Germany’s jazz Halo gives a big thumbs up for the album!
Born in Perth, Western Australia and now based in the UK, saxophonist Brandon Allen has a special fondness for Stanley Turrentine's playing style and approach.
This is also reflected in the quote below about the current album: “This is very much a labor of love. My deep respect for Stanley Turrentine's music has guided me in putting together these arrangements and in my selection of what I believe is my strongest band to date. I believe that we've captured some of the 'spirit' of the music and I can't wait to share this album with the world." And what applies to Stanley Turrentine - "There's so many ways you can hit one note" - also applies to Allen, who comes very close to the flow of Turrentine without delivering a slavish copy of Turrentine. And another quote should be added at this point: "Like Ammons, I have always loved Stanley's way of phrasing and his unmistakable sound. Turrentine made his name performing with legends such as Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, George Benson and numerous others. His albums on the Blue Note and CTI labels in particular have become jazz classics. His soulful, expressive, and fluid style has always appealed to me. When putting this project together I deliberated over the choice of tunes for some time. Listening to as many albums as I could, discovering some gems along the way, I slowly began to pick out some selections that resonated with me and that would work well with this line-up. I then began to arrange these for the quartet. Some of the original versions were orchestral in nature and so I tried to capture the essence of that large ensemble feeling.” By the way, some listeners might describe the album as “mainstream”. For others, it's an album that harkens back to jazz's many roots. The current album also satisfies the fact that jazz is not a monolithic genre, but comes in a variety of forms.
Allen's quartet includes tenor saxophonist Allen, pianist and keyboardist Will Barry, bassist Conor Chaplin and drummer Dave Ingamells. No, we don't hear Allen's own compositions on the album. Instead, it opens with a Beatles song called "You Can Buy Me Love." With "The Fool On The Hill" the quartet recorded another Beatles song for the album. We also find on it "Love For Sale" (C. Porter), "Little Green Apples" (B. Russell) and a number of compositions by Stanley Turrentine, including "Mississippi City Strut" - the album's final track, "Let It Go" or "And Satisfy". By the way, if you're looking for a comparison with Stanley Turrentine's original playing style, listen to recordings like "Sugar" on YouTube. Everyone else just gets involved with Brandon Allen and prick up their ears.
"Can't Buy Me Love" is opened by the pianist of the quartet before Brandon Allen swings the musical scepter. But then it is again the pianist who puts his stamp on the piece with a style that is also characteristic of ragtime, phrasing and paraphrasing passages of the Beatles song. The tempo of the piece is brisk and may be ideal for jive dancing. In the opening piece, Brandon Allen emphasizes that a tenor saxophonist is able to play softly drawn, but also sonorous and, as it were, to combine the sounds like in a pearl game. Incidentally, anyone who remembers the hour of birth of rock'n'roll and early songs from this era in the 1950s will be able to discover sound affinities in Allen's playing. Incidentally, the arrangement with the interplay between the pianist and the saxophonist can also be found in "You're Gonna Hear From Me". "Love For Sale" is one of the jazz standards and dates back to 1930. The song comes from a musical. The song was written from the point of view of a hooker singing about the different ways of love. Initially a Cole Porter hit, "Love For Sale" fell victim to censorship and stopped being played by the radio stations. Lines like "Appetizing young love for sale/Love that's fresh and still unspoiled/Love that's only slightly soiled/Love for sale" could be heard. Brandon Allen presents a purely instrumental version on his album with him as the "leading voice" for the theme of the piece and the pianist with energetic accompaniment and fast-moving passages in the solo intermezzo. One is inclined to choose the term cascading. Allen picks up these cascades as soon as he is in focus again. Here and there he lets his saxophone voice be heard as a broken one. Yes, and then the bass player is also present as a soloist and not just as an accessory to a quartet. But he also foregoes the subject and instead indulges in string debauchery. The theme is heard at the end of the piece, however, when Allen chants it loudly on his woodwind. With "Little Green Apples" the presence of a Rhodes adds a very unique sound coloration. In addition, Allen lets his thoroughly sonorous voice ring out, only partially roughened and in no way exuberant. One gets the impression that this piece is also a piece of pop music. There is also a spicy pinch of soul to experience.
Let us now turn to Turrentine's compositions, which Allen selected and arranged for the album. First off, there's “And Satisfy”: a ragtime/boogie line is unmistakable on this track, especially in the sequences on the white and black keys that Will Barry taps. "Cascade Staircase" is appended to "Cascade Staircase". The saxophonist Allen lets his woodwinds “roar” over these piano passages. With less verve than Allen, bassist Conor Chaplin swings his woofer's strings for a long time as he introduces the song's theme. And in the course of the piece you see couples turning, the rollover and the quick sequence of steps that were common in Lindy Hop and later in Rock 'n' Roll. The sonorous, strongly fading saxophone passages in "Let It Go" stay in your head. In terms of style, the arrangement of this Turrentine composition hardly differs from "And Satisfy". But there is one difference: the saxophonist sometimes lets his instrument appear in a very blatant manner. However, since Allen's arrangements always leave room for his fellow musicians, this impression is not as overwhelming as with many other saxophonists, who in fact see themselves more as a solo entertainer in their performance. Finally, we would like to point out “Mississippi City Strut”: Not for the first time on the album, Will Barry grabs the keys of a Rhodes and breathes a bit of jazz rock into the piece, walking, one might think, on Joe Zawinul's paths. Overall, this instrumentation gives the piece a fresh cell treatment and also leaves Turrentine behind - and that's not the worst thing you can do.
Closing note: Wouldn't you like to know why the selection came down to the Beatles songs that we hear on the album? And that's not "Yesterday", not "When I'm 64" or "Norwegian Wood". Rights issues or a question of Turrentine-style arrangements for a quartet? Similarly, the question of choosing the Turrentine songs also arises, right?