Áine O'dwyer Music For Church Cleaners,

Stan Getz, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Stanley Turrentine, Dexter Gordon and Earl Klugh.

These nine ballads were recorded by Stanley Turrentine between 1962 and 1969. Apart from being a genuinely wonderful set of romantic tunes, Music for Lovers showcases a soft side of the great tenor's playing. Turrentine is one of the quintessential soul-jazz saxophonists. His Blue Note recordings from the 1960s with Shirley Scott are generally the works cited, but there is so much other material on offer that a small collection like this is welcome. A pair of ballads with Scott on organ are here, representing that darker groove aspect, but so are tunes with pianists like Sonny Clark, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Horace Parlan, and Cedar Walton…

The Music for Lovers series from EMI and Blue Note spotlights the balladic nature and romantic side of artists who have recorded for its associated labels. Joe Williams, of course, was a superb ballad singer whose rich voice and patient interpretations usually brought a maximum of feeling to the standards he sang. His Music for Lovers volume includes songs from three sessions for the EMI-owned Roulette - all but one from either 1959 or 1961 - and it features Williams in a comfortable setting with musicians who knew how to swing the Joe Williams way; two of the tops, trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison and tenor Ben Webster, join him on the highlights, "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "You Are Too Beautiful"…

Music for Lovers is a nice 12-track collection that covers several of Earl Klugh's laid-back, romantic tunes recorded for Blue Note Records, including "If You're Still in Love With Me," "Long Ago and Far Away," and "Livin' Inside Your Love." Though it isn't a comprehensive retrospective of his greatest hits, Music for Lovers is a decent introduction to the sentimental material the lite-jazz guitarist is known for.

The 14 cuts on Stan Getz's Music for Lovers - as part of Blue Note's eight-part series - were all recorded between 1948 and '54. With the exception of "Early Autumn," on which Getz is a member of Woody Herman & His Orchestra, and "Easy Living," as a member of Count Basie's band, these were all small group sessions, quartets. and quintets. There are a number of classics here, such as "Moonlight in Vermont," with the saxophonists' memorable solo and Johnny Smith's empathic guitar playing. Ditto that with Jimmy Raney playing on "These Foolish Things" (which also featured Duke Jordan on piano) and "Tenderly." Another high moment is "Imagination," where Getz interacts with pianist Horace Silver (who has his own volume in this series)…