In college I took sax lessons with with Kristen Strom, known for being in San Francisco’s Nuclear Whales sax quartet and more recently for leading her own group.

Stanley Turrentine

She has a lot of funny stories from her life as a musician. One day at a lesson, I turned to Stanley Turrentine’s “Sugar” to practice for a performance and she told me about how Turrentine’s dad made little Stanley play only one note per day for a while.

Probably not too much fun to do that, but it helped him get an incredible sound on all the notes.

I got a cassette tape with “Sugar” on it when I was about 12 years old and have always liked that song. Lately I’ve been working on transcribing some of Turrentine’s solos. Coming back to Turrentine’s solo on Midnight Special from the album with Jimmy Smith and from a few of his other pieces. Learned a bit from The Hustler.

You’ll find that some of his solos definitely extend into the altissimo range. Just something to be aware of.

I like Stanley Turrentine because of the soul he puts into the music, you can really hear the emotion.