Sugar came on about four minutes into the drive and I did not touch my phone again until I parked.
That is the review. I will keep going anyway.
Three tracks on the original LP. Ten minutes, ten minutes, fourteen minutes. That is the record. Most albums use that much space to show you six different ideas. Stanley Turrentine uses it to show you one idea and then stay in it.
The title track is the one everybody knows. George Benson and Ron Carter lock into a slow figure and just hold it. Turrentine comes in over the top with that tone. Big, round, a little rough at the edges. He is not in a hurry about anything. Freddie Hubbard answers him. Lonnie Liston Smith fills the middle on electric piano, and nobody rushes.
The details: recorded at Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, November 1970. CTI 6005, Creed Taylor producing. It was Turrentine's first date for CTI after a long run at Blue Note. Benson on guitar, Ron Carter on bass, Billy Kaye on drums, Hubbard on trumpet.
The keyboard chair shifts by track, which is worth knowing. Lonnie Liston Smith plays electric piano on the title track. Butch Cornell plays organ on the other two. Richard Landrum adds congas on those two as well, not on the title track. Different keyboard, different feel, same room.
Sunshine Alley is Cornell's tune and it is the one people skip. Do not skip it. It is a shuffle with the organ sitting under everything, and it is the most relaxed ten minutes on the record.
Then Impressions: Coltrane's tune, fourteen minutes, played by a soul jazz band. On paper that should not work, but it works. They take the modal thing and put a groove underneath it. Hubbard is excellent here. This is the track that reminds you these were serious players and not a bunch of guys knocking out a payday.
There is a fourth tune from the same session, Gibraltar, written by Hubbard. It sat in the vault and did not surface until the CD issue. Later CD releases also add a live Sugar from July 1971 with Hubert Laws and Billy Cobham, and both are good. The original three song sequence is still the way to hear it.
Here is what I will say about why this one works on a commute in particular. Short tracks make you aware of time. Every three minutes something ends and something else starts and you notice it. Long tracks do the opposite. Sugar starts, you are somewhere else, and then you are parked.
Then there is the tone. Turrentine's sound is thick. It fills up car speakers and cheap earbuds without needing volume. You do not have to turn it up to hear what he is doing, and that matters at seven in the morning.
CTI catches a lot of grief. The Creed Taylor production, the glossy covers, the crossover ambitions. Some of that criticism lands fine on other records. It does not land on this one. This is a blues band playing long and playing well, and the polish is not hiding anything.
Start with the title track. If you are not in by minute three you will not be in by minute ten. You will be in.