Messie Bessie

I'm not gonna lie. This record just happened to be sitting in front of me and I hadn't heard it in a while so I put it on and recorded it. Some people (cough*Soulstrut*) might classify this as "tepid soul jazz", but they can beso mi culo.

For those who don't know, Shirley Scott was a prolific jazz organist and wife of Stanley Turrentine with an incredible 39(!) albums to her name and a career spanning almost 4 decades. Messie Bessie is taken from her Something LP (Atlantic 1970) which is made up of mostly covers with the exception of this song written by Mrs. Scott. Some of you will probably recognize this cut for the De La Soul sample, but it's a solid song throughout. It's hard to go wrong with Billy Butler, Chuck Rainey and Ralph MacDonald on your team.

I've been going back and re-listening to a lot of old Prestige/Atlantic/Blue Note/Impulse records with this vibe and I think I appreciate them more now than I did when I first heard them. Speaking of, what happened to the art of liner notes? Almost every record I own from the late 60's/early 70's has some in-depth breakdown of the artist and songs on it. We need to resurrect that for real.








Shirley Scott - Messie Bessie