LT-1075

Stanley Turrentine - Mr. Natural

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 4, 1964
Lee Morgan, trumpet #1-4; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Ray Barretto, congas #1-3.

1422 tk.1 Shirley
1423 tk.11 Wahoo (as Stanley's Blues)
1424 tk.14 Tacos
1425 tk.22 Can't Buy Me Love
1426 tk.23 My Girl Is Just Enough Woman For Me

Session Photos

McCoy Tyner

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Stanley's Blues	Duke Pearson	September 4 1964
Shirley	Stanley Turrentine	September 4 1964
Side Two
Tacos	Lee Morgan	September 4 1964
My Girl Is Just Enough Woman For Me	A. Hague-D. Fields	September 4 1964
Can't Buy Me Love	J. Lennon-P. McCartney	September 4 1964

Liner Notes

STANLEY TURRENTINE

"I play a little of this and a little of that, and some of this and some of that," Stanley Turrentine told Down Beat recently. "But hey," he added, "I'm playing something that's very tasteful, too. I can listen to each record I've made over the past 20 years and not feel ashamed...I might put my music in different settings, but I can't change me."

And with that straightforward analysis, Stanley William Turrentine says as much about his music as do any of his records: either the 60s Blue Note LPs, or the more recent releases on CTI, Prestige and Elektra. For as critic Bob Porter writes in notes to Turrentine's JUBILEE SHOUTS (Blue Note LWB 883), "Stanley Turrentine is the last of the bosses...in a tradition that extends as far back as the 1930's: the tenor sax man who, regardless of the quality of the accompaniment, could lift an audience and stand it on its ear with the sheer force of his playing."

Okay: but what happened one day in 1964, when Turrentine recorded these previously unreleased sides — with McCoy Tyner, and (for the first time on LP) Elvin Jones and Lee Morgan? He had to cave in, right? To an adventuresome session in modality? Nope. Well, at least to a blistering post-bop blowing session, right? Uh-uh. Amidst every challenge to his dominance (modestly, Stanley says, "I'm not that versed to be able to change my ways"). The Last of the Bosses prevailed. And the result is another definitive Stanley Turrentine record.

Consider the saxophonist's "Stanley's Blues." True, it is a bit modal; yet, it's still a blues, with the feel of, say, "Comin' Home, Baby," or "Work Song." And, Stanley's first solo chorus is a bit harmonically lean, considering the backup of Tyner and Jones, who helped John Coltrane cut A LOVE SUPREME three months later in the same studio; yet, by the second chorus, he moves into some r&b tinged plaints, with Barretto's congas a helpful ballast. And by the next tune — Stanley's dedication to his then-wife, organist Shirley Scott — he sounds even more himself, seemingly less fettered by more conventional changes.

All of this, apparently, was not lost on Tyner and Jones. Compare the pianist's solo on "Stanley's Blues," where his stentorian right hand bass lines and his stabbing left hand echo much of his work in the 70's, with his runs on "Shirley," "Tacos," 'My Girl," and especially "Can't Buy Me Love": all, more redolent of Red Garland's playing than anyone else's. (Of course, when this music was recorded, Tyner was in the middle of a nearly four-year association with Coltrane, and always looking toward other outlets for balance; as he subsequently told critic Len Lyons, "At times I even went out of my way to play differently from the way I played with John." (You can hear how much on eight other 1964 Blue Note dates, pairing McCoy and Elvin behind Wayne Shorter, Grant Green and Joe Henderson.) Plus, listen to the adjustments Jones makes in his playing throughout; particularly, on "Tacos," where he walks a fine line between straight time and pulse, and "Can't Buy," where he virtually abandons his personal style for some straight-ahead swinging.

In the middle of all this, however, Lee Morgan just plays like Lee Morgan. He was still working off some of his early brashness, but also displaying more of the tonal and structural discipline that made him so breathtaking a player by the late Sixties. In fact, you can hear both motifs in all his solos here: a balance of long, smooth lines and short, playful clusters deftly built to an incessant tension on "Stanley's Blues"; his broad and sassy Brownie influence tempered by an injection of introspection on "Shirley"; and, his slick yet swinging runs on "Tacos" and "Can't Buy Me Love."

Still, though, Stanley stars here — especially on "My Girl Is Just Enough Woman For Me" and "Can't Buy Me Love." On the first tune (initially recorded on Turrentine's first album for Time Records in 1960, and a year later on what was later issued as JUBILEE SHOUTS), his basic links to Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins come as clear as his own unique style, in a clean, strong and swinging solo. And, in the second (recorded again nineteen days later, with Scott, Cranshaw and Candy Finch at Newark's Front Room, and recently released on Scott's THE GREAT LIVE SESSIONS), a Lennon-McCartney riff is not only linked to a standard Blue Note head, but Turrentine also plays his most relaxed — yet lusty — solo on the date: sweetly, like "Sugar." "I play," says Stanley Turrentine, "and I appreciate the people who like what I play. What knocks me out is the fact that I can just get up on a bandstand and get a standing ovation from people from just playing what I play. No rehearsal to try and make 'em. It's something that I naturally do...Man, that's a warm feeling. You dig what I'm saying?"

We dig, Stanley. Some guys, you drop 'em off a building, and they land on their feet, blowing. Like you said: you're a natural — and you couldn't change if you wanted to.

—Michael Rozek

Notes for the 2012 CD Edition

This album is, in my opinion, one of Stanely Turrentine's greatest albums. Most likely, this and "1n Memory Of"' did not come out at the time because they were not as commercially appealing as some of Stanley's other albums for the label.  

But this is some amazing band: Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw, Elvin Jones and Ray Barretto. A veritable powerhouse and everyone is operating at top level.  

The first composition on this album had the working title "Stanley's Blues" but it was later discovered out that it was the Duke Pearson tune "Wahoo" which Pearson recorded under his own name two months later.  
 
- Michael Cuscuna