If you ever want to show someone exactly where jazz music completely sheds its polite, intellectual academic skin and turns into a living, breathing, sweat-drenched manifestation of pure urban soul, you play them Stanley Turrentine. Known to anyone who ever loved a saxophone as “The Sugar Man,” Turrentine possessed a tenor saxophone sound that was absolutely singular in its size. It didn’t float or flutter through the upper registers; it sat squarely in the pocket, boasting an immense, thick, and deep-fried lower-midrange growl that pulled directly from the Sanctified church, the deepest Mississippi delta blues, and the late-night vocabulary of the Pittsburgh streets. In June 1964, right in the thick of an incredibly prolific year, Turrentine marshaled an absolute Dream Team sextet into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio: Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Bob Cranshaw on double bass, and Otis “Candy” Finch on drums. Together, they cut In Memory Of.
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Yet, in one of those baffling historical mysteries that make the Blue Note vaults so legendary, Alfred Lion left this stellar session sitting completely unreleased on the shelf until producer Michael Cuscuna unearthed it in 1979. This is an incredible, sprawling album that effortlessly traverses swinging hard bop, complex African polyrhythms, and breathtakingly beautiful balladry. For generations of analog audiophiles, reproducing the sheer physical thickness of Turrentine’s horn without choking the micro-dynamic details of the backing brass has been an elusive mountain to climb. The definitive archival triumph finally arrived when Joe Harley handpicked the record for the premium Blue Note Tone Poet Series. Cut completely all-analog (AAA) directly from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed onto heavy, pristine 180-gram virgin vinyl at Record Technology Incorporated (RTI), this reissue completely redefines the album. It stands today as an indispensable reference disc for evaluating a sound system’s lower-midrange chest resonance, transient brass separation, and wide-stereo staging.
The foundational, unyielding challenge that In Memory Of throws down at the feet of your playback chain is the absolute, massive physical scale of its front-line horns. Look no further than the sizzling Side A opener, a brilliant rendition of Wes Montgomery’s “Fried Pies”. The moment Turrentine states the primary theme, his tenor saxophone bursts into the room with an upfront, holographic weight that will instantly expose any structural flaws in your loudspeakers. Turrentine’s signature tone operates heavily between 200 Hz and 500 Hz—the exact territory where poorly damped speaker cabinets love to ring or introduce artificial thickness. Kevin Gray’s masterful, flat-transfer cutting style ensures there is zero artificial low-end boost or high-frequency limiting here. A truly linear high-fidelity system will reproduce his horn with a breathtaking, visceral realism, capturing the literal texture of the thick cane reed and the immense column of air vibrating through his vintage brass Selmer horn.
As you flip the heavy vinyl over and drop the stylus onto the stunning, complex rhythms of Bobby Benson’s “Niger Mambo”, the soundstage opens up into a rigorous masterclass of mid-century spatial geometry. Here, Blue Mitchell’s brilliant trumpet occupies a distinct, razor-sharp pocket in the right channel, while Curtis Fuller’s warm, rounded trombone anchors the left-center alongside Herbie Hancock’s gorgeous, percussive piano comping. The real technical torture test on this track is the separation of these three completely distinct brass and woodwind timbres. When all three horns blow in unison, your system’s crossover network and amplifiers must work in absolute harmony to maintain their distinct spatial boundaries. If your playback chain suffers from high-frequency phase shift or poor transient speed, Mitchell’s bright brass bite will bleed into Fuller’s smoky trombone lines, instantly collapsing the three-dimensional depth of the room and flattening the musicians into a muddy, two-dimensional wall of sound.
Meanwhile, the low frequencies on this RTI-pressed Tone Poet edition offer a relentless workout for your system’s bass articulation and woofer control. The rhythm section of Bob Cranshaw and Otis “Candy” Finch lays down a solid, driving foundation that acts as the absolute heartbeat of the record. On the deeply moving title track, “In Memory Of”, Cranshaw’s double bass is captured with its honest, woody body resonance vibrating perfectly against the studio floor. There is no modern, bloated sub-bass enhancement here; you hear the taut, clean pluck of the strings and the natural decay of the acoustic instrument. For this section to translate with its proper rhythmic swing, your amplifier needs an exceptionally high damping factor to halt your woofers instantly between notes. Otherwise, the deep walking bassline and Finch’s heavy bass drum accents will blur into a boomy, overwhelming hum, completely masking the delicate, complex cymbal work floating elegantly in the upper-right corner of the stage.
To sit down in the sweet spot, turn up the volume, and absorb In Memory Of from its opening groove to the final fading chord of side B is to understand why the all-analog vinyl medium remains the absolute pinnacle of musical reproduction. This isn’t about clinical, sterile digits on a screen; it is about capturing the living, breathing soul of a historic evening frozen in time. A master storyteller like Nelson Motta would undoubtedly tell you that this album is an intoxicating, late-night journey into the very heart of sophisticated bohemian luxury—a piece of pure, soulful art best enjoyed in a dimly lit room with a pour of old bourbon while the rest of the world turns to sleep. The Blue Note Tone Poet team has delivered a monumental archival triumph, treating Stanley Turrentine’s immense hard-bop and soul-jazz legacy with the uncompromising reverence it demands. It is an indispensable cornerstone that will continuously challenge your audio system to achieve its absolute highest potential of transparency, speed, and emotional truth.