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Shirley Scott


undergroundagent

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Queen of the Organ is one of the baddest live recording in jazz... period. I don't care if you like organ or not, this group swings their collective butts off! Oh to have seen them live like this is their prime.

My favorite non-live Shirley record, however, is the rare Strata-East album "One For Me" with Shirley kickin' bass, Billy Higgins on drums and Harold Vick on the tenor. Fantastic record.

All of Shirley's last recordings on the Candid label are highly reccomended as well. It's a true shame her life was cut short in the midst of what sounded like a brilliant comeback to the recording and performing world.

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The same really must be said about her Blue Note work with her then-husband, Stanley Turrentine.

Starting with "Dearly Beloved" (err...Little Miss Cott), these records groove hard!!! My favorite is actually "Never Let Me Go". I've owned it numerous times, but Morganized hooked me up again a few weeks back. It's been spinning ever since.

I also really enjoy "Chip Off the Old Block" and "Hustlin'".

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Yes, "Never Let Me Go" is a favorite of mine. All of her work with Stanly are gems. The Prestige stuff is good too... the "Legends of Acid Jazz" series.

Shirley could definately hang with the big boys. I don't know why she didn't record without a bassist more often... she could kick bass with the best of them.

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WOW. Ok, I can understand not liking Shirley... but STANLEY?!?!

GOOD GOD MAN!?!?? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?

Someone give this man 100cc's of soul, STAT!

:g

I know I'm an oddball on this (to say the least :rolleyes: ) but I do not like S.T.'s tone, or his sense of time. This is how strange I am regarding S.T. -- I think his tone is shallow (yes, you read correctly). Just do not like how he sounds in the least. I'm a hopeless case.

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Very surprising how few Shirley Scott albums for Prestige have been reissued by Fantasy in their original forms. She was one of Prestige' constant seller and the label issued albums by her one after the other in the sixties.

She started very strong with albums like 'Great Scott!', 'Scottie', 'Hip Soul', 'Hip Twist' and 'Plays Horace Silver', all excellent.

They have remained favorites.

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Ok, I love Shirley, truly LOVE her, but I was listening to ROLL 'EM last night at work about 6x in a row, and about the 3rd time through, it flashed on me that you could scat her solos with Porky Pig-esque "stuttering" syllables and it would fit her phraseology PERFECTLY! I started doing it in my head and damn near had to get up and leave so I could laugh out loud.

Try it at home, kids - it REALLY works!

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So did you try it, Jim? I tried doing it audibly yeaterday afternoon, and it didn't work because I do a sucky Porky Pig, but if you can just hear it in your mind, that's enough, especially when she does those ascending lines on the downbeats with a constant note on the upbeats - (a)BLEE(a)BLEE(a)BLEE(a)BLEE(a)BLEE-bluhhhh.

I tell you man, it's Porky Pig on B-3! I love it!

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  • 7 years later...
  • 6 years later...

Not too long ago I put together a 78 minute personal "best-of" compilation from Shirley's Prestige catalog — importantly, with no horns — and listened to it while making dinner last night. Everybody else at home was doing their own thing, so I had a chance to really zero in on Shirley's soloing — how she finesses grace notes (both quick and slow), her use of glissandi, and her approach to eighth notes in general.

I must say, I think Shirley Scott is perhaps my very favorite organist, or rather the organist I derive the most pleasure from listening to. Ten or so years ago, I know I would have said Larry Young. But these days I'm listening for other, perhaps more subtle, aspects in a jazz organ solo. There's a slyness, and a reluctance to dazzle, that I hear in Scott's work that I don't hear in other organists of her era. Granted, I still don't know organists in the way that I'm familiar with other instrumentalists, but Scott — perhaps because she was a woman in a male-dominated scene, and perhaps because her choice of organ settings made her playing occasionally sound dated or comical — I think is still greatly under-valued.

There's no question she could swing. Her solos on paper might not be especially remarkable. But her handling of the jazz idiom for organ is unlike any of her contemporaries that I can think of. Those trio records with George Duvivier and Arthur Edgehill aren't just fun listening; they offer, in my opinion, an essential alternative to the Jimmy Smith experience.

And that Plays Horace Silver record? Damn. I hope Horace owned that one.

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didn't Shirley do 2 tribs to Horace, or was that Duke?  I have everything Stanley did on BN, plus some of Shirley's on Impulse! and Atlantic (love what they did with the 5 Royales' "Th.ink"), need to get her Prestige stuff.  My fav so far may be Dearly Beloved with just her, ST and a drummer, the first side is brilliantly programmed.  My fav organ group remains McDuff's with Joe Dukes, Geo. Benson, and Red Holloway

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