Stanley Turrentine - Pieces of Dreams

1995 CD reissue.

with Sonny Burke, John Miller, Gene Page, Ray Parker, Jr., Dean Parks, David T. Walker, Ron Brown, Ed Greene, Ed Moore, Gary Coleman, Joe Clayton, Myrna Matthews, Carolyn Willis, Edna Wright

Jazz musicians in general, and Stanley Turrentine in particular, were no strangers to orchestral settings when Pieces of Dreams was recorded in 1974; yet the album was a significant event in both the tenor saxophonist’s career and the jazz/pop idiom. Co-producer Gene Page’s arrangements place Turrentine’s horn on a cushion of guitars, keyboards, and supporting vocals in a program that draws upon a Wilson Pickett hit, a Brahms classic, Stevie Wonder, and, most notably, the title track by Michel Legrand and the Bergmans, which Turrentine (1934-2000) made into a standard.

A whole new audience opened up to Turrentine’s blend of urban grit from his native Pittsburgh and the more countrified blues inflections he picked up from early road work with Lowell Fulsom and Ray Charles, and Page’s lush orchestrations were widely copied. Three bonus alternate takes provide a more reflective view of the albums’s signature pieces.