Wavy Gravy

Stanley Turrentine (tenor sax), Kenny Burrell (electric guitar), Major Holley (double bass), Bill English (drums) and Ray Barretto (congas). From the album Midnight Blue (1963).

Stanley Turrentine was an American jazz saxophonist with a characteristic thick, undulating tone and his ability to sustain rhythm with his soul and imagination. Known for his warm and sonorous sound, he began playing in blues and rhythm and blues bands, such as Lowell Fulson’s and Earl Bostic’s influenced by Illinois Jacquet. After doing his military service in the mid-50s he joined Max Roach’s group and then met organist Shirley Scott, whom he married in 1960 and recorded on numerous occasions. When they moved to Philadelphia they met the legendary organist Jimmy Smith and Turrentine started playing soul jazz.

He appeared in the Smith’s albums Back at the Chicken Shack and Midnight Special. In the early 1970s he divorced Scott and worked with Creed Taylor’s CTI Record playing jazz fusion. In 1970 he recorded his first album Sugar, which was a success, followed by four more albums. Although these commercial efforts were also artistically rewarding, critics didn’t like the music he made in the late 1970s for Fantasy Records. However, Turrentine continued to play soul jazz during the 1980s and 1990s. He died in New York in 2000 of a heart attack at 66 years of age.

Holley and English make a short introduction and then Burrell comes in to expose the theme. It’s a medium tempo blues and Turrentine joins to play it a second time. After a drumroll of Holley’s, they change the melody. The first one to play his solo is Turrentine with usual, although no less exciting, blues phrases, even though little by little he creates his own discourse. Burrell follows him with a melodic line that is also very bluesy, but original while Barreto plays his the congas underneath. Finally, the group re-exposes the theme and adds some more phrases to finish fading out.