With a spread of jazz from hard bop to smooth sax, this album shows band-leader Stanley Turrentine and his sizable group of backing musicians (with almost three dozen contributors credited) playing with more of an ear towards experimentation than consistency. That approach, along with the rotation of the band’s line-up and all but one of the songs being covers (the exception being “There Is A Place (Rita’s Theme)“, written by Pamela Turrentine), doesn’t keep the group from maintaining a recognizable character and steady quality to the music, though.
While some of that persistence is attributable to the department-store production, the majority of it is due to the clear skills of the performers, which bring frissons of lively embellishment along with solid foundations to each song. With all of it kept instrumental, the little touches are allowed more clarity, and there’s quite a few passages into the lush details of which a listener can just let themselves pleasantly sink. The occasional chintziness is minor enough as to not impact things too much, and the whole of it comes off well, if a little too wide in scope.
Scrambled Brains 