Three Engines — Turrentine, Blakey, and Rich
Route
The sequence asks where musical authority lives.
- Roots: blues-tenor and R&B projection establish the speaking language behind Turrentine.
- Turrentine: tone and microtiming lead organ-combo and CTI arrangements without needing constant harmonic density.
- Blakey: the drum kit becomes an interactive small-group conductor and the Jazz Messengers become a composer-development institution.
- Rich: the drummer scales leadership into sectional big-band architecture.
- Coda: Max Roach supplies a contrasting drummer-composer model built around melodic independence and formal clarity.
Sequence
- Illinois Jacquet — “Flying Home” — the honking, projecting tenor as a public voice.
- Gene Ammons — “Hittin’ the Jug” — blues authority, space, and behind-the-beat weight.
- Ray Charles — “The Midnight Hour” — R&B phrasing as an arrangement-level force.
- Earl Bostic — “Flamingo” — projection, precision, range, and popular communication.
- Stanley Turrentine — “Look Out” — the Blue Note tenor voice arrives fully formed.
- Stanley Turrentine — “Little Sheri” — riff economy and rolling internal subdivision.
- Jimmy Smith — “Midnight Special” — organ sustain and tenor attack become complementary registers.
- Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine — “Let It Go” — long-developed organ-tenor conversation.
- Stanley Turrentine — “Sugar” — a patient vamp expands into CTI scale.
- Stanley Turrentine — “Don’t Mess With Mister T.” — cinematic production with the horn’s identity intact.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “Moanin’” — call-and-response composition animated by drum rhetoric.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “Blues March” — vernacular rhythm becomes public form.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “Along Came Betty” — Blakey adapts force to Golson’s harmonic elegance.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “Lester Left Town” — Wayne Shorter’s composition pressure-tested by the band.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “A Night in Tunisia” — explosive live architecture.
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers — “Free for All” — controlled escalation at the edge of saturation.
- Buddy Rich — “West Side Story Medley” — episodic chart plus drum-led dramatic release.
- Buddy Rich — “Love for Sale” — fast swing, light cymbal surface, exact ensemble kicks.
- Buddy Rich — “Channel One Suite” — drum color binds an extended sectional form.
- Buddy Rich — “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” — the Adderley/Zawinul vamp translated into big-band rhetoric.
- Buddy Rich — “Birdland” — post-fusion groove translated into brass-and-reed architecture.
- Max Roach — “The Drum Also Waltzes” — melodic solo construction and independence as a final comparison.
Comparison prompts
- Turrentine ↔ Ammons: where is the beat? Compare the delay before a held note and the speed of the internal pickup.
- Turrentine ↔ Blakey: on A Jazz Message, does Blakey answer the tenor’s rhetoric or redirect it?
- Blakey ↔ Rich: when does the drummer respond to a soloist, and when does he articulate a prewritten ensemble event?
- Rich ↔ Roach: can you sing the solo’s form after one hearing? Which drummer makes register, dynamics, or recurring cells do the organizing?