Stanley Turrentine

Stanley Turrentine
At King Pleasure

Stanley's smooth. During his three nights at King Pleasure he showed me that it's not what you play but how you play it. I mean, I could say that the music Stanley Turrentine's quartet made was middle-of-the-road jazz, but that's not what it is.

Stanley, true to his recorded musical style, kept things in a framework that wouldn't surprise or offend anyone. It's the least-common-denominator scam that renders most popular music and media so useless. But there's a critical difference here. Most M.O.R. stuff appeals to people by employing a familiar style and saying nothing in it. The Turrentine Quartet, however, took an M.O.R. format and just pleasantly nudged the audience into a new space. The themes (which always managed to seem vaguely familiar) lured the ear into the music and then the musicians began to speak of themselves.

Stanley 's saxophone was full of sound. I mean big, fat, blowing. Whether he was rippin' and runnin' through John Coltrane's Impressions or playing his own Salt Song as pretty as you please, you always knew that he meant it. Butch Cornell's organ playing was the quartet's musical foundation. His feet floating over the bass pedals and left hand virtually always laying down a kind of chordal rhythm he provided a solid musical base on which Stanley, Ed, Roland, and Butch's own right hand built beautiful music.

Ed Moore's drumming had a kind of laid-back exuberance. He would embellish his own stated, swinging rhythm with rim shots, dancing cymbals, and genuinely amusing drum flash. His playing had the other musicians literally grinning with delight, particularly Stanley who would occasionally turn around in the middle of a solo so he could watch and dance.

The guitarist, Roland Prince, was amazing. He played rhythm guitar so well that you didn't notice him until he stepped out. And since he shared most of the solo space with Stanley, he got many oppor-

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MICHIGAN BOOGIE

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tunities to display his pyrotechnics (chops). He has absorbed so many influences and styles into his own playing that during one five or ten minute solo he employed the various techniques of Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Sharrock, and even some Jimi Hendrix string-tapping effects. And what's more, he had them flowing in and out of one another so perfectly that in the end it was all his. So it wasn't the style that made the difference, not the form, but the the content. The MUSIC, that's what it is.

--Chris McCabe