Stanley Turrentine

Stanley Turrentine

Baker's Keyboard Lounge

Over the years Clarence Baker has demonstrated consistent, high-quality taste in that only talented, professional, serious contemporary jazz musicians have graced the stage at his fabled Baker's Keyboard Lounge. The performers generally, fall into two categories: those uncompromising artists, like Yusef Lateef , who simply play the best music that they know how to play; and those, like Les McCann or Stanley Turrentine, who obviously feel just as natural making music that, first and foremost, is focused on commercial success.

Turrentine tries to be commercially successful and, like Grover Washington, he does it by playing very well. You have to give him and his band (John Miller, piano and synthesizer; Gary DuBarry, bass; J.T. Lewis, guitar; Eric Saunders, drums) that much credit.

The Turrentine quintet gets over in three basic modes. There's the old-fashioned romantic ballad bag ("More," "I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do ") which is Miller's forte; there's the gut-bucket funky bag ("Black Lassy"), he old jazz/r&b fusion; and there's the new fusion, slick MFSB type dreamy jazz that has been Turrentine's main meal-ticket lately, with tunes like "Pieces of Dreams" and "Midnight" often on the turntables of" stations like Detroit's WJZZ.

Turrentine has no lack of work, his band is super-competent and fits him like a glove, and he'll probably be making his kind of music for a long time.