This pair of hidden 1960's gems from Stanley Turrentine are hard to complain about: Mr Natural from 1964, but not released until 198o with those shoddy pseudo-hipster album covers; that paid no mind to the proud Blue Note/Reid Miles designs of the 50's and 60's.
In fact, those covers I always thought were an embarrassment. The pictured Mr. Natural cover was the Japanese reissue on CD, which does a better job at living up to the Blue Note legacy in my opinion.
Accompanying Stanley on the album are Lee Morgan on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, with Elvin Jones in the drum chair.
Another Story was released in 1969, and features Thad Jones on flugelhorn, Cedar Walton on Piano, Mickey Roker on drums, and Buster Williams on bass.
Both of these titles are also available via the Mosaic Records box set: The Stanley Turentine Quintet and Sextet Sessions. Both sessions are straight ahead hard bop dates, with plenty of swinging medium tempo blues, ballads, and up beat cookers.
The 1969 session Another Story is the best of the two in my opinion. I just love the Sugar Man's take on "Stella By Starlight": Wow! it's a great rendition.
The other highlight on Another Story is the the Oliver Nelson vehicle "Six and Four" a laid back modal piece. With a nice walking Buster Williams bass line.... and nice solos for Stanley's sax and Thad Jones' trumpet.
Mr. Natural is also a fine album: "Wahoo" is a fine classic hard bop medium tempo tune. Ray Barretto's conga simmering behind the drums of Elvin Jones do add color to the track. Stanley did have an original tone didn't he?
The track bubbles and bubbles until the pace picks up and over boils on the stove by the time Lee Morgan joins in. He takes his turn stirring the pot, I can help but feel Lee's having an off night here. It's not bad, but doesn't seem as hot as you might think. He does recover at the end of his run though.
I like the Mosaic 5 CD box set, it's one of the better Mosaic's out there for the money. I paid $90 I think when it was first released. No, that's right, I may have received a discount for it at the time, as a father's day gift to myself. I used to smoke cigars back then, and now a spend my cash more wisely on these Mosaic sets new or used.
You know, you could tell the economy was bad then, when I was seeing these Mosaic sets at the different used music stores at less than face value, good for my ears, and pocket book.
As I give the 1964 recording Mr.Natural another listen, I am starting to warm up to it even more, the Ray Barretto congas in the back ground do add a little bit of complexity for the soloists to interact with.
I still feel Morgan's trumpet playing on Mr. Natural is a little off by his lofty standards, but I must in the end state that both records are equal and worthy of your collection. All 5 discs on the Mosaic set's material are damned good. Besides these 2, also Jubilee Shout not released until 1986.
1 comment:
There are so many wonderful Stanley Turrentine gems sitting around and the Mosaic set was one of them. Probably one of the last Mosaics that I bought as they seemed to stop with the Blue Note sets pretty much afterwards which was a real pity.
These combined with both Jubilee Shout and Up at Mintons were absolute classics.
The Minton sets were picked up on Japanese LPs and later on CD and I think were some of my favourite live Blue Notes
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