Can't Buy Me Love

After the June 3, 1964 In Memory Of session, three full months passed before Stanley Turrentine returned to the studio again.  

Three months was an eternity in 1964.  On June 21, three civil rights workers were abducted and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by local members of the Ku Klux Klan with local law enforcement officials involved in the conspiracy. Their bodies were not found until August 4. The Senate had to overcome a filibuster by Southern segregations to pass the Civil Rights Act, but on July 2, President Johnson signed it into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States.  

The first of the Long Hot Summers occurred in 1964, including six days of race riots in Harlem, prompted by the shooting of a teenager. Several days of Philadelphia riots in late August led to 341 injuries and 774 arrests. 

On June 27, 1964, Eric Dolphy traveled to Berlin to play with a trio led by Karl Berger. He was apparently seriously ill when he arrived, and during the first concert was barely able to play. He was hospitalized that night, but his condition worsened. On June 29, Dolphy died after falling into a diabetic coma. While certain details of his death are still disputed, it is largely accepted that he fell into a coma caused by undiagnosed diabetes. His album Out To Lunch was released posthumously that August.  

In June 1964, the John Coltrane Quartet (Trane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones) released the album Crescent.  Trumpeter Lee Morgan released the album Search For the New Land in July.

But musically, 1964 was all about The Beatles.  In April, they held the top 5 positions in the Billboard Top 40, an unprecedented achievement. The top 5 songs in America that month were: Can't Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me.. 

It is against this background that Turrentine returned to Van Gelder Studio on September 4, 1964.  He was accompanied by McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones of the John Coltrane Quartet and trumpeter Lee Morgan.  Bob Cranshaw was on bass and percussionist Ray Barretto added occasional congas.  They recorded five tracks, including one Turrentine composition, one Lee Morgan number, and a cover of The Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love.

I can't stand the first 1:10 minutes of their version of Can't Buy Me Love.  It's such an incredible waste of the extreme talent in that lineup.  It sounds like a supermarket Muzak cover of the tune, or some insipid mass-market-friendly version produced for television. But then, surprisingly, they throw away the melody and launch into some inspired hard-bop/post-bop jamming worthy of the performers, before returning to that wretched opening theme. It's a worthwhile listen if you can ignore the bookends on either end of the track.

Turrentine's composition, Shirley, obviously named for his wife, the organist Shirley Scott (she included the song on her 1964 album Everybody Loves A Lover), is more like it.  Ray Barretto opens the track with a conga line over which Tyner soon lays a hint of melody.  Turrentine and Morgan then play the melody in unison, before Turrentine takes off on a lengthy solo, the first of many fine individual performances.  His solo is followed by Morgan, and then by McCoy with some sparkling piano lines before the theme is restated to wrap up the track.

For whatever reasons, the tracks were not released until 1980, when Blue Note issued the Mr. Natural LP.  Considering the fame and the reputation of the performers involved, not only Turrentine, but also Morgan, Tyner and Jones, it's surprising that it was kept under wraps for so long.  And what's the point of recording a novelty jazz version of Can't Buy Me Love if it isn't released, at least as a single, while the song was still in the Top 40? The album is near impossible to find nowadays, but the tracks have been included in various Turentine and Blue Note box sets. 

Turrentine continued to record in 1964, but this was the last session under his name until April 1965.