Instrumentals: The Dream of the Blue Turtles

Sting: The Dream of the Blue Turtles

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The statement of our theme clearly states that there are to be no voices at all. I hope I may be forgiven for the laughter at the end of this one. It has everything to do with how this song came to be.

Sting said in interviews at the beginning of his solo career that he had come to feel stifled in the Police. He was seeking a spontaneity he had been missing. So he sought to put together a band of jazz musicians for his first solo album. They all said yes, and what a band it was! Drummer Omar Hakim came from Weather Report. Sax Player Branford Marsalis was a well known bandleader, and he brought with him his keyboard player Kenny Kirkland. And bassist Darryl Jones had just finished a stint with Miles Davis. All took the music seriously, but they had a lot of fun together as well. One day in the studio, the band was just jamming for fun, but the tape was rolling. This was where the song The Dream of the Blue Turtles came from. Sheet music had to be written up afterwards, because this one just happened. I suppose, for Sting, the song epitomized the spontaneity he was looking for, because this became the title track of the album.