LT-1037

Stanley Turrentine - In Memory Of

Released - 1979

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 3, 1964
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Otis Finch, drums; Mickey Roker, congas #1,2.

1361 tk.2 Fried Pies
1362 tk.5 In Memory Of
1363 tk.13 Sunday In New York
1365 tk.30 Make Someone Happy
1364 tk.35 Jodie's Cha Cha
1366 tk.38 Niger Mambo

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Fried Pies	Wes Montgomery	June 3 1964
In Memory Of	Randy Weston	June 3 1964
Niger Mambo	Bobby Benson	June 3 1964
Side Two
Make Someone Happy	Condon-Green-Styne	June 3 1964
Jodi's Cha Cha	Bill Lee	June 3 1964
Sunday In New York	Carroll Coates-Peter Nero	June 3 1964

Liner Notes

STANLEY TURRENTINE

"I remember that we were driving through Arkansas after a string of one nighters heading for Texas," Randy Weston recently told me, "I think it was about 1948. It was a standard rhythm and blues band tour through the South. Frank Culley was in the band. So was Connie Kay. We had a Cherokee Indian, a big strong cat, on bass. He couldn't play it, but he could drive and change tires and act as a bodyguard and so forth. So on the bandstand, he'd just pluck the strings in time. We pulled into this joint in Texas just in time for the gig. In those days, it was customary for both bands on a bill to have a sort of battle of the bands. Well, the other band was Lowell Fulsom's. And it was the first time that I encountered Ray Charles, who was the pianist in the band. When we walked in, Fulsom and members of his band were burning. And most of them were playing atop tables all over the club. I thought, this is it. Coming up against these guys is what paying dues it all about."

Indeed, there has always been something manic and non-stop about Texas music played in Texas. And to risk further generalization, there is something absolutely distinctive about Texas saxophonists. In the notes for a Booker Ervin album, I wrote, "That tone, immediately recognizable and irresistible, is strong, biting almost to the point of overblowing, passionate almost to the point of frenzy. Improvisations are crystalline and precise. A powerful, bent half note will express more than a mad flurry of sixteenth notes. These are our gutbucket intellectuals, true masters of lyrical construction, the bearers of the modern day field holler, musical synthesizers of the mind and the soul."

Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Buddy Tate and the late Herschel Evans typified the first generation of Texas tenormen. David Newman, King Curtis, Don Wilkerson, James Clay, Ervin, Wilton Felder and altoist Hank Crawford are their successors. There is something so strong and instinctive about the sound that these men share that it seems a birthright that no outsider can acquire.

But, as they say, no generalization is true, not even this one. Pittsburgh born Stanley Turrentine is a native Texan when he puts his tenor to his lips. Of course, Stanley had some first hand experiences in that part of the world. While still in his teens, he toured Texas in the bands of Lowell Fulson, Ray Charles and Earl Bostic.

In 1959, Stanley and his older brother trumpeter Tommy, who had also worked in the Bostic band, joined the front line of Max Roach's group. Roach's material was, as always, challenging in structure and time signature; his band was considered an important incubator of new talent. Thus, the Turrentines had arrived.

The association with Max lasted into 1960 and bore three albums on Mercury under the drummer's leadership as well as albums by Stanley and Tommy on the now defunct Time label. In that same year, Stanley signed with Blue Note Records; this association was to span the decade.

The team of Stanley, Horace Parlan, George Tucker and Al Harewood with Tommy or Grant Green added on occasion made six masterful albums within a year, four under Stanley's name and two under Parlan's. At the same time, the label teamed Turrentine with Jimmy Smith for a series of albums that would remain that organist's finest recordings.

In 1961 , Stanley teamed up with organist Shirley Scott to form a working group. They also played on each other's record dates, and eventually became husband and wife. Of course, they also recorded independently of each other as well, Shirley for Prestige and Impulse and Stanley for Blue Note.

This date of June 3, 1964 is a case in point. The instrumentation and broad scope of material on this session signify a deliberate effort to avoid any pidgeonholing of Stanley through his associations with organists Scott and Smith.

Trumpeter Blue Mitchell at this time had just recently left Horace Silver's quintet and was already recording as a leader for Blue Note. In the previous year, he had participated in Stanley's A Chip Off The Old Block, a tribute to Basie. He would die of bone cancer in June of 1979, a few months after his 49th birthday. But in the intervening years, he created a hell of a lot of beautiful music.

Curtis Fuller, resident trombonist at Blue Note from 1957 until the end of the sixties, recorded as a leader and with just about everyone else on the label. He too was just leaving a long association at the time of this date, as the sixth member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Donald Byrd brought Herbie Hancock to New York from his native Chicago in 1961 and literally launched the young pianist-composer's career, employing him as a sideman, securing a record contract for him at Blue Note and giving Mongo Santamaria Herbie's tune Watermelon Man. Hancock's own talent took it from there. By 1963, he was with Miles Davis, a gig that would last until 1968, Two weeks to the day after this Turrentine date, Herbie would record Empyrean Isles for the label.

Bob Cranshaw, also from the Chicago area, came to New York in 1960 and quickly established his jazz standing with Sonny Rollins. Since that time, he has been in constant demand in the studios for jazz and commercial dates. Throughout the sixties, he was the most frequent choice for the bass chair on Blue Note dates. Stanley once told Nat Hentoff, "Bob Cranshaw can play with just about anyone without losing what makes him distinctive. It's hard to put that special quality of Bob into words. I could talk about his sound, his beat, his conception, but maybe I can explain best what I mean by saying that if ten bassists were playing, simultaneously, I'd have no trouble picking out Bob immediately."

Otis "Candy" Finch had worked with the Billy Mitchell-Al Grey Sextet before joining the working group co-led by Stanley and Shirley Scott. He was, of course, a member of that unit at the time of this recording. He later moved on to work with Dizzy Gillespie among others.

On the few occasions when Stanley used congas during this period, it was usually Ray Barretto, a man equally at home in jazz, Latin and studio contexts. A conga player joins the sextet here for Fried Pies and In Memory Of, and it is most likely Barretto, although the identity of the conga player is not in the files for this session.

Fried Pies, an unusual blues-based tune by Turrentine, is the album's longest performance with solos from Stanley, Blue, Curtis and Herbie in that order. And it contains the spirit that might have sparked those Texas bandstands in the saxophonist's early years. A sort of suspended pedal tone section at the beginning of each solo creates a tension that is released when the band kicks into regular tempo. Each soloist has his first chorus to himself, after which tight, clean horn riffs support each succeeding chorus for a building effect.

In Memory Of was written a year earlier by Randy Weston as a funeral march for those great musicians who have died. Its heritage dates back beyond the New Orleans funeral marches and to certain African tribes who customarily played dirges at such occasions. Turrentine's solo is beautiful and reveals his full understanding of the piece's tone. He is passionate and sad, but never maudlin or sentimental. Hancock also plays a moving solo.

Randy Weston introduced Niger Mambo to the United States, although it was written by the Nigerian composer Bobby Benson. The horns play the melody, and the tenor sax is the only solo instrument. There is occasional piano, but for the most part, the entire cast turns to various drums and percussion instruments over which Stanley burns.

Turrentine is again the only soloist on this inventive arrangement of Make Someone Happy. He plays it at a slower than usual tempo, turning a mindless "Have A Nice Day" kind of sentiment into a heartfelt, bittersweet plea. And again, Stanley avoids the demons of cliched sentimentality, relying only on his considerable artistry.

Jodi's Cha Cha is not a cha cha at all, but a lovely Tadd Dameron-esque line that gives solo space to Stanley, Blue and Herbie.

The album's closer Sunday In New York is from the film of the same name. Turrentine's solo is unusual for this sort of material. He is laid back to the point of being off handed, yet his phrases are low down and understatedly funky. This arrangement is structured in a building pattern. The piano lays out for Turrentine's first 16 bars, entering at the bridge. On the second and third choruses, the horns kick in at the bridge. Herbie takes a lovely chorus. His unique style of building tension, which he used so often with Miles during this period, is evident on the bridge here.

Stanley Turrentine's next album would be in a big band setting with Oliver Nelson arranging. Thereafter he would make a succession of successful Blue Note albums in a small big band setting with arrangements by Duke Pearson. But Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff would carefully intersperse some quartet and quintet blowing dates to balance the picture.

By 1970, the tenor saxophonist would break with Blue Note and with his wife/musical comrade Shirley Scott. His albums would thereafter become increasingly more pop-oriented in arrangements and material, but his playing has not wavered because it is truly his voice.

—Michael Cuscuna