Kennedy Center Tribute to Stanley Turrentine 6/10/01

by Alan Greenblatt

A decade ago, every show in jazz was a tribute. Musicians had learned that it made for smart marketing. You called your concert a tribute to Clifford Jordan and you could sell out a hall that Jordan himself had barely half filled.

Yesterday's tribute at the Kennedy Center to Stanley Turrentine, though, was the real thing. Turrentine died last September and about 20 musicians took the stage to pay him homage, playing tunes associated with Turrentine or simply playing in his bluesy, soul jazz style.

The show worked well because it was mainly about music, with only a few testimonials about what "a great honor it was to know a great man who was a great artist" coming at the end. A quartet of musicians led by guitarist Dave Stryker -- Turrentine's last working band -- served as the rhythm section to various players such as tenor sax man Don Braden and vibes player Stefon Harris. This was the funkier portion of the concert.

Then sax player Frank Foster made some remarks. He sat in a wheelchair, the victim of a stroke. "Did you know that stroke is the third leading cause of death in America?" Foster asked. "Hmm. If I had known that, I would have had a heart attack instead." The concert was partially a benefit for the American Heart Association.

A new rhythm section then took the stage, led by Kennedy Center regular Billy Taylor. Taylor played in his usual elegant, polished way and his set was actually far superior to that driven by Turrentine's band. For one thing, Taylor's regular bass player, Chip Jackson, drew the biggest crowd reaction of the afternoon with his big, quavering and resonant version of "Summertime."

Other highlights: guitar player Russell Malone played an unaccompanied, finger-tap style version of Jerome Kern's "Yesterday" that was just a lovely ballad, then with the Taylor trio played the thing as if it were a blues. Similarly, Braden's beautiful, clean, almost vibrato-free sound was well suited to the ballad "A Child Is Born," but he also went funkier, completely at home with honking sax idioms.

Jimmy Owens wore a canary yellow blazer, a big yellow and turquosise scarf and a funny fishnety ball cap as he blew "My Romance," full of growls and a big wet trumpet sound. Frank Wess was a model of restraint in his solos on both tenor sax and flute. Vibraphonist Stefon Harris took a relatively minimalist approach to his instrument, not drowning an uptempo blues in notes like many another vibes player, instead emphatically pinning down each one.

Once upon a time, when I took a college course in jazz history (a rigorous subject, I'm sure), the instructor said that some students complained when he didn't cover particular favorites, mentioning Stanley Turrentine as an example. Turrentine was a fine player, he said, but the history of the music wouldn't have been any different if he hadn't lived.

That's probably true, and the stage yesterday was bereft of famous innovators. But playing tried and true blues and ballads, they were able to come together and play awfully well for more than two hours. Not bad.