Stanley Turrentine The Blue Note Quintet, Sextet Studio Sessions

Stanley Turrentine was fresh from his brilliant playing on Hammond B-3 maestro Jimmy Smith's Midnight Special and Back at the Chicken Shack sessions when he officially signed with Blue Note Records in 1960, but although the hard bop sax/organ template (which later came to be called soul-jazz) seemed to fit Turrentine like a glove, his first sessions for the label found him working with a more standard jazz format highlighted by a piano-led rhythm section. On Dearly Beloved, though, paired with his eventual wife, Shirley Scott, on the B-3 and the alert and sensitive drumming of Roy Brooks, Turrentine found the perfect pocket for his big, soulful, and slightly raw and bluesy sax tone, and for those only familiar with his later pop crossover recordings with CTI Records, it's a pretty revelatory set…

This collection provides a great value, especially if you total up the costs of each album separately. There are a few issues of which you should be aware. Sound quality is acceptable, but not spectacular. Audiophiles will hate these discs, but I assure you that they are listenable. More importantly, these are not cheesy 'needle drop' transfers from scratchy LPs. Plus these are from albums recorded in the late 1950s/early 1960s during an era when recording technology was rapidly improving. If you compare these to some of the albums to which I've linked below you will see that the ones in this collection do not have bonus tracks. In all cases you are getting tracks that were released on the original album. The six albums span four discs.

Comin' Your Way is an album by jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine recorded for the Blue Note label. With Tommy Turrentine (trumpet), Horace Parlan (piano) George Tucker (bass), and Al Harewood (drums). Recorded at Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Small group. 1995 reissue of a sumptuous '60s Soul Jazz date. Horace Parlan at his bluesy best.

Stanley Turrentine is generally pegged as a soul-jazz man but also has proven quite adept in several other styles of modern jazz, as heard on this diverse compilation of tunes from three initially unreleased Blue Note dates with a larger ensemble. While hitting up a handful of the pop tunes of the day, Turrentine shows he is interested in and capable of tackling more modern compositions, with the vibrant and exciting assistance of pianist McCoy Tyner, also not a slouch when soul-jazz is placed in front of him. That Turrentine plays a most enjoyable fluid, tuneful, and tonic tenor saxophone has never been questioned, but what he adds in value as a leader on these tracks further cements his estimable reputation…

Stanley Turrentine's great blues-inflected tenor sax work for Blue Note Records in the 1960s helped build the template for what became known as soul-jazz, but as Turrentine left Blue Note and began working with Creed Taylor's CTI Records in the early '70s, he became increasingly a crossover artist, earning his keep with a kind of smooth, orchestrated after-hours chillout music that was delivered with just enough groove to keep things breathing. What saved all of this from being jazz wallpaper was the steady, slightly raw tone of Turrentine's sax breaks, which seldom disappointed. When he left CTI for Fantasy, Turrentine began pumping up the rhythms into light funk fusion territory…

If ever there were a record that both fit perfectly and stood outside the CTI Records' stable sound, it is Sugar by Stanley Turrentine. Recorded in 1970, only three tracks appear on the original album (on the reissue there's a bonus live version of the title track, which nearly outshines the original and is 50 percent longer). Turrentine, a veteran of the soul-jazz scene since the '50s, was accompanied by a who's who of groove players, including guitarist George Benson, Lonnie Liston Smith on electric piano, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, bassist Ron Carter, organist Butch Cornell, and drummer Billy Kaye, among others.

Stanley Turrentine's great blues-inflected tenor sax work for Blue Note Records in the 1960s helped build the template for what became known as soul-jazz, but as Turrentine left Blue Note and began working with Creed Taylor's CTI Records in the early '70s, he became increasingly a crossover artist, earning his keep with a kind of smooth, orchestrated after-hours chillout music that was delivered with just enough groove to keep things breathing…