYC, October 28, 1968
Thad Jones, trumpet, arranger; Burt Collins, flugelhorn; Jimmy Cleveland, trombone; Dick Berg, Jim Buffington, French horn; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute, clarinet; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Jerome Richardson, tenor sax, flute, clarinet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass, electric bass; Mickey Roker, drums; 12 strings overdubbed on, including Gene Orloff, violin.

4044 Those Were The Days
4045 Song For Bonnie

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Bonita	A. C. Jobim-R. Gilbert	June 23 1967
She's A Carioca	A. C. Jobim-R. Gilbert-V. deMoraes	February 17 1967
Samba Do Aviao	A. C. Jobim	February 17 1967
Side Two
Better Luck Next Time	I. Berlin	June 23 1967
Night Song	R. Strouse-L. Adams	February 17 1967
Flying Jumbo	D. Pearson	June 23 1967
Side Three
Little Green Apples	B. Russell	October 1 1968
Those Were The Days	G. Raskin	October 28 1968
Song For Bonnie	T. Turrentine	October 28 1968
Smile	C. Chaplin-G. Parsons	April 15 1967
Side Four
Trouble #2	P. Logan	January 24 1964
Cherry Point	N. Hefti	October 21 1963
One O'Clock Jump	C. Basie	October 21 1963

Liner Notes

STANLEY TURRENTINE

Marshall McLuhan might have been talking about Stanley Turrentine when he coined the phrase "The medium is the message," for it seems particularly appropriate to the saxophonist's lusty, full-bodied music. Turrentine is and has always been a jazz musician — he is, in fact, one of the foremost and widely popular artists in all of contemporary jazz. And jazz, above all the popular arts, is a music that simultaneously is both medium and message; come to that, one doesn't exist without the other. Despite the large discography of recordings that, like the baker's dozen contained here, comprises its great, lasting legacy to us, jazz is not so much a body of music as it is an approach to music, a way of playing music that is quite at odds with the conventional practices and ends of popular song.

Jazz is, above all, an act — of creating, of communicating one's feelings directly and immediately, of making something fresh and new and deeply, thrillingly personal from the materials of popular song. It is a spontaneous music, of the here-and-now, composed on the spot and instantaneously executed as in a single incandescent flash. In it the thought is given immediate voice, so quickly in fact as to be indistinguishable one from the other, two sides of jazz's coin of the realm — improvisation, the most necessary ingredient of its thrilling "sound of surprise."

Stanley Turrentine has been one of the best known and accomplished wizards of this particular form of musical alchemy for more than a decade and a half now. His big, booming, full-throated tenor saxophone has entranced vast numbers of listeners in that time, as it continues to do, primarily because in his music Turrentine has been an unswervingly committed populist. His approach to making music is as happy as it's healthy. He believes, above all else, in direct, uncomplicated, open and unapologetically emotional communication, in connecting totally and immediately, at a fundamental, visceral level, with his listeners. To do which he's not been afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, to hold nothing back in his music but, rather, to speak his mind plainly and forthrightly, to sing, sob, preach, shout and cry through his saxophone, to appear on occasion corny or unsophisticated, if that seems appropriate to his expressive ends. In short, he says what he means and means what he says, and amen to that.

Because of this willingness to bare his soul, to let it all hang out in his music, he has been able to reach and hold the interest of a wide listenership who, like him, prize this kind of honest, unaffected utterance, who are convinced of the soundness of their and our instincts, who rejoice in and give free expression to the emotional part of our nature. And that's what his lustrous, robust and always sanguine music has helped many of us do over the years— to liberate and celebrate that deep, sometimes hidden part of ourselves and thus be more complete, more honest and healthier people.

That's what the best jazz always has done, when you get right down to it, and because of this commitment to the heart rather than to the head, emotional utterance has been jazz's very heart and soul. The fundamental sound of jazz, as of all black American music, is a cry, a sound all know and respond to. It calls to the blood and few can deny such a deep, emotive summons, one that touches us where we live. The finest jazz musicians have recognized this and, far from denying it, have reveled in its dark, feral power to excite and thrill the senses. Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman — all have cried to us through the voices of their instruments, and one of the very first lessons any aspiring jazz musician sets out to learn is how to use his instrument vocally, to make it cry.

That it's central to the sound of Stanley Turrentine's music is witnessed by these 13 glistening performances, culled from his numerous recordings for Blue Note over the years he was one of the label's most impressive and consistently popular featured artists. It can be heard perhaps most openly in the earliest performances in this appealing, always interesting set — in his big, preaching solos on the funky Trouble #2 (a tune more than a little reminiscent of Little Willie John's huge 1956 rhythm and blues hit Fever) and in his zesty, no-nonsense outings on Neil Hefti's Cherry Point and Count Basie's hardiest of perennials One O'Clock Jump, wherein Stanley does exactly that, and mightily too. (Incidentally, on all three of these performances is heard the shouting but never strident electric organ of Shirley Scott, a well-known recording artist in her own right, and if the empathy between the saxophonist and her seems a bit fuller than one expects of leader and side-person, there's a very good reason for it: they had been husband and wife for several years before these 1963 recordings were made and thus had been able to develop rapport of a kind unavailable to most jazz musicians whose collaboration is merely professional.)

These invigoratingly earthy performances, along with such others as Duke Pearson's infectious Flying Jumbo, remind us anew of just how passionate and persuasive a preacher of the blues Turrentine can be. Then too they serve to call to mind that it was with just this kind of gutty, blues-drenched jazz approach that he initially had established his reputation in the late 1950s and early '60s, first as a member of the highly esteemed group of drummer Max Roach, which he and his trumpeter brother Tommy joined in 1959, and a year later as leader of his own highly successful group with Shirley Scott, which the pair formed the same year Turrentine signed with Blue Note Records, 1960.

Most of the saxophonist's recordings in his first several years with the label were, as befitting the times, small group efforts made in the company of such like-minded peers as his brother Tommy, Ms. Scott, the Three Sounds, guitarists Kenny Burrell and Grant Green, pianists Les McCann and Horace Parlan, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, bassists George Tucker and Sam Jones and drummers Al Harewood and Roy Brooks, among other stalwarts of the funky fundamentalism that was the dominant jazz form of the period. And with his big, swaggering, full-voiced tenor saxophone no less than his uncommonly persuasive command of the blues bedrock, Turrentine was one of the uncontested leaders of this hugely popular idiom, and the several performances in this style included here indicate clearly just why he was so regarded.

But there was another side to the man's musical personality that, in the long run, was to serve him even more handsomely. This was his way with ballads and popular song forms, at the embellishment of which he excelled and to which he brought the same unpretentious assurance, emotional conviction and unerring swing that characterized his handling of more basic musics. From the very start of his recording and performing career Turrentine had been drawn to the ballad and always included generous samplings of his warm, romantic treatment of such material in his albums. They were as popular with his audiences as were his earthier efforts, and for much the same reasons, They were, thanks to his uncomplicated directness of expression, immediately accessible, full of a singing, forthright lyricism and an unabashed ardor that never was cloying. And he never forgot his blues roots when approaching these kinds of songs. Pure and simple, he transformed them into blues ballads, infusing them with more than a breath of the deep-dish, soulful feeling that was his particular forte as a jazz player.

This combination of the touch and the tender was formidably successful for Turrentine, both artistically and commercially, and once the bossa nova movement of the mid-1960s had succeeded in restoring lyricism to favor in jazz he was able to indulge to the fullest his penchant for the sensuous ballad interpretation. This transition is signaled here by the inclusion of three selections from the saxophonist's lovely album of bossa nova interpretations, Bonita, She's A Carioca and Samba do Aviao, all luminous compositions by one of the idiom's leading lights, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and all given sinuous, languid readings by Turrentine.

Quite properly, considering the huge, deserved success he has had with the ballad and other popular song forms, the balance of this retrospective set deals with Turrentine's singular abilities in this rich area. Under the deft guidance of pianist-arranger Duke Pearson, who served as an extraordinarily effective director of recording for Blue Note during the late 1960s and who personally supervised most of Turrentine's recordings of the period, the saxophonist produced a remarkable series of performances that are notable for their sensitive, balanced fusion of committed jazz playing and popular appeal. Much of their success derives of course from Turrentine's deceptively effortless playing, languid and airy yet at the same time lithe, muscular and earthy, every arching note colored with the poignant, bittersweet crying intensity of the master jazzman.

Listen to them — Irving Berlin's Better Luck Next Time, Night Song from Sammy Davis' triumphant Golden Boy, Pearson's Flying Jumbo, the no longer maudlin pop hits Little Green Apples and Those Were the Days, the normally shopworn Smile, and Turrentine's own luminous Song tor Bonnie — their dancing grace and unabashed tenderness belying the cold metal, springs, felt pads and cane reed of their instrument's singing, breathing voice. That's Stanley Turrentine playing himself, being himself through it, doing what he does best — sorcery, musical alchemy, the materials of popular song the base metal his alembic of a tenor saxophone distills into the lustrous musical gold that shines so brightly here. Even more heartening to the fan is the fact that there's a lot more where this came from, in Turrentine's many Blue Note albums.

PETE WELDING