Description
Reissue: 21-10-2022
Blue Note’s been digging deep in the vaults and turned up one long-forgotten gem in Common Touch , a joint production between the former husband-and-wife team of Stanley Turrentine and Shirley Scott.
Ms. Scott has always been a vastly underrated organ player who crafted her own light and airy sound out of some dead-serious blues. She was also a much better-suited partner to her ex-husband’s deep, rich and individual tenor than even Jimmy Smith.
There’s clearly an unmistakable emotional telepathy here. The Turrentines recorded on more than a dozen occasions throughout the 60s for a variety of labels (Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse and Atlantic); the best of which is Turrentine’s Let It Go (Impulse) and Never Let Me Go (Blue Note) and Scott’s Blue Flames , The Soul Is Willing , Soul Shoutin and this late entry from 1968, Common Touch.
What makes this different is the addition of the agile guitarist Jimmy Ponder (like Turrentine, a Pittsburgh native) and a markedly funkier edge — nothing Turrentine, Scott, Ponder, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Idris Muhammed couldn’t do in their sleep. Common Touch rocks with a funky groove that is catchy and thoughtful all at once. “Buster Brown” simmers at a boil without condescending or collapsing. Ms. Scott’s hot “Boogaloo,” featured on last year’s The Lost Grooves compilation from Blue Note, works some sparkling interplay into a hip-grinding groove.
And just when you think no jazz could loosen up Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind,” listen to how funky it gets here. A bonus is the addition of a long, sizzling blues recorded by more or less the same group earlier in the year, “Ain’t No Way” (from a from May 1968 session that was eventually featured as the title cut to an album released under Turrentine’s name in 1981).
Tracklist:
- 1. Buster Brown
- 2. Blowin’ In the Wind
- 3. Lonely Avenue
- 4. Boogaloo
- 5. Common Touch
- 6. Living Through It All
