George V. Johnson, Jr. (vocals), Pharoah Sanders (tenor sax, bells, vocals), Danny Moore (trumpet), Steve Turre (trombone), Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone), John Hicks (piano), Art Davis (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). From the album Rejoice (1981).
In 1974 Turre collaborated on Woody Shaw’s The Moontrane and from 1974 to 1976 regularly played trombone and electric bass in drummer Chico Hamilton’s band, appearing on his album Peregrinations (1975). During the following years he worked with jazz musicians Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Slide Hampton, McCoy Tyner and Cedar Walton; Latin jazz musicians Tito Puente, Poncho Sánchez and Hilton Ruiz; pop musicians Paul Simon and Van Morrison; and world music group TriBeCaStan. In 1987 he recorded his first album Viewpoint with the Stash label playing in various styles, such as swing, bebop and Latin jazz. Later he participated in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, in Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy and in The Timeless All Stars.
In 1992 he founded the group Sanctified Shells, composed of four trombonists, including himself, also playing shell horns, a trumpeter, electric bassist, drummer and several percussionists, with which he published Sanctified Shells the following year for Antilles Records and performed at the 1995 Monterey Jazz Festival in California. Turre has a collection of shell horns of various sizes gathered during his many travels whose mouthpieces he carefully cuts so that they emit different notes, forming choruses and frequently changing them when doing solos. He found the largest one in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and was painted by a Cuban artist. With them he gets a music in which he combines blues, swing, bebop, modal jazz and avant-garde along with Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythms. In 1995 he released the hard bop album Rhythm Within, in which he invited great pianist Herbie Hancock and free jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders.
This is a version of John Coltrane’s theme from his 1958 album Blue Train. The brief introduction is the same as Coltrane’s and the theme is sung by Johnson, Jr. with lyrics in unison with Hutcherson. Sanders immediately enters offering a decided and interesting solo in which he proves that besides making noise with the saxophone, he also knows how to interpret excellent quality improvisations. Hutcherson follows with an equally stimulating and skillful discourse that delights the listener. Then comes Hicks playing in a solid and consistent way alongside cleverly modified chords. And finally Sanders returns showing more of his art until Johnson, Jr. and Hutcherson re-expose the theme.
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