Stanley Flute

Stanley Turrentine - A Bluish Bag (1967) {Blue Note 0946 3 85193 2 4 rel 2007}
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© 1967, 2007 Blue Note | 0946 3 85193 2 4 | 24bit mastering
Jazz / Hard Bop / Soul Jazz / Saxophone

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 Turrentine was always restless, and he recorded in a wide variety of formats, from trios to sextets, during his nine years at the label. This set, drawn from a pair of 1967 sessions, one in February that included Donald Byrd on trumpet, and the other in June with McCoy Tyner on piano, wasn't released by Blue Note at the time, although it is a smooth-running and varied album from start to finish, featuring several fine Turrentine sax solos over artfully arranged massed horn charts (eventually some of the tracks were released as Stanley Turrentine in 1975 and others as New Time Shuffle in 1979).

Stanley Turrentine's stint with Creed Taylor's CTI label may not have produced any out-and-out classics on the level of the very best LPs by Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, or George Benson, but the bluesy tenorist's output was consistently strong and worthwhile for all but the most stridently anti-fusion listeners. Salt Song was Turrentine's second album for CTI, and while it's perhaps just a small cut below his debut Sugar, it's another fine, eclectic outing that falls squarely into the signature CTI fusion sound: smooth but not slick, accessible but not simplistic. In general, keyboardist Eumir Deodato's arrangements have plenty of light funk and Brazilian underpinnings, the latter often courtesy of percussionist Airto Moreira.

One of the giants of soul-jazz, Stanley Turrentine and his mellow, agile, bluesy saxophone can be heard on many of the most seminal recordings of the genre, including Jimmy Smith's Back at The Chicken Shanck. But Turrentine also made a steady torrent of solo recordings over the years, most of which adhered to the soul-jazz template he'd helped perfect.

Stanley Turrentine - Always Something There (1968) {Blue Note Japan SHM-CD TYCJ-81085 rel 2014} (24-192 remaster)
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© 1968, 2014 Universal Japan / Blue Note | BN 75th The Masterworks | TYCJ-81085
Jazz / Hard Bop / Soul Jazz / Jazz Blues / Saxophone

Features the high-fidelity SHM-CD format (compatible with standard CD player) and the latest 24bit 192kHz remastering. This LP was the very obvious follow-up to the moderately commercially successful "The Look of Love." Both took their titles from their opening Burt Bacharach tunes; and both included other contemporary pop hits, including by the Beatles. This one added a second Paul McCartney Beatles song, with the last two tracks being "Hey Jude" and "Fool on the Hill." The arranger on both "The Look of Love" and "Always Something There" was the great Thad Jones, who contributed one excellent original blues-jazz composition for each - here, one called "Home Town," which outstrips everything else due to its creative jazz content.

Stanley Clarke's debut solo effort was issued when he was already a seasoned jazz veteran, and a member of Chick Corea's Return to Forever, which at the time of this recording also included Joe Farrell on soprano sax and flute, and the Brazilian team of vocalist Flora Purim and drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira. Produced by Corea, who plays Rhodes, clavinet, and acoustic piano on Children of Forever, the band included flutist Art Webb, then-new RtF drummer Lenny White, guitarist Pat Martino, and a vocal pairing in the inimitable Andy Bey and Dee Dee Bridgewater on three of the five cuts – Bey appears on four. Clarke plays both electric and acoustic bass on the set; and while it would be easy to simply look at this recording as an early fusion date, that would be a tragic mistake.

Stanley Cowell - Brilliant Circles (1969) {Black Lion BLCD760204 rel 1995}
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© 1969, 1995 Black Lion / DA Music | BLCD760204
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz / Piano

Pianist Stanley Cowell's second recording as a leader finds him leading a powerful all-star sextet that includes trumpeter Woody Shaw, Tyrone Washington on tenor, flute and clarinet, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Joe Chambers. The challenging repertoire (an original apiece by Cowell, Washington, Shaw and Hutcherson) falls between advanced hard bop and the avant-garde, consistently inspiring the talented players to play at their most creative. Recommended.

After giving Clarke's fans a taste of some live tapes of the School Days band on I Wanna Play for You, Epic waited until 1991 to put another batch of them out, well after it would have been commercially feasible to do so. But no matter, for this CD captures one of Clarke's best electric bands – maybe his best band, period – in a number of gigs in the U.S. and U.K., mixing up the jazz, funk, and rock into a high-energy, musically literate brew. A lot of this album recycles then-existing material, but the live conditions add flashes of spontaneity and sometimes considerable interest to jazz fans.