Listening to Prestige 589: Roy Haynes with Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: Scoochie

Booker Ervin had been in the studio for Prestige earlier in 1963, for a session with Larry Young, that was inexplicably shelved, not to see the light of day until many years later, in the CD reissue era, when it was coupled with an Ervin-Pony Poindexter recording which was made later in the year. He had appeared on one previous New Jazz recording, with Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron. He was to become a mainstay of Prestige over the next few years.

Roy Haynes was already a Prestige mainstay, appearing with musicians covering the spectrum

from Willis Jackson to Phil Woods to Eric Dolphy. He'd played soul jazz with Shirley Scott, harp jazz with Dorothy Ashby, blues with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and a little bit of everything with master of eclecticism Jaki Byard. 

He had led his own trio (Phineas Newborn, Paul Chambers) in 1958, for a particularly beautiful album, We Three, and followed it in 1969 with another trio album (Richard Wyands, Eddie de Haas), Just Us. He had put together a couple of earlier sessions as leader with Mercury/EmArcy, and one with a smaller independent label. He told Ira Gitler that wanted to do more work as leader, because he could "set more of a pace," or as Gitler put it, he could "[pick] the tunes, the order they should be programmed in, and the tempo they should follow. The last, of course, is closest to the drummer's domain. Before he can do any of these things, a leader has to make his most important decisions--choosing the men who will play with him. Haynes has chosen well in the past, and his current quartet again reflects his good taste."

For his first Prestige album, Haynes had chosen two of the finest--and most talked about--of the younger musicians on the scene. For his second, he chose musicians who would never have the honors or name recognition of Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers, but who were bold and sensitive, and delivered the music that Haynes was looking for. A 1962 session for Impulse! featured the rising star Roland Kirk.

Here, in Booker Ervin, he has another rising star, that would blaze forth through the rest of the 1960s on albums for Prestige and Blue Note, before Ervin's untimely death from kidney disease in 1970.

At 28, Ronnie Mathews was another young talent, and one who apparently appealed to the era's finest drummers--he had been discovered by Max Roach, and also worked extensively with Art Blakey. He had made his recording debut for Prestige in 1961 with Roland Alexander, and would lead a session of his own for the label later in 1963.

Larry Ridley was 26 when this record was made, and he had a fine career as a bassist ahead of, playing with Chet Baker, Kenny Burrell, Dexter Gordon and Stephane Grappelli among others, but perhaps an even more important contribution to the music was his work as an educator and administrator. He served as (and I'll just quote his Wikipedia entry here):

chairman of the Jazz Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and was the

organization's National Coordinator of the "Jazz Artists in Schools" Program for five years (1978–1982). Ridley is a recipient of the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation's "Living Legacy Jazz Award", a 1998 inductee the International Association for Jazz Education Hall of Fame (IAJE), an inductee of the Downbeat Magazine Jazz Education Hall of Fame, a recipient of the Benny Golson Jazz Award from Howard University, and was honored by a Juneteenth 2006 Proclamation Award from the New York City Council. Ridley is currently the Executive Director of the African American Jazz Caucus, Inc., an affiliate of IAJE. He is also the IAJE Northeast Regional Coordinator. He continues to actively teach as Professor of Jazz Bass at the Manhattan School of Music. Ridley is currently serving as Jazz Artist in Residence at the Harlem based New York Public Library/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He established an annual series there dedicated to presenting the compositions of jazz masters that are performed by Ridley and his Jazz Legacy Ensemble.

  Haynes also utilized the composing talents of the musicians he brought in. Ronnie Mathews composed "Dorian" and "Honeydew." Booker Ervin contributed "Scoochie," and Haynes finished the session with his own "Bad News Blues." Randy Weston is represented by his tribute to Melba Liston, "Sketch of Melba."  

They play one semi-standard, "Under Paris Skies," originally composed by Hubert Giraud for the French film Sous le Ciel de Paris, later recorded by Edith Piaf. With English lyrics, it became a favorite of vocalists and mostly of sweet-music dance bands, although it has had some jazz adherents, most prominently Duke Ellington. Art Van Damme and Quincy Jones both also recorded it. Haynes liked the tune, and featured it in his club performances, often with Frank Strozier soloing on flute. Haynes's virtuoso lead-ins are a strong feature of all the tracks on this album, but on this one he really goes to town, driving all thoughts of sweet strings out of your head. Larry Ridley joins him on bass before--over thirty seconds in--Ervin enters, playing the familiar melody, and sticking mostly close to the melody for a full three minutes, as Haynes continues to kick it hard. The real improvisation starts with Mathews, and continues with Ervin, until the head is briefly restated at the end, this time by Mathews, perhaps somewhat sardonically. 

"Bad News Blues" is a first rate example of what sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder used to call a "five-o-clock blues" -- it's the end of a session, we've played all the tunes we came in with, let's just play some blues. Prestige founder and president Bob Weinstock loved a good jam session, and a lot of good ones came out of this approach, with "Bad News Blues" being a prime example, Haynes setting the pace and everyone getting some room to blow.

Mathews's "Dorian" is in the Dorian mode, the minor-key modal structure made most famous by Miles Davis's "So What" and here turned into a moody, emotionally stirring piece, particularly in Mathews's own solo. All of this is taken at a quick tempo, not what you'd think of as the first choice for moody introspection, but it works. "Honeydew" is altogether different, with Ridley playing the blues right out of the gate, with Mathews and Ervin joining to create a full-bore, major scale excursion into rhythm and blues with Haynes providing a complex but driving alternative to the back beat.

"Scoochie" is Ervin's, and it is not only scoochie, it is downright scorchy. Ervin had introduced the tune a few years earlier in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, in a group led by Teddy Charles and also featuring Booker Little. If that rendition scooched the statues into life, this one would have scorched and singed them, with Haynes providing the beat, Ervin flying high, and Mathews turning in a piano solo that echoes and extends what Teddy Charles did in the Garden.

Haynes had entered a phase of his career where he wanted to work more as a leader, with his own groups, but he was only to make one more record for Prestige, and then one for Pacific Jazz, and nothing else in the 1960s, though the 1970s were a much more fruitful decade for him in the leader role, and he was to continue as a jazz stalwart, and a jazz legend, into his 90s.

Cracklin' was the title of the New Jazz album release,and the title credit was Roy Haynes with Booker Ervin. The two Mathews compositions, "Dorian" and "Honeydew," were a 45 RPM single. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 588: Willis Jackson

LISTEN TO ONE: After Hours

LISTEN TO ONE: Gator Tail

 Willis Jackson worked a series of recording sessions for Prestige in 1963 and 1964 with his working band at the time: Carl Wilson on organ, Frank Robinson on trumpet, Bill Jones on guitar, Joe Hadrick on drums. They weren't musicians who had recording careers outside of these sessions with Jackson, and I could find no biographical material on any of them, but they knew how to play Jackson's kind of music, or they wouldn't have stayed with him, because Jackson's was an ensemble that always found work. 

Jackson's best-known ensemble, the one he brought to Prestige in 1959, featured Jack McDuff as organist, and he was a tough act to follow, but Jackson didn't put his side men into a cookie cutter. Wilson is his own man on organ, and his own man is a wild man.

For the second of these Prestige sessions--and thereafter--Bill Jones was replaced by  a guitar player named Pat Azzara, who would go on to make a name for himself, only the name wasn't Azzara. He was to change it to Pat Martino.

The ensemble, with different bass players, would record five studio sessions and one live, a date that makes Miles Davis's contractual marathon look like the Minute Waltz. This was four sets at the club Allegro in New York City, and Prestige recorded them all, and released them all on four albums. And why not? This was a working band, that toured hard and played hard, and audiences loved them. They could play all night, and it could have been, and should have been, and was saved for posterity.

The LP from the March session was entitled Loose. It followed Jackson's template, and set the pattern for all the sessions to follow--some standards, some recent hits ("When My Dreamboat Comes Home" was both--an old song refurbished for the young crowd by Fats Domino), some riff-based rhythm and blues, or as we now called it, soul jazz. Jazz with a beat. "Secret Love" became a two-sided 45 RPM single, and "Y'All" was the flip side of "Arrivederci Roma" from an earlier session.

The two May sessions were parceled out to two LPs, Grease 'n' Gravy and The Good Life. The 45s were "Gra-a-avy" / "Brother Elijah" and "Troubled Times" / "As Long as He Needs Me." The October session became More Gravy, with the title tune and "Pool Shark" broken out on 45. January of 1964 became Boss Shoutin'. The teenaged Mr. Azzara, making his recording debut, is described in H. G. MacGill's liner notes as "a combination of early Kenny Burrell, Tiny Grimes, a little Jimmy Raney and the beginnings of a highly original style of his own."

Each of the Allegro sets went onto its own album--Jackson's Action! Recorded Live; Live!Action; Soul Night Live!; and Tell It.... "Jive Samba" from the first set, two-sided, was the only 45 RPM release. All of the live sessions, when re-released on CD, were credited to Willis Jackson with Pat Martino.

Ozzie Cadena produced all, including the live sessions.

Listening to Prestige 587: Rhoda Scott

LISTEN TO ONE: I-Yi-Yi-Yi

Newark's Key Club was a home base for Rhoda Scott, Joe Thomas and Bill Elliot, who were from Newark and had gotten their start there. Scott was destined to make her home, and her career, and her major reputation far from Newark, when she moved to France in 1969 and began a series of performances that would go on for decades and make her one of the most popular entertainers in Europe. But in 1963 she was still one of the most popular entertainers in Newark, and Newark was still a city with a jazz tradition, and her fans were packing the place, ready for that all-systems-go sound that Scott, Thomas and Elliot always delivered.

Scott and her trio were signed to Tru-Sound, Bob Weinstock's "modern rhythm and blues" label, and they delivered--raucous, jarring, uptempo, not necessarily what you'd think of a jazz and not necessarily what you'd think of as rhythm and blues, but Newark was never known for genteel manners, and this trio delivered a solid home town sound--all the more so for being live. Prestige rarely went into live recordings, but it's not hard to see why this one seemed like a good idea. 

The Tru-Sound album was called, of course, Live at the Key Club, and the single from it was "I-Yi-Yi-Yi," parts 1 and 2. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 586: Lucky Thompson

LISTEN TO ONE: Who?

 Lucky Thompson was associated with an earlier era of jazz (although he was only 39 at the time of this recording): he'd played with Lionel Hampton, Don Redman, Billy Eckstine, Lucky Millinder and Count Basie. His time with Eckstine coincided with that of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and like so many of that era and that influence, he moved into bebop. He had recorded once for Prestige, a 1954 session with Miles Davis.

Also like many of that era, who grew increasingly frustrated with the racism of American society and the avarice of the music industry, and moved to Paris in the mid-1950s. His debut with Prestige (he would record three albums altogether) came shortly after his return to the States.

His association with the jazz of earlier times (just a few years earlier was already being thought of as earlier times) may have been what prompted Prestige to suggest an album of Jerome Kern, and to release it on Moodsville.

There's nothing wrong with devoting an album to Jerome Kern, one of our greatest and most subtle composers. And nothing wrong with a Moodsville release, either--the subsidiary label was home to some great albums by major artists. But I'm not sure that this really a Moodsville album. Thompson was a true bebopper, and this album is in the tradition--fast tempi, bravura solos. Somewhat outside of the bebop mainstream was his choice of the soprano saxophone as a lead instrument -- perhaps the Paris influence of Sidney Bechet.

Anyway, Moodsville or no, it's great that Thompson is back in the States (he would leave again in a few years), playing with some wonderful musicians.These years of Moodsville and Swingville led to the recording of musicians who might not otherwise have been recorded in this era, by an important independent label with good distribution. Dave Bailey is the new face here, and this was to be his only Prestige session. Best known for his work with Gerry Mulligan, Bailey is another of those jazzers with an interesting day job. In 1969 he retired from music to become a flight instructor.

The album is called Lucky Thompson Plays Jerome Kern and No More because, in fact, there was one more -- a Thompson original entitled "No More." "Who?" and "Lovely to Look At" became a 45 RPM single on Prestige. Don Schlitten produced.

Listening to Prestige 585: Kenny Burrell - Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Call it Stormy Monday

 This session has a little something for everyone, with the soul jazz organ of Jack McDuff teamed up with the technical wizardry and stylistic range of Kenny Burrell, and the brilliant Latin percussion of Ray Barretto thrown into the mix for good measure.

Burrell certainly knew how to play with an organ combo, as his long association with Jimmy Smith attests to, and he jumps right in here, starting with the first number on the session, a McDuff composition called "Grease Monkey," which has the fire and energy of the finest rhythm and blues, with Burrell pushing McDuff's riffs, and McDuff creating the kind of riffs that can sustain three and a

half minutes of solid dancing or listening.

"The Breeze and I," by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, is probably more associated with lounge acts than jazz combos, but it's had its share of jazz interpreters too (both Curtis Fuller and Wes Montgomery recorded versions of it at around the same time), and why not? If you have Ray Barretto nailing the mambo beat and Joe Dukes laying down that archetypal soul jazz rhythm, you've got a great start, and then when Kenny Burrell does what he does, which is improvise stunningly while never losing sight of the melody, you come to appreciate what a good melody it it. Lecuona was one of Cuba's leading composers, and the melody which became known as "The Breeze and I" was originally a part of his well regarded Suite Andalucia.

Barretto and Dukes don't stop the carnival, as they tear into "Nica's Dream," Horace Silver's tribute to the jazz baroness and protector of Thelonious Monk. Between the two of them over these two selections, they threaten to turn this into a percussion session to rival Art Blakey at his most intense.

"Call it Stormy Monday" is one of the most recorded of blues songs, but it took a while to get there, and for Walker to start realizing any royalties on what would become his most famous composition. When Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd (then including Bill Harris, Richie Kamuca, Victor Feldman and Vince Guaraldi) released the first cover version in 1957, ten years after Walker first recorded it, there weren't many blues classics because nobody much was recording cover versions of great blues songs. When Herman recorded his Blues Groove album for Capitol, whoever wrote the blues for the back sleeve was had to find a way to sell the concept, and he came up with "Woody Herman and his Herd combine the beat of rock and roll with the dynamic sounds of swinging jazz." Jazz with a beat, as Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis described it in the title to their first album together, but not many people were looking to catalog of blues originals for material. Ralph J. Gleason, in the liner notes to Blues Groove, looked forward hopefully but uncertainty: "There may come a time when the blues will be regarded as the true folk art of America."

That was 1957. The blues had already, as Muddy Waters was to point out later, "had a baby and they named it rock and roll," but jazz fans still shunned that birth as illegitimate, and to true music aficionados like Gleason, the mainstreaming of the blues into American culture was still a wistful dream.

Bizarrely enough, the next performer to take it on, in 1960, was Pat Boone. Even more surprising, his version isn't bad, with Boone adding some crooner's touches, but respecting the blues, and a nice band behind him.

But then it was the 1960s, and Ralph Gleason's dream for the blues started to become a reality. And T-Bone Walker's dream of royalty checks for a great song, as it was recorded by Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bobby Bland, and Lou Rawls with Les McCann. Kenny Burrell liked the song so much he would record it again for Prestige the following year, with Shirley Scott.

And also in 1964, "Call it Stormy Monday" was recorded by Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, the first British blues band, and that brought it all back home, as the showed the Yanks what the true folk art of America was. 

Burrell and McDuff seize on this classic-to-be as a license to play the blues, and that's what they do. This is soul jazz, yes, but at its heart it's the blues, the whole blues, and nothing but the blues.

Most of this session went onto the LP Crash!, credited to Kenny Burrell with the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet. "Moody McDuff" went on to a 1966 McDuff album, Steppin' Out, which is interesting because it pulls together tracks from five different sessions utilizing three of jazz's greatest guitarists, all of whom worked with McDuff at different stages of his career: Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson. Apparently by the time the album was released, Burrell had already stepped out of his Prestige contract and into an exclusive contract with another label: he is credited as K. B. Groovington. "The Breeze and I" and "Nica's Dream" were released on 45 RPM. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 584: Etta Jones

LISTEN TO ONE: Some Enchanted Evening

 Another artist wrapping up her career with Prestige in early 1963 was Etta Jones, with two sessions in February added to three songs recorded the previous November to put the final touch on this phase of her career, but Prestige would stay with her. After bouncing around a few other labels, she would reconnect in 1975 with Joe Fields, who had been Prestige's sales manager, but had now started a jazz label of his own, Muse. And after two decades and 14 albums, when Fields left Muse to start a new label, HighNote, she went with him, and recorded nine more albums.

Jones never quite hit the heights of popularity of the big four -- Sarah, Ella, Billie and Dinah -- but she maintained a loyal fan base--and the respect of the jazz community--in a career that lasted six decades, and into a seventh, as she made her final recordings in 2000. Her approach blended elements of all four of them, particularly Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, but her voice was her own, and she never sounded derivative. 

The two sessions used talents of Larry Young, about to break loose as a new and distinctive voice in jazz organ when he signed with Blue Note in 1964, and Kenny Cox, new on the scene. Cox was a Detroiter, too young to have been part of the Detroit influx that made such a huge imprint on the jazz scene of New York, and from there the world, starting in the 1950s, but still very much a product of that scene. This was his first collaboration with Jones, but he was to stay with her until 1966 as pianist and musical director. He later made two albums for Blue Note, but his roots were always in Detroit, and by the 1980s he had returned home to male the rest of his career there.

Kenny Burrell also played on both sessions. The group was anchored by two solid rhythm sections--George Tucker and Jimmie Smith on February 4th, Peck Morrison and Oliver Jackson on the 12th. "Someday My Prince Will Come" and "Old Folks" are taken without the piano and organ.

Jones takes in a nice variety of tunes over the two days, with a nod to Miles Davis, who introduced

"Someday My Prince Will Come" to the jazz lexicon, and also did a definitive version of "Old Folks," and a salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein. This last is particularly noteworthy. Jones possesses that special jazz singer's ability to take a wide range of songs and make them her own, but "Some Enchanted Evening" seems like a real stretch. From South Pacific, the song was originally written for the operatic bass voice of Ezio Pinza, and it's hard to imagine a bluesy jazz arrangement of it, with an improvisation off the melody...until you've heard Jones do it.

"Some Enchanted Evening" did not make a 45 RPM release. The two singles each featured one of the  Miles borrows. "Someday My Prince Will Come" was matched with "A Gal From Joe's," from her November 28, 1962, session; "Old Folks" had "Love Walked In" on the flip.

The album was titled Love Shout. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 583: Frank Wess

LISTEN TO ONE: The Long Road

 This album wraps up Frank Wess's run with Prestige--in fact, it was his last recording session as a leader for the rest of the 1960s, although he continued to work steadily, with Count Basie, whom he had joined in the early 1950s and would stay with until 1964, and then with Clark Terry's big band. He brings two Basie bandmates with him, Thad Jones and Buddy Catlett, and they play a brand of jazz that was not the fashionable soul jazz or the disturbing free jazz of the time, but represented a mainstream of jazz that has never failed to find adherents and listeners, drawing on the Kansas City swing of Basie and Lester Young

and Coleman Hawkins, but even more on the modern sounds that were being explored by Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. So while these Basie stalwarts bring a lot of Basie with them, they aren't just playing small group interpretations of Basie arrangements. There's a little of that in their music, but more of it is the classic jazz dynamic, head-solo-solo, that people come out to clubs to hear, to sit in close proximity to the musicians and get an intimate glimpse into their voices and personalities, to be present at the creation of improvisational ideas and the immediacy of musicians inspiring each other, as a master jazz player takes an idea, explores it, and hands it off to the next player to continue the exploration.

You get all of that throughout this session, but to particularly good advantage on "The Long Road," one of three Wess compositions (the other two are "Yo-Ho" and "Cold Miner"), where all five musicians have their chances to shine. Wess plays tenor on "The Long Road," flute on much of the rest of the album. Jones contributes one tune, "The Lizard."

The album was somewhat clunkily titled Yo-Ho! Frank Wess, Poor You, Little Me. A 45 RPM single release featured "Little Me," by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, the title song from the popular Broadway musical of the time, with Wess's "Cold Miner" on the flip. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 582: Shirley Scott - Stanley Turrentine

LISTEN TO ONE: I Feel All Right

 Shirley Scott returns with a new soul collaborator and a new soulmate—her new husband, Stanley Turrentine. Turrentine was signed to Blue Note, but the two labels were friendly rivals—Blue Note’s Alfred Lion had given Bob Weinstock the push that moved him to start Prestige and get into the jazz recording business. So the two labels worked out a deal whereby the happy couple would record for both of them—Shirley as nominal leader for the Prestige sessions, Stanley for Blue Note. Both labels, of course, utilizing the genius of Rudy Van Gelder in the recording studio. Both continued to have separate careers, as well.

Married in 1960, they began collaborating in 1961, at a point where they had worked out their marital contracts, but not, apparently, their recording contracts to everyone's complete satisfaction. On their first session together, for Blue Note in June, she is listed as Little Miss Cott, with a knowing wink in the liner notes (Stanley and Little Miss Cott "really have something going. It is akin to a musical love affair") and even more knowing wink with the album's title and its title cut (Dearly Beloved). By November, when they made their first recording for Prestige, he was still listed in the session log with a pseudonym (Stan Turner) but by the time the album was released in 1962, an arrangement had been struck, and Turrentine is credited under his real name, with acknowledgment that he appears courtesy of Blue Note Records.

This session was recorded on January 10. Just over a week later, on January 18, the two of them were back in Englewood Cliffs to record for Blue Note (a short session, with two of the four tracks rejected), and in February they were back again for Blue Note.

Major Holley, who had been aboard for an early January Turrentine session with Kenny Burrell, for

Blue Note, played on the Prestige session, sat out the January 18 Blue Note session, and was back again for the February session. Scott liked to work with a bass player, which was not the case with all jazz organists--many of them preferred to take care of the bass line themselves. In fact, during this period, when the organ was becoming really popular as a jazz instrument, many bandleaders preferred to hire an organist as their keyboard player. With the bass part taken care of, it meant one less musician's salary to deal with. Holley was a recent addition to the Prestige stable, having recorded four albums with Coleman Hawkins.

The drummer on this and one more Scott-Turrentine session, but not on the Blue Note sessions, was Grassella Oliphant, a newcomer to Prestige and a new name to me--in fact, I thought at first that Scott had hired a woman drummer, but the first name was misleading. He was generally known by friends and associates as Grass, and that played nicely into the two albums he made for Atlantic as a leader, The Grass Roots and The Grass is Greener. Oliphant was a veteran by the time he hooked up with Scott and Turrentine. He had worked with Ahmad Jamal in 1952, and later with Sarah Vaughan. Vaughan praised him for his nice and easy touch with the brushes, and one imagines he probably was valued by Jamal for much the same reasons. One would not immediately seize on someone with those credentials as a soul jazz drummer, but Oliphant's contributions on this album, particularly his work on the ride cymbal, are exactly what's needed.

Oliphant worked through the 1960s and then basically retired from the jazz world to raise a family. The retirement stretched to nearly 40 years, but he picked up his career again in the new millennium, and was active until his death in 2017.

The most important name in this quartet, of course, is Stanley Turrentine. The Scott- Turrentine marriage lasted ten years, so it must have had some harmony to it, but their musical partnership was definitely harmonious. Scott was one of the pioneers of the soul jazz organ, and, with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, one of the pioneers of the organ-tenor sax combo, and as soul jazz became a more and more dominant sound in the early and middle 1960s, her partnership with Turrentine kept her right in the thick of it.

Stanley Turrentine began his career with Earl Bostic, and Bostic's bluesy lyricism was definitely an influence, but he was definitely a man of his time, with a full tenor sound and a soulful bent. All that can really be heard on "Secret Love," the movie ballad by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, popularized by Doris Day, a tune that Bostic might have recorded but didn't. Turrentine leads off with the head, full-toned and lyrical in the Bostic style, albeit a little more uptempo and with some kicking work by Oliphant. He then goes into an improvisation which keeps much of the same feeling, with some punctuation by Scott. When Scott enters, she brings what only Scott can.

I've always heard a different approach to the organ in Shirley Scott's work. The soul jazz organists, and the were an incredibly talented bunch, mostly played the organ as a keyboard instrument with special properties--which of course it was. But Scott seemed to me, more than the others, to be intrigued with finding out all the different things an organ could do. It made for an exciting blend with Davis's raunch, and it makes for an exciting blend with Turrentine's lyricism.

Much of this album is taken up with an unusual and interesting blend of standards, given the soul jazz treatment. You might not expect "Secret Love" to be all that soulful, but others have done it successfully, including a doo-wop version by the Moonglows, and Scott and Turrentine breathe soul into it. Going back a little further, they pluck a tune by Sy Oliver that was first recorded in 1941. Oliver had just been pirated from Jimmie Lunceford's orchestra by Tommy Dorsey, looking to add some serious swing to his ensemble, and in the 1941 version by Dorsey, with Oliver and Jo Stafford handling the vocals, you can hear the beginnings of soul, that would be developed in the 1950s by Della Reese, the Pilgrim Travelers, Ray Charles (especially!), Pat Boone, Kate Smith...what? OK, maybe not everyone who recorded it gave it soul. But Scott and Turrentine certainly do.

They go back to 1925 for an Irving Berlin favorite, "Remember," which was actually recorded by Earl Bostic in 1955, when Turrentine was in the band (he had replaced John Coltrane). Bostic's version gives him a chance to show his raunchy rhythm and blues side, and Turrentine and Scott take it from there.

They pay homage Wild Bill Davis, the pioneer of soul jazz organ and an early influence on Scott. 

But they reach their soul summit on this album with two Turrentine originals, "The Soul is Willing" and "I Feel All Right." I wonder if they had originally been planning to make 45 RPM single releases out of the two recent chart hits, "Secret Love" and "Yes Indeed." Maybe they did, and maybe "The Soul is Willing" and "I Feel All Right" were just so damn soulful that nothing else would do. Anyway those were the two 45s, and each of them two-sided, Parts 1 and 2, so nothing needed to be edited down.

The Soul is Willing was the name of the album. Ozzie Cadena produced.

originators of the Philadelp