Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
Showing posts with label Stanley Turrentine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley Turrentine. Show all posts
By this time Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine are as blissfully united musically as we hope they are in their marriage life, though their marriage was destined not to last beyond 1971. But hey, you never know with marriages, and the music they recorded together remains an enduring testament to the best days of their relationship.
But just because they're perfectly attuned to each other, that doesn't mean they're slipping into too-familiar grooves. They're playing soul jazz to appeal to anyone with a pulse, but the way they play off each other gives each of them the opportunity for creativity and new discoveries. Scott, in particular, is always going to find new ways of approaching, and taking off from, a solid swinging musical idea.
Bob Cranshaw makes his Prestige debut here. He's best known for his five-decade association with Sonny Rollins, beginning in 1959, but he was always in demand for other sessions, including a number for Prestige throughout the decade with a variety of artists. One of his first recording gigs had been with Scott on a 1959 album for Impulse!, and although this is only Prestige session with her, he played with her on other albums for Impulse! and Atlantic.
"Flamingo" was first recorded by Duke Ellington in 1941, and taken to the top of the rhythm and blues charts in 1951. It became a crowd pleaser for club dates, and in fact was part of the Willis Jackson night that Prestige recorded live. "A Night at the Five Spot," a tribute to the great New York jazz club, was written by Benny Golson and recorded by Curtis Fuller and Art Farmer separately, and then by Golson, Farmer and Fuller together as the Jazztet in 1961. Scott and Turrentine made the next recording of it three years later, and after that it entered into the jazz standard repertoire. Bob Cranshaw may have brought along Sonny Rollins's "Grand Street."
The other tunes are by Scott, and they do an excellent job of showcasing the great organist and her talented husband. I particularly liked "The Funky Fox" -- perhaps a self-reference?
The album was released by Prestige as Blue Flames. Ozzie Cadena produced.
Stanley Turrentine's fourth recording session with wife Shirley Scott found the tenor saxophonist at his soul shaking peak, perhaps best realized on his own composition, "Soul Shoutin'," which made enough of an impact that it was included on a Prestige 60th anniversary double album.
Scott and Turrentine went out for this session with a stripped-down quartet, just bass and drums. Not every jazz organ album includes a bassist--frequently the Hammond B-3 takes over the responsibility of the bass line, and in those days part of the organ's growing popularity stemmed from the fact that if a bandleader hired an organist instead of a pianist, he wouldn't have to also pay a bass player. But including a bass here meant that Scott didn't have to shoulder that responsibility, so she and Turrentine could handle all the front line stuff.
And they do. Scott is amazing, as she always is, but this is Turrentine's session primarily. Of the five tunes, two are Turrentine's, and those are the two that became the 45 RPM single of the album. "Soul Shoutin'" is the title cut, and on it Turrentine lets go, and shows just how rich and subtle soul jazz can be in the hands of a musician who is a jazzman first and a soul man second. The soul is not neglected--this is still jazz with a beat, and you can dance to it, but Turrentine gives so much more.
"Soul Shoutin'" is the uptempo side of the single. Turrentine's "Deep Down Soul," on the reverse, is a beautiful blues ballad. If Turrentine's solo on "Soul Shoutin'" puts Scott to some degree in the shade (nothing could completely do that), she comes back strong on "Deep Down Soul," with all her usual hallmarks -- experimental sound shadings, inventive improvisation, melody, and, yes, soul.
The other selections for the session are a varied grouping, and all of them interesting, if not with the immediate impact of the Turrentine compositions. "Gravy Waltz" was written by Ray Brown and Steve Allen, and became an instant jazz standard, in part due to Allen playing it on his TV show, although he contributed the lyrics, which are rarely sung. Seventeen different versions of it were recorded in 1963 alone.
"Serenata" is by Leroy Anderson, a composer of light orchestral pieces such as "Sleigh Ride" and "The Syncopated Clock," many of them written expressly for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. "Serenata" was one such, and it was premiered on record by the orchestra in 1949. His work would seem to lend itself more to the Boston Pops than to a jazz combo. But jazz musicians have an ear for the good tunes, and "Serenata" had been recorded by George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Art Farmer and Benny Golson, and Jonah Jones, before Scott and Turrentine picked it up. Its orchestral lilt makes it an odd choice for a soul jazz recording, but Turrentine gives it that soul drive. Scott, in her extended solo, explores some textures that the Boston Pops never thought of.
Cole Porter is more of a mainstream choice for jazz musicians, amd Scott and Turrentine take "In the Still of the Night" for a good romp.
Earl May, for many year's Billy Taylor's bass player, had worked with Shirley Scott before, and Grasella Oliphant had first joined them for their January date.
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.
No sooner do I get done praising the uniqueness of Steve Lacy's commitment to the music of Thelonious Monk, devoting one full album and the greater part of another to Monk's compositions, when what should come along but an album by Shirley Scott devoted to the music of a different jazz composer?
And while Horace Silver, as a composer, may not have had the depth of a Monk or an Ellington, he certainly knew how to write some catchy tunes, and an album devoted to them, especially as played by Scott, is going to be great for listening, for finger snapping, for toe tapping.
And one wonders if there was a marketing consideration here. Both Prestige and Blue Note were going after the new and burgeoning soul jazz market, with Blue Note having the inside track, largely because of Horace Silver. Prestige wasn't going to get Silver, but they could get his name on an album cover.
One way or another, there can't be anything wrong with hearing tunes like "Doodlin'," "Senor Blues" and "The Preacher" played by someone as inventive as Scott, combining a popular touch with a gift for musical exploration.
Scott was joined on this day by Otis "Candy" Finch, a drummer who worked with Scott, with her husband Stanley Turrentine, with Herbie Hancock and Dizzy Gillespie and others, before leaving New York for Seattle, where would teach and play music away from the limelight.
Bassist Henry Grimes, in his only appearance on Prestige. Grimes was shortly to launch into a career as one of the favored bassists of the avant garde, working with Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor and Pharaoh Saunders. But in 1961, he had already established himself a significant, figure, first in rhythm and blues (playing with Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson, Arnett Cobb, “Bullmoose” Jackson, Little Willie John and others), and then with a variety of mainstream jazz artists. His reputation as one of the most versatile bassists around was cemented in one weekend--the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, the one captured in the documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day. He appeared with Benny Goodman, Lee Konitz, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, and Tony Scott.
Grimes would go on to bring a whole new level of creativity to the bass throughout the 1970s, and then suddenly disappear from the scene, so completely that he was presumed to be dead. Free jazz didn't necessarily translate into a living, even for someone as respected as Grimes, and after his bass was damaged on a West Coast trip (strapped to the roof his friend's car, it was baked by the sun through three days of driving through the desert), he had to sell the instrument.
He described what happened next in an interview with Jon Liebman of the For Bass Players Only website:
HG: I worked as a janitor and maintenance man and day laborer. I also spent many hours in the library, studying literature and writing poetry, short stories and metaphysical ideas. I have around ninety notebooks at home with my writings from those times. I still continue to write today.
He lived like this for 35 years, until a social worker and jazz enthusiast named Marshall Marotte tracked him down. A younger jazz bassist, William Parker (also a free jazz player and also a poet) donated a bass to him, and he was able to resume his career.
FBPO: Did you ever really give up on music, or did you believe, deep down, that one day you would be back?
HG: I never gave up on music, not for a minute. You could say I was absent for a long time, but I always believed I would be back one day. I just couldn’t see the way to get there, but I knew it would happen.
In the same interview, Grimes gave the best, perhaps the only reasonable answer to the question, "What would you be doing if you weren't a bass player?
This question doesn’t have any meaning to me. I am a bass player and violin player and poet. If I weren’t those things, I wouldn’t be Henry Grimes. I wouldn’t be… at all.
Grimes married, continued to create and teach and write, and lived a fulfilled life until finally felled in April of this year by the Covid virus.
Scott's second session of the day marked the start of a new association, both musical and personal. She had certainly been one of the most important figures in establishing the soul jazz organ/saxophone sound through her work with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis; now she was to continue to mine that vein with a new saxophonist, Stanley Turrentine, who was also her new husband. Turrentine was signed to Blue Note, so as the two continued to record together throughout the 1960s, they would be billed under her name for Prestige albums, under his for Blue Note sessions. I'll have more to say about him, and their partnership, in chronicling subsequent sessions.
Esmond Edwards produced. The trio album was called Shirley Scott Plays Horace Silver, the quartet album with Turrentine Hip Twist. Both were released on Prestige. There were 45 RPM singles released from both sessions: "Sister Sadie, parts 1 and 2," and "Hip Twist, parts 1 and 2."
This is a new turn in the career of Shirley Scott, as her organ-tenor sax partnership shifts from Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis to Stanley Turrentine, and this one is a partnership that extended beyond the recording studio: Scott and Turrentine were married in 1960, and their marriage lasted until 1971, dissolving right around the time that Bob Weinstock dissolved his connection with Prestige, and the label wrote the last chapter in its history as a presenter of new jazz recordings.
What's the difference between the two combos? I hear more warmth in the Scott-Turrentine pairing, but perhaps that's just the romantic in me. Or maybe it's the romantic in Turrentine, stemming from his apprenticeship with Earl Bostic, with whom he served an apprenticeship (replacing John, Coltrane as the tenor sax chair in Bostic's band) in 1953.
Turrentine entered the upper echelons of jazz society in 1959, when he and his older brother Tommy joined Max Roach. Their first session with Roach, for EmArcy, was one of those oddities that could have come into being in those years when stereo was still an oddity. It was a gimmick album called Rich vs. Roach, the gimmick being that each drummer brought his quintet with him, and each quintet occupied a separate stereo channel. This is not a gimmick you'd want to see repeated a whole lot. Ornette Coleman did it on his album Free Jazz, with two quartets split over two stereo channels. but Coleman was a complex genius, and Free Jazz was an important musical experiment, not a gimmick. Still, it's fun in a weird sort of way to have this one.
Turrentine went on to record several more albums with Roach over a very short period of time. A session with Dizzy Reece brought him to Blue Note in April of 1960. He then did two Blue Note albums with Jimmy Smith, and in June, he recorded his first Blue Note album as leader. That same year, he married Shirley Scott. Like Romeo and Juliet, Scott and Turrentine came from two households. both alike in dignity, but unlike milords Montague and Capulet, Alfred Lion and Bob Weinstock did not with civil blood make their civil hands unclean. The course of true love was allowed to run smooth for the better part of a decade, and Scott and Turrentine were able to make a number of albums together--under her name as leader for Prestige, under his for Blue Note. This session, however, came before the contractual swap was ironed out, and the new Mr. Shirley Scott is billed as Stan Turner.
Scott had a new rhythm section to go with her new husband and musical partner. Bassist Herbie Lewis was a West Coaster who had broken in with Les McCann in 160, then come east to join Chico Hamilton. He was to stay in New York for a decade, then return to California, where he became director of the music program at the New College of California, in San Francisco. Roy Brooks was yet another musician to bubble out of the jazz cauldron of Detroit, playing with Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris, and Sonny Red, with whom he had his first recording session.
Stanley Turrentine provides two of the tunes for Stan Turner and Scott to play. "Hip Soul" is the more jukebox-oriented of the two, with a solid, danceable riff, and it's the one that made the jukeboxes as a two-sided 45 RPM single. "Stanley's Time" gives them more room for improvisation, but it's catchy as well.
Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer's "Out of this World" and "By Myself," by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, are the two standards, and one would think these would give them plenty of room to explore their romantic side, but not so, especially "By Myself." This is the weeper best known for Judy Garland's
rendition, which pulls out every stop of heartbreak. Here Turrentine and the rhythm section start it off a tempo a little to brisk for tormented introspection, and then Scott comes in and takes it to the wild places that only she knows. And she's not by herself, as Turrentine catches up with her. and they chase each other through the vast unknown, with Lewis and Brooks as their beaters.
Benny Golson and John Coltrane are the jazz composers called upon for the session. Golson's tune is "411 West," and if it' been recorded elsewhere, even by Golson, I can't find it. A shame. It's up to Golson's high standards as a composer, melodic enough to be instantly accessible, complex enough to bring out the best in two gifted improvisers. "Trane's Blues" is instantly recognizable in versions by Trane and by the Miles Davis Quintet with Trane. It's a good choice to take on, and they prove themselves worthy of it.
Esmond Edwards produced. Hip Soul is the title of the album, as well as the single.
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