Features the high-fidelity SHM-CD format (compatible with standard CD player) and the latest 24bit 192kHz remastering. One of Stanley Turrentine's few organ-based sessions for Blue Note – recorded in the company of his lovely wife Shirley Scott, who was really a cooker on the Hammond! The album's got a much stronger sound than most of Shirley's own from the time – played by a solid group that includes Kenny Burrell on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Otis Finch on drums. Tracks include "Trouble No 2", "Goin Home", "Ladyfingers" and "The Hustler".
This is a typically excellent recording from the husband-wife team of tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and organist Shirley Scott. With assistance from guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and drummer Otis Finch, Turrentine (who always had the skill of playing melodies fairly straight but with his own brand of soul) and Scott dig into "Love Letters," Lloyd Price's "Trouble," "Something Happens to Me," a couple of basic originals, and "Goin' Home." The Turrentine-Scott team never made an unworthy disc; all are easily recommended, including this one.
Joe Louis Walker deserves all the respect he gets, and he gets a lot - as a singer, a producer, a guitarist in multiple styles, a songwriter, and a harmonica player. But that doesn't prevent his first album for the Stony Plain label from being something of a mixed bag. One of Walker's great strengths is the authority with which he can play several different varieties of blues: his version of "It's a Shame" is a supremely confident, horn-driven Chicago blues exercise, while "Midnight Train" evokes the subtler chug of a John Lee Hooker song. "Lover's Holiday" (a lovely duet with Shemekia Copeland) is New Orleans-style R&B, and "Hustlin'" features some very fine barrelhouse piano by Bruce Katz. And that's just the first four tracks, in order…
As he was developing his formidable career in the early era of smooth jazz, the saxman proved an invaluable sideman of Chick Corea's Elektric Band, David Benoit's touring ensemble and a studio player for projects by such artists as Keiko Matsui and Mike Garson. Yet as a solo artist, he spent his first three albums searching for an identity that ranged from pop (Round Trip) to electronic mainstream jazz (Crossroads). With Oasis, his search came to a diverse, exciting, and highly enjoyable end. Marienthal applies his stellar blowing techniquest to styles ranging from folk to gospel, but the overall attitude he conveys is sweet and soulful R&B, as in the hoppin' grooves of the funky opening tracks "Hustlin'" and "Seafood to Go."
Soulful singer and guitarist Tab Benoit has never made secret his devout allegiance to the Louisiana music tradition. With The Sea Saint Sessions, Benoit, ably assisted by several Crescent City stalwarts, takes his music back to the source, setting up shop at the famed hit factory to cook up a sonic gumbo that successfully recaptures the spontaneity of the classic Sea Saint sound. Benoit's guests conjure up some of the studio's old musical magic as "Big Chief" Monk Boudreaux infuses Mardi Gras Indian spirit into "Monk's Blues," Meter man George Porter Jr. funkifies "Making the Bend," and Cyrille Neville sings on his own "Plareen Man". But it is Benoit's distinctive guitar lines–somehow both supple and hard-edged–and the impeccable elasticity of his regular rhythm section that makes the music work. Most of the material is Benoit's own, although he pays tribute to Louisiana legend Guitar Slim with a take on the classic "Sufferin' Mind" and dips into the Howlin' Wolf songbook for a rendition of "Howlin' for My Darling".
Most of the music on this four-CD set from 1997 has been reissued many times, both on LP and CD, but this is the most "complete" set thus far. Louis Armstrong recorded for RCA during two separate times. During 1932-1933, he led an erratic (and under-rehearsed) big band on a series of numbers, but all of the selections have their moments of interest. Although not up to the level of his Hot Five and Seven recordings of five years earlier, these spirited tracks find Armstrong mostly in excellent form both instrumentally and vocally, and the reissue has four alternate takes never released before.