Stanley Turrentine With Milt Jackson – Cherry, 1978 CTI Records – LAX 3193 Japan Vinyl
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Speedball
I Remember You
The Revs
Side Two
Sister Sanctified
Cherry
Introspective
The Jazz Record.com Review
Cherry is one of those early CTI albums that offers the listener the best of both the past and the future of jazz music in the early 1970s. Stanley Turrentine’s husky tenor is a perfect match for Milt Jackson’s soulful vibes, and when Bob James’ masterful work on the Fender Rhodes is thrown into the mix we get a heady blend of soul-jazz, hard bop and the burgeoning funk-jazz sound all wrapped into one cohesive and very enjoyable record. With all the talent on hand, we could have gotten a battle for the spotlight, but instead the players mesh together perfectly as a group and shine as individual soloists.
The group’s take on the bluesy “Speedball” – a Lee Morgan original – is excellent and personifies this melding of styles and talent. Turrentine, Jackson and Billy Cobham all get in some fine solo time, and the whole group manages to take a classic hard bop track and give it a soul-jazz edge, while retaining the vitality of the original.
On the other end of the spectrum we get “Sister Sanctified,” a straight up funky soul-jazz masterpiece, with Cobham and James laying down the funkiest of melody lines, while Turrentine and Jackson have a blast doing their thing over the top. It also features a killer solo by the guitarist Cornell Dupree, who shows why he was a valued sideman to both jazz cats and R&B stalwarts. The tune is a Weldon Irvine composition, and while the original version on his Liberated Brother LP is a whirlwind of jazz-funk, he stops by on Cherry to act as the arranger and perfectly fuses the original’s funkiness with the soulfulness this group could provide. “Sister Sanctified” has been sampled countless times, but old school hip-hop fans will immediately recognize the melody line from Boogie Down Productions classic 1988 track “My Philosophy” (which is still one of the most righteous hip-hop tunes ever recorded, by the way).
ORIGIN : Japan
LABEL : CTI Records
CONDITION OF COVER & INSERT : EX+
CONDITION OF RECORD : EX+
RECORD GRADING DEFINITIONS
MINT: Never opened, still in original shrink wrap.
NM: Opened, appears unplayed.
EX: A few very light surface hair-line marks with no major deterioration to the sound quality.
VG: A few light scratches and/or scuffs creating audible background noise. There is no skipping or jumping on this record unless indicated in the condition description.
A plus or minus (+ or -) denotes slightly better or slightly less than a grade, eg. VG+.
Each record has been cleaned and played to ensure the accuracy of the following grading
