BST 84436

Stanley Turrentine - Another Story

Released - 1970

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 3, 1969
Thad Jones, flugelhorn #1,2,4,5; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Cedar Walton, piano; Buster Williams, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

3743 tk.2 The Way You Look Tonight
3744 tk.11 Quittin' Time
3745 tk.22 Stella By Starlight
3746 tk.28 Six And Four
3747 tk.31 Get It

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Get It	Stanley Turrentine	March 3 1969
The Way You Look Tonight	Dorothy Fields, Jerome Kern	March 3 1969
Stella by Starlight	Ned Washington, Victor Young	March 3 1969
Side Two
Quittin' Time	Thad Jones	March 3 1969
Six and Four	Oliver Nelson	March 3 1969

Liner Notes

The art of jazz somewhat resembles that of the novel. An embroidery on a theme or an improvisation on a chord sequence will vary in significance according to the musician's instrumental skill, mood and imagination. Whether familiarity with the material results in a relaxed or routine performance usually depends on the support and enthusiasm of the soloist's accompanists. Because the novelist's accompanists are invisible, his improvisations perhaps parallel most closely those of the solo pianist, but just as jazz musicians resort repeatedly to blues, ballads and standards, so do most fiction writers avail themselves of such well-tried forms as westerns, romances and who-dun-its.

Formal categories are only restrictive outwardly. Westerns must have horses, romances, lovers, and who-dun-its murders, but the author is free to manipulate his characters in as original a fashion as his imagination may suggest — provided that he tells a story. It always used to be axiomatic that the good jazz solo "told a story", and to the discerning it still is. Running the changes exhibitionistically — like a display of vocabulary—is not enough. However impressive it may be to the ear at first, repetition usually occasions distaste. There has to be shape, content, continuity, direction—in other words, a story.

The stories a jazz musician tells; just like those of the novelist, are variously affected by setting, context, the company in which he finds himself. Stanley Turrentine has been associated with Thad Jones on previous Blue Note albums where the presentation of popular songs in a popular manner suggested a large band and strings. The stories told were short, gentle and, in terms of character, relatively shallow. In this album, on the other hand, Thad Jones is not the arranger behind the podium, but a vital/ playing participant. And instead of a big band with strings, the context is that of a quintet.

In a quintet of this instrumentation, everything is revealed, bright, clean and stark. There is nothing to hide behind, and very little to lean upon. If we persist with the literary analogy, the means are like those of a Norse saga, where ornamentation is at a minimum and every word counts in the advancement of the story. To those, then, whose acquaintanceship with Stanley Turrentine began in the lusher settings of The Look of Love (4286) or Always Something There (4298), this album will appear singularly well titled, for it is indeed Another Story.

The opener, Get It, is a Turrentine original, and a likeable blues story at a resolute, medium tempo. The rapport that exists between the leader and Thad Jones is shown immediately in the opening ensemble chorus. The tone of the flugelhorn, warmer and deeper than that of the trumpet, complements the tenor saxophone admirably, but beyond this is the intuitive understanding that leads to easy dialogue and quick, inspiring responses. Note, for example, Thad's helpful background and sharp, high notes of punctuation during Stanley's fourth solo chorus. The compliment, incidentally, is returned by Stanley during Thad's solo. the last chorus of which is distinguished by his intriguing use of a flutter-tongue effect.

The Way You Look Tonight, the Jerome Kern standard from 1936, is stripped of all sentimentality and played at up tempo. The theme is stated at beginning and end to give the listener his bearings, but in between are what Duke Ellington calls "calisthenics', fast and furious, the expertise of all concerned being very convincingly demonstrated.

Stella by Starlight puts Stanley on his own for a change of pace in two attractive choruses at slow tempo. Both are relaxed and lyrical, but the saxophonist's amorous rhapsodizing builds subtly all the way.

The second side is almost another story again, since if differs considerably from the first. Quittin' Time is a Thad Jones composition with an unusual melody line and construction, and Thad's musical personality makes itself felt throughout. The contrast of his quiet entry after the impassioned climax of Stanley's solo is dramatically stirring. Cedar Walton follows him with a reflective solo, after which Buster Williams has twenty bars in the sun. Mickey Roker, who is a great source of strength everywhere, uses brushes sensitively behind him. and again on cymbals in the imaginative and unexpected coda.

The performance of Six and Four is the album's longest, and it gives the leader plenty of room to stretch out. "Stanley Turrentine sounds real Texas," Dizzy Gillespie once told Leonard Feather in a Down Beat blindfold test, and although Stanley is from Pittsburgh, there was a lot of truth in the remark, for he has the big, masculine tone and energetic approach that earlier characterized such Texans as Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb. Updated phraseology and reduced use of vibrato distinguish him from these honored predecessors, yet his playing affords another example of how the worthiest jazz traditions are perpetuated by those younger players who have listened with heart and ears.

The construction of Oliver Nelson's Six and Four, to which the refers, proves an inspiration rather than an obstacle to the musicians, Williams's walking bass enframes an outstanding interpretation played at c rocking, tempo. A crackling solo from Jones and another thoughtful one from Walton are attractive features of this long, short story, the last —and probably the best—in Stanley Turrentine's current collection.

STANLEY DANCE

75th Anniversary Reissue Liner Notes

Stanley Turrentine's second-to-last session for Blue Note after several ambitious commercial albums with Duke Pearson and Thad Jones arrangements was "Another Story", recorded on March 3, 1969 and released in May 1970. This is purely straight-ahead affair with Thad Jones, Cedar Walton, Buster Williams and Mickey Roker.

As a great blues player and interpreter of standards, it is no surprise that the album kicks off with Stanley's "Get It" and moves into an up-tempo "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Stella By Starlight".

It is the two tunes that comprised side two of the original album that are unexpected and unusual.

"Quittin' Time" is little known Thad Jones gem with a 20-bar structure that starts off as a ballad, then moves to medium tempo and sports a bluesy bridge. Oliver Nelson's "Six And Four" is the longest performance on the album as this quintet digs into the 6/4 rhythm that Roker lays down and stretches out. The tune first appeared on Nelson's "Straight Ahead" (New Jazz, 1961) and the composer even scored it for big band for Pee Wee Russell in 1967.

Michael Cuscuna