A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Grant Green (1936-1979): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green
is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar. He combined an
extensive foundation in R&B with a mastery of bebop and simplicity
that put expressiveness ahead of technical expertise. Green
was a superb blues interpreter, and while his later material was
predominantly blues and R&B, he was also a wondrous ballad and
standards soloist. He was a particular admirer of Charlie Parker, and his phrasing often reflected it. Grant Green
was born in St. Louis in 1935 (although many records during his
lifetime incorrectly listed 1931). He learned his instrument in grade
school from his guitar-playing father, and was playing professionally by
the age of thirteen with a gospel group. He worked gigs in his home
town and in East St. Louis, Illinois -- playing in the '50s with Jimmy Forrest, Harry Edison, and Lou Donaldson -- until he moved to New York in 1960 at the suggestion of Donaldson. Green told Dan Morgenstern
in a Down Beat interview: "The first thing I learned to play was
boogie-woogie. Then I had to do a lot of rock & roll. It's all
blues, anyhow." During the early '60s, both his fluid, tasteful
playing in organ/guitar/drum combos and his other dates for Blue Note
established Green as a star, though he seldom got the critical respect given other players. He collaborated with many organists, among them Brother Jack McDuff, Sam Lazar, Baby Face Willette, Gloria Coleman, Big John Patton, and Larry Young. He was off the scene for a bit in the mid-'60s, but came back strong in the late '60s and '70s. Green played with Stanley Turrentine, Dave Bailey, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones.
Sadly, drug problems interrupted his career in the
'60s, and undoubtedly contributed to the illness he suffered in the late
'70s. Green
was hospitalized in 1978 and died a year later. Despite some rather
uneven LPs near the end of his career, the great body of his work
represents marvelous soul-jazz, bebop, and blues. Although he mentions Charlie Christian and Jimmy Raney as influences, Green always claimed he listened to horn players (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis)
and not other guitar players, and it shows. No other player has this
kind of single-note linearity (he avoids chordal playing). There is very
little of the intellectual element in Green's playing, and his technique is always at the service of his music. And it is music, plain and simple, that makes Green unique. Green's playing is immediately recognizable -- perhaps more than any other guitarist. Green
has been almost systematically ignored by jazz buffs with a bent to the
cool side, and he has only recently begun to be appreciated for his
incredible musicality. Perhaps no guitarist has ever handled standards
and ballads with the brilliance of Grant Green. Mosaic, the nation's premier jazz reissue label, issued a wonderful collection The Complete Blue Note Recordings with Sonny Clark, featuring prime early '60s Green albums plus unissued tracks. Some of the finest examples of Green's work can be found there.
Green was born on June 6, 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri. He
first performed in a professional setting at the age of 13. His early
influences were Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker; however, he played
extensive R & B gigs in his home town and in East Saint Louis, IL
while developing his jazz chops. His first recordings in St. Louis were
with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest for the Delmark label. Lou
Donaldson discovered green playing in a bar in St. Louis. After touring
together with Donaldson, Green arrived in New York around 1959-60. In a Down Beat
interview from the early 60's, Green said “The first thing I learned to
play was boogie-woogie. Then I had to do a lot of rock and roll. It's
all blues, anyhow.” Lou Donaldson introduced Green to Alfred Lion
of Blue Note Records. Lion was so impressed that, rather than testing
Green as a sideman, as was the usual Blue Note practice, he arranged for
him to record as a bandleader first. This recording relationship was to
last, with a few exceptions, throughout the 'sixties. From 1961 to 1965
Green made more Blue Note LPs as leader and sideman than anyone else.
Green was named best new star in the Down Beat critics' poll, 1962. As a
result, his influence spread wider than New York. Green's first session
as a leader did not meet the approval of Lion and was shelved, not to
be released until 2002 as First Session. Green's first issued album as a leader was Grant's First Stand. This was followed in the same year by two more Blue Note releases: Green Street and Grantstand.
He often provided support to many of other great musicians on Blue
Note. These included saxophonists Hank Mobley, Ike Quebec, Stanley
Turrentine and Harold Vick, as well as organists Larry Young and Big
John Patton.
Sunday Mornin' , The Latin Bit and Feelin' the Spirit
are all loose concept albums, each taking a musical theme or style:
Gospel, Latin and spirituals respectively. Green always carried off his
more commercial dates with artistic success during this period. Idle Moments (1963), featuring Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson, and Solid
(1964) are acclaimed as two of Green's best recordings. Many of Green's
Blue Note recordings, including a series of sessions with pianist Sonny
Clark were not released during his lifetime. In 1966 Green left Blue
Note and recorded for several other labels, including Verve. From 1967
to 1969 Grant was inactive due to personal problems. In 1969 Green,
having relocated to Detroit, returned with a new funk-influenced band.
His recordings from this period include the commercially successful Green is Beautiful and Live at the Lighthouse. Grant left Blue Note again in 1974 and once again recorded sporadically for different labels. Green
spent much of 1978 in hospital and, against the advice of doctors, went
back on the road. While in New York to play an engagement at George
Benson's Breezin' Lounge, Green collapsed in his car of a heart attack
on January 31, 1979. He was buried in his hometown of St. Louis,
Missouri, and was survived by six children.
Grant
Green rehearsing for the 1961 Blue Note recording session that would
become the “Standards” album (photo: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images)
Odd as it seems, Grant Green (1935-1979) is simultaneously one of
the most and least celebrated guitarists in jazz history. He was
certainly one of the most prolific. The writer and radio personality Bob
Porter, in his Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975,
notes that the St. Louis native played on 15 sessions for Blue Note
Records in 1961, 18 more in 1962 and another 18 in 1963. He made 22
albums as a leader between 1960 and 1965, according to veteran producer
Michael Cuscuna. Only 14 were released at the time, but soon after
Green’s tragic death at age 43, the shelved material began to surface.
More and more has emerged from the vaults over the decades, the latest
additions being two live albums from Resonance Records, Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) and Slick! Live at Oil Can Harry’s (from Vancouver, 1975). However, despite Green’s level of exposure, this swinging,
bluesy, lyrical musician remains an underdog in the guitar pantheon. Wes
Montgomery and Jim Hall are more commonly mentioned as influences. In
soul-jazz and organ jazz, Green’s protégé George Benson became the
dominant force, followed by Pat Martino. Though Green worked regularly
and had staunch admirers, he chafed at the fact that “the premier black
jazz guitarist slot was never opened up to him, even after Wes
Montgomery’s death [in 1968],” as Sharony Andrews-Green wrote in her
1999 biography Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar.
Nearly 20 years since that book’s publication, “forgotten” seems
too strong. Green isn’t a household name, but his playing is widely
known and respected among musicians, even if it isn’t constantly cited.
He attained a new relevance in the ’90s, when his funk-oriented mid-’70s
records (often with Idris Muhammad on drums) were spun obsessively by
rare-groove and acid-jazz DJs and sampled by A Tribe Called Quest,
Wu-Tang Clan, Cypress Hill and Us3—not to mention Kendrick Lamar’s more
recent use of his work. And yet, when we consider Green today, we still
confront what the late musician and producer Bob Belden once referred to
as an “unresolved legacy.” Why hasn’t he received his full due? It’s a
question worth unpacking.
The
new Resonance release “Slick!” documents a hard-grooving gig in
September 1975 at Oil Can Harry’s in Vancouver featuring (L to R) Ronnie
Ware, Gerald Izzard, Green, Greg “Vibrations” Williams, and Emmanuel
Riggins (photo: Gerry Nairn/Courtesy of Resonance Records)FROM BIRD TO THE O’JAYS
Together, Funk in France and Slick! Live at Oil Can Harry’s
allow us to reexamine Green’s evolution and long-term impact. There’s a
certain before-and-after aspect to the recordings: By 1969, the organ
trios and hard-bop lineups of Green’s first Blue Note phase had given
way to the R&B and proto-fusion concepts that marked his return to
the label, following a gap of several years and a move with his family
from New York to Detroit. In the midst of this second Blue Note period,
which saw the release of Carryin’ On, Green Is Beautiful, Visions, Alive! and other titles, it makes sense that Green opens Funk in France with a James Brown tune. But the Paris date that makes up the first six of the album’s 10
tracks is still steeped in bebop and acoustic jazz. The occasion was a
three-guitar summit spearheaded by France’s ORTF, featuring Kenny
Burrell, Barney Kessel and Green, in the tough position of subbing for a
sick Tal Farlow. Bassist Larry Ridley and drummer Don Lamond were the
house rhythm section, playing trio with each guest star. When Green
takes on “Oleo” and “Sonnymoon for Two,” the aesthetic isn’t far from
the 1961 Blue Note dates Green Street and Standards (a.k.a. Remembering),
which found him in a highly exposed role, playing taut single-note
lines, and chords very selectively or not at all, making his unadorned,
straight-into-the-amp tone the main focus. In that same vein, Green achieves a forceful, jewel-like clarity in his solo intro to “Untitled Blues,” a moment on Funk in France
that might be without parallel in his catalog. The solo intro and outro
on “I Wish You Love” almost rises to that level, though the tune
itself, with Kessel comping, is a muddle—Green and the others can’t seem
to agree on the form. The last four cuts on Funk in France are of lesser sound
quality. They capture Green at the Antibes festival a year later, on
two different days, playing vamp-based material with tenor saxophonist
Claude Bartee, organist Clarence Palmer and drummer Billy Wilson. Green
is by far the most compelling presence in this somewhat unsteady
quartet. They play “Upshot” and “Hurt So Bad” (the latter a Little
Anthony and the Imperials cover), both from Carryin’ On. They
also play, for nearly half an hour, a furious rendition of the Tommy
Tucker blues-rock vehicle “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” which Green dispatched in
six minutes on one of the few non-Blue Note albums in his discography,
the 1967 organ-trio date Iron City! For Green to play crossover material at this time was nothing
shocking; Wes Montgomery had also tipped his hat to Little Anthony with
“Goin’ Out of My Head,” among other then-current pop songs. But what’s
clear on the Antibes tracks, as well as on Slick!, from five
years later, is the consistency and integrity of Green’s attack, his
boppish yet blues-rooted vocabulary, his soul. They remain the same
regardless of genre or instrumentation. Though Slick! finds Green using Fender Rhodes (Emmanuel
Riggins, drummer/producer Karriem’s father) and electric bass (Ronnie
Ware), the set opens with “Now’s the Time,” reflecting Green’s longtime
love of Charlie Parker. Jobim’s “How Insensitive,” played fairly
straightforwardly in Paris, resurfaces on Slick! as a half-hour
odyssey with the deep-funk detours of Greg “Vibrations” Williams on
drums and Gerald Izzard on percussion (and whistle). The closing medley,
another half-hour, melds material from Stanley Clarke and Stevie
Wonder, Bobby Womack, the Ohio Players and the O’Jays. Green was
bringing Detroit to western Canada, no passport necessary. Whatever the setting, Green’s playing had a uniquely
communicative quality, though by today’s standards it’s not especially
complex or technically ambitious. His bop lines took a handful of
familiar routes. His blues licks could be unabashedly repetitive; at the
peak of excitement he might play one riff and ride it for an entire
chorus or more. But he always fully commits to these moments and puts
them across with clean and unflagging articulation. It might be simple
from a theoretical standpoint, but it is not at all easy to play. (Cue
up 2:27-2:54 of “Jan Jan,” from Live at the Lighthouse, and try to copy it.) For guitarist Eddie Roberts of the New Mastersounds, a jazz-funk
revivalist group, Green’s most enduring trait was his way with melody,
his ability to sing on the instrument. “If a jazz singer has a beautiful
voice and tone, they’re going to be celebrated,” Roberts argues. “But
for some reason, if you’re a guitar player you’ve got to play hundreds
of notes and be really complicated. Grant’s voice was beautiful, and it
does seem that he was overlooked perhaps because of that more lyrical
approach.” (Roberts has been playing Green tribute concerts of late, and
“Green Was Beautiful,” from the Mastersounds’ latest release, Renewable Energy, is an explicit homage.) “He was such a funky player,” remarks Grant’s son Greg Green, a
guitarist who performs (with his father’s blessing) under the name Grant
Green Jr. “He had that New Orleans grease behind him. It was all about
feel and phrasing.” “Groove and pocket, patience and restraint—those are things you
learn from Grant,” says guitarist Miles Okazaki, a solo artist and Steve
Coleman collaborator who puts Green in his personal top three. “Those
topics are a little advanced. They’re not the first things you learn.
Sometimes you don’t appreciate them until you’re a little older, when
you’re not as impressed by information.”
Green
and a 22-year-old Herbie Hancock cut the guitarist’s “Feelin’ the
Spirit” album for Blue Note at Van Gelder Studio, December 1962 (photo:
Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images)TONAL CENTERS
It has become commonplace for jazz guitarists to say they are not fond
of the guitar. They envy the piano’s richer harmony, or the greater
linear possibilities of saxophone and trumpet. Accordingly, the sound of
the guitar changed in the years following Green’s death. The biting,
natural, naked tone associated with him seemed to fall out of favor, and
the use of chorus, delay and distortion effects came to predominate.
Pat Metheny, John Scofield and Bill Frisell became chief role models,
followed by Kurt Rosenwinkel, Adam Rogers, Ben Monder and others. The
current crop of great young players, including Gilad Hekselman and Mike
Moreno, has pushed the language forward, favoring a wetter, warmer,
highly polished sound. The irony is that Green, too, strove to sound like a horn, in the
mold of Charlie Christian. His single-note conception, not only in
solos but in the articulation of ensemble parts, was modeled on the horn
players he so admired. To contemporary ears, however, his bluesy
double-stops and bop patterns are inescapably guitaristic. “His playing
is raw, man,” says guitarist Jeff Parker, who counts Green among his
primary influences. “His ideas stay in his idiom, I would say. He’s not a
slick player—his thing is emotional, and very idiosyncratic.” Parker
cites Green on Stanley Turrentine’s two-volume Up at Minton’s as some of the best jazz guitar one could hope to hear. Rosenwinkel, who has maintained a deep connection to
straight-ahead playing with his Standards Trio, was effusive about Green
in an email: “I got into him through the album The Latin Bit
and the quartets with Sonny Clark. To me he’s like the Roy Eldridge of
guitar, existing in this relaxed, creative place next to an endless
fountain of melodies. He’s modern and traditional at the same time—a
semi-hollowbody guitar like the ones we play today [typically a Gibson
ES-330], straight into a Fender Twin like we play, with some spring
reverb. His sound lets us hear up close what he’s doing with his
fingers—the expressiveness of every motion, the subtle nuances and
dynamics. It tells a story that’s easy and intriguing to follow, like
your mom reading you a book in bed. There’s a cozy feeling that allows
your imagination to fly.” Okazaki first checked out Green at the urging of his teacher
Rodney Jones. Then he got closer to the source by gigging briefly with
Turrentine, as Green himself had done back in 1961. He mentions Dave
Stryker (another Turrentine apprentice), Bobby Broom and Mark Whitfield
as Green’s stylistic heirs, and one could extend the list. Peter
Bernstein has a sonic temperament not unlike Green’s, soaringly melodic
but unafraid of some string noise, able to whisper and still cut
through. Ed Cherry’s recent organ-trio dates for Posi-Tone also bring to mind Green in his heyday. The leadoff track from Soul Tree, Cherry’s latest, is “Let the Music Take Your Mind,” the Kool & the Gang classic that led off Green’s Alive!,
from 1970. Jeff Parker recalls playing that song, as well as “Ain’t It
Funky Now” and other late-period Green staples, while cutting his teeth
in funk bands around Chicago. “I always liked the sound of the guitar,” Okazaki says bluntly,
and perhaps that in the end is what separates Green devotees from the
pack. “Grant was able to make use of the natural sound of the guitar to
great effect,” he continues, “and I’ve always been attracted to that.”
Grant Green and Emmanuel Riggins at Oil Can Harry’s in September 1975 (photo by Gerry Nairn)
BEYOND INFORMATION
By some wonderful alchemy, Green’s less-is-more approach dovetailed with
the sounds of the heaviest players in jazz, again and again. The
collective personnel on Green albums like Idle Moments, Solid, Matador, Talkin’ About! and Street of Dreams—McCoy
Tyner, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Larry Young, Elvin Jones—is a
who’s who of the music’s cutting edge in the 1960s. And even in those
modern settings, Green retained all the loose, earthy expression of his
organ dates with Baby Face Willette (Grant’s First Stand) and Big John Patton (Am I Blue, Blues for Lou), or his theme albums Goin’ West and Feelin’ the Spirit (both featuring Billy Higgins and a young, on-fire Herbie Hancock). Green’s sideman appearances were just as vital and definitive. He
proved himself on his first St. Louis sessions with saxophonist Jimmy
Forrest and organist Sam Lazar. He gained notoriety soon after moving to
New York with “Funky Mama,” from Lou Donaldson’s The Natural Soul (it was Donaldson who landed him a Blue Note contract). He added a boogaloo touch to Hancock’s My Point of View and lent an energy and elusive beauty to Lee Morgan’s Search for the New Land, Hank Mobley’s Workout, Hutcherson’s The Kicker, Larry Young’s Into Somethin’ and Mary Lou Williams’ Black Christ of the Andes,
among others. He also wrote memorable originals, among them “Jean de
Fleur,” “Plaza de Toros,” “Sunday Mornin’,” “Grant’s Dimensions” and
“Gooden’s Corner.” In his teens Okazaki was turned off by the repetition in Green’s
playing. But later, he recalls, “When I became more hip to African
music, where the point is to create a vibe or a trance, I could hear
that in his playing. He’s creating a kind of motion. It challenges the
expectation of what a solo is.” The overall effect of a Green solo, he
adds, isn’t captured on the notated page. “If you transcribe some
Coltrane or Bud Powell,” he says, “you’re going to get a lot of
information. If you transcribe Grant’s solos and analyze them, you’re
not really going to get a lot. Because the information is not the whole
story.” Grabbing his guitar and playing phrases into the phone from
Green’s rendition of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Okazaki also
demonstrates a toggling back and forth between triple and duple feel in
Green’s improvisations. “You hear it on that tune very clearly because
it’s a shuffle. Or on the title track of Solid, a midtempo
blues, he’s also going between triple and duple feel, a real contrast.
Triple is this African feel of rhythm, and with Grant it was the first
time I heard it so explicitly on the guitar. It’s not just that a given
tune is in 6/8 or whatever. He’s messing with different kinds of feels
to get an effect, and you don’t hear it that much in guitarists of that
era.”
WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND
Green endured personal struggles and frustrations that didn’t fully ebb
during his later Detroit years. He battled drug addiction and pushed
well past his limits on the road. Friends and associates began to notice
a paranoid streak, mentioned fleetingly in Andrews-Green’s biography.
Like Muhammad Ali, Green was a member of the Nation of Islam, which
certainly didn’t discourage conspiratorial thinking about his career
being held back. Whatever the case, he worked long and hard in a music
industry that couldn’t be trusted to act in the best interests of black
musicians. His body began to break down, first with a stroke that left him
partially paralyzed but still able to play. Told that he urgently needed
bypass surgery, he refused, instead driving across the country and back
for a gig. He promptly expired upon his return. It was only long after
his death that he reached what Andrews-Green termed his “tardy triumph.” Very little video of Green exists, but one delightful exception,
on YouTube, is the same Paris trio set with Ridley and Lamond that
starts off Funk in France. There’s also footage of Green with
Burrell and Kessel, in the full set that the three played together that
late October day in 1969. It’s riveting to watch Green bob his head and
put his body into it, sounding rich and full and more than holding his
own, letting his large fingers roam the fretboard of the blond Epiphone
archtop he favored at the time. There is also a short documentary that Andrews-Green made while
working on her biography, shot in the mid-’90s but posted on YouTube and
Vimeo only recently. (She declined to comment for this story.) There’s a
sadness in the black-and-white imagery, and in the fact that a number
of the on-camera interviewees have since died. But their insights and
memories remain, spurring deeper appreciation for Green’s life and work,
as well as questions about what might have been. One central truth
refuses to fade: Green’s playing, in its authoritative rhythm and
plainspoken melodicism, is recognizable in an instant. And jazz guitar
students ignore him at their peril.
This
week, Resonance Records will release three concert recordings of the
jazz guitarist Grant Green that had been buried in archives for more
than forty years. Photograph by David Redfern / Redferns / Getty
There’s a
special thrill of liberation in the live recordings of jazz that few
studio recordings can match. Resonance Records will gratify a
long-standing dream of mine with the release, on May 25th, of three
concert recordings of the guitarist Grant Green that had been buried in
archives for more than forty years. The first two are on the two-disk
set “Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970),” and come from
France’s audiovisual archive; the third, “Slick!—Live at Oil Can
Harry’s,” was recorded in Vancouver, in 1975, by a Canadian radio
station; and both albums offer revelatory delights.
Green (who was born in 1935 and died in 1979) recorded copiously from
1961 to 1971, mostly on the Blue Note label, both as a leader and as a
sideman, and his musical range was wide. He said that he learned to play
guitar by listening to and playing along with the records of the
pioneering bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker, and, though Green often
played blues-based music, accompanied by an electric-organist, he was
most celebrated for his forward-reaching performances alongside leading
post-bop modernists of the day (such as Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and
Joe Henderson). He’s the most original jazz guitarist of his time,
along with Wes Montgomery,
whose sound was more distinctive and who projected a clearer musical
personality. Green’s work, whatever the context, maintained an air of
abstraction and concentration that was more searching. If Montgomery’s
solos are filled with joyous affirmations, Green’s improvisations are
filled with question marks that often yield to bursts of insistent
fervor.
The importance of these new Resonance releases of Green’s live
performances is something of a paradox, because several of the most
popular items in Green’s discography are concert recordings from the
early nineteen-seventies. Those recordings also mark a switch in idiom,
featuring tight funk rhythms in lieu of the freewheeling swing of
Green’s jazz modernity of the sixties. Green’s playing was narrower and
riffier on those live recordings than in his earlier classic-jazz
records. Though a change of idiom toward more popular styles doesn’t
necessarily involve a decline in inspiration (Miles Davis, for instance,
worked ingeniously with his plugged-in bands of the late sixties and
seventies), Green, in those commercially released concerts, rarely
reaches the heights of improvisational inventiveness that marked his
work of the early to mid-sixties. (I’ve put together a Spotify playlist,
below, with some highlights.) The two new Green releases are
different; they offer three performances that are thrilling in
themselves, and that also add a major historical dimension to Green’s
career, proving that his shift—from what the organist Clarence Palmer,
interviewed in the “Funk in France” liner notes, calls “heavy bebop
jazz” to “rock and roll”—nonetheless offered both a remarkable
continuity and a noteworthy advance in the guitarist’s own art. The two
new Green albums reveal nothing less than an opening-out of Green’s art
at a time when earlier commercial releases suggest that he had been
backing off. The first session, recorded in 1969 with an audience
at a Parisian radio studio, is “heavy bebop jazz” with a twist. Green,
accompanied by Larry Ridley, on acoustic bass, and Don Lamond, on drums,
opens with a propulsively funky number, James Brown’s “I Don’t Want
Nobody to Give Me Nothing,” but for the rest of the concert the trio
explores the modern-jazz songbook, including two compositions by Sonny
Rollins, “Oleo” (which Green had recorded in 1962) and “Sonnymoon for
Two” (which he had recorded in 1960). Green’s expansive solos float
boldly and fly forcefully above the harmonic intricacies before breaking
into starkly rhythmic virtual shouts. Despite his rapid-fire fluidity,
Green seems to use his guitar also like a percussion instrument, doing
so slyly in his sinuous musical phrases, brazenly at dramatic crescendi.
That percussive element comes to the fore in his rock-based recordings
of the seventies, but, in these albums, it remains in balance with his
long-lined improvisations. The four long tracks from 1970 on “Funk
in France,” from Antibes, come from two days of concerts, and there’s a
big difference between them. On the two numbers from July 18th, Green
sounds tentative and constrained, feeling his way into the electric
groove. Then, on July 20th, he unleashes waves and torrents of sharply
honed notes, inspired by the skittering drumming of Billy Wilson and the
allusive interjections of the organist Palmer. The instrumentation here
resembles that of many of Green’s earlier classics, but more than the
mood is different: the band generates a brash turbulence that undergirds
its jittery frenzies with firm rhythmic landmarks that Green
thrillingly speeds past until he, as thrillingly, stops short and counts
them off before speeding ahead again. The saxophone solos of Claude
Bartee offer more heat and energy than they do musical light, but they
certainly don’t detract from the concert’s freewheeling and rambunctious
spirit. In 1975, at Oil Can Harry’s, in Vancouver, Green—joined
by Emmanuel Riggins, playing electric piano; Ronnie Ware, on bass; Greg
(Vibrations) Williams, playing drums; and the percussionist Gerald
Izzard—starts with a nod to one of his personal classics, Charlie
Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” which darts and lurches through the changes
with jagged intensity. He revisits Antônio Carlos Jobim’s bossa-nova
tune “How Insensitive (Insensatez).” That tune is also part of the 1969
Paris program, where Green’s exhilarating filigreed solo bounces along
with the jaunty rhythms; in Vancouver, Green bounces off them, urged
onward by Riggins’s assertively florid
interjections, with results that are less subtle but far more
challenging, replacing a limpid musical stream with a churning musical
magma. The thick-textured heat is even more intense in the concert’s
final number, a medley of funk and fusion tunes (including the Ohio
Players’ “Skin Tight” and the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money”) that
rises to a volcanic eruption that spotlights both the glories and the
limits of Green’s style. Though Green played with some of the most
advanced musicians of the sixties (including the drummer Elvin Jones,
the saxophonist Sam Rivers, and the organist Larry Young, who is
featured on another superb Resonance release),
he stayed consistent with the forms of late bebop, without pushing
toward the avant-garde as they often did. That’s no knock on Green, but
it does mark the difference between his consistent and incremental
approach to his bands’ new modes of raising an electrical racket and
that of Davis, whose multi-keyboard and multi-guitar amplified bands of
the late sixties and early seventies build sheer volume and dense
textures into an orchestral frenzy that Davis’s own shrieking and splintered improvisations
matched head-on. Green, by contrast, doesn’t quite find the same
liberation in his newly clamorous context. He shows, here, just how far
he—and his style—could go.
Raised on the Blues, Succeeded and Crashed in New York City, Turned to Popular Music
1935–1979
Jazz guitarist
Although Grant Green recorded more than 100 albums, including 30 as
the group leader, his career was overshadowed by more successful jazz
guitarists, particularly Wes Montgomery and George Benson. Known for his
clear, single-note, melodic style of playing with a pick, Green avoided
the chords and octaves favored by his contemporaries and was renowned
for his unique tone. He was a major force in the evolution of the guitar
as a lead instrument and he influenced a generation of guitar players
including Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Benson himself.
Green always played to his audience, with a variety that ranged from
straight-ahead jazz standards, bebop, soul, gospel, Latin,
country-western, to funk. He covered the Beatles, James Brown, The
Jackson 5, and Mozart. But whatever he played, his music remained rooted
in the blues. Green played a green guitar, wore green suits, drove a
green Cadillac, and his song and album titles often played on his name.
During the 1990s Green was rediscovered and dubbed the father of "acid
jazz" and his recordings reissued.
Raised on the Blues
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 6, 1935, Grant was the only
child of Martha, a homemaker, and John Green, a laborer, security guard,
and parking-lot owner. Grant's father bought him a beat-up guitar and
amplifier and, together with an uncle, taught him to play the blues.
Grant plucked his ukulele in his elementary-school classroom, played
drums in the school drum and bugle corps, and sang in the choir. His
early influences included pioneering electric guitarist Charlie
Christian, but he mainly listened to horn players, especially Charlie
Parker, the originator of bebop.
By the age of 13, Grant Green was playing guitar professionally in
churches, with a gospel group, and with accordionist Joe Murphy.
Although he briefly studied guitar with Forest Alcorn, Green was
primarily self-taught. With his parents' support, he dropped out of
school before the ninth grade. Soon he was playing with jazz and rhythm
and blues combos, including groups led by trumpeter Harry Edison and
saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, and was a well-known figure in the St. Louis
music scene. Jazz drummer Elvin Jones first heard Green in 1956. Years
later, Jones told Sharony Andrews Green, Grant Green's biographer and
his son Grant Jr.'s former wife: "I had never heard anybody play with
that kind of purity … I always felt that this was a great artist …."
Green married Annie Maude Moody. Among his well-known tributes to her
were "Miss Ann's Tempo" and "Blues in Maude's Flat." Their first child,
Gregory, was born in 1956, and the couple would have three more.
Gregory Green and his three younger siblings were raised primarily by
their two sets of grandparents in St. Louis. Green's personal life was
filled with conflicting issues. He was using heroin by his late teens,
and later drugs and his gigs kept him from spending much time with his
family. But Green was not an apathetic person; he held strong beliefs
and was among the musicians who founded the first St. Louis chapter of
the Nation of Islam, a black separatist Islamic sect.
Succeeded and Crashed in New York City
Grant Green's first recordings were a 1959 Delmark album with Jimmy
Forrest and Elvin Jones and a 1960 recording on Argo with organist Sam
Lazar. Green was 24 in 1959, when saxophonist Lou Donaldson first heard
him play in St. Louis. The following year, Donaldson took Green to New
York City to audition for Blue Note Records, the premier jazz label of
the era. He was hired immediately as the staff guitarist. Green's first
recording for Blue Note was Lou Donaldson's Here 'Tis in January
of 1961. Five days later he was recording his first album as leader.
During 1961 Green recorded eight sessions for 17 Blue Note albums, as a
sideman or leader, including his first live recording, with saxophonist
Stanley Turrentine. The following year he recorded a Latin album, a
gospel album, and a jazz rendering of country-western music.
Between 1961 and 1965 Green recorded with almost every Blue Note
musician, on more albums than any other artist at the label. He recorded
frequently with organists Jack McDuff and Larry Young, as well as
pianists Sonny Clark and McCoy Tyner and tenor saxophonists Hank Mobley
and Joe Henderson. Many critics consider his Idle Moments from 1964 to be his all-time best album. Meanwhile Green was becoming a force in New York's live jazz scene.
By 1966 Green had grown frustrated with his meager earnings. Blue
Note could record cheaply but lacked the resources to promote their
albums. He left Blue Note and recorded a few sessions on the Verve
label. However, like most jazz musicians, Green rarely received
royalties for his original compositions. Since he could not read music
well, he got very little studio work.
As his drug habit escalated out of control, so did his debts. Drugs
interfered with his live performances and he gained a reputation for not
paying his musicians after gigs. In 1968 Green received a brief prison
sentence for drug possession. Rather than reporting to prison, he left
for a gig in California. Federal agents waited until he finished his set
before arresting him and escorting him to prison for a longer sentence.
Turned to Popular Music
Green had always loved James Brown. By 1965 he was moving more toward
pop music and funk. After his release from prison, Green returned to
Blue Note to make more commercial recordings that received radio play.
Between 1969 and 1973 Green's records not only scored high on the jazz
charts, they hit the rhythm and blues and soul charts as well. Some
critics accused him of selling out to commercialism. Green told Guitar Player
in January of 1975: "You have to be a businessman first, and an artist
along with it. You can't play something people dislike and stay in
business."
For the first time, Green's family joined him in New York, settling
in Brooklyn where his wife took a job with the New York Model Cities
agency. The reunion didn't work out. An aunt found the children living
alone and she took the youngest, Grant Jr., to California for the
summer. Green and Moody divorced. Moody remarried and took the other
children to live in Jamaica with her new husband.
At a Glance
Born Grant Douglas Green on June 6, 1935, in St. Louis, MO; died on
January 31, 1979, in New York, NY; married Annie Maude Moody (divorced);
married Karen Duson Wallace, 1974 (divorced 1977); Dorothy Malone
(companion until death); children (first marriage): Gregory, Kim, John,
Grant Jr.; married Karen Duson Wallace, 1974. Religion: Nation of Islam.
Career: Guitarist performing with gospel, jazz, and rhythm and
blues groups, St. Louis, MO, 1948–60; Blue Note Records, New York, NY,
staff guitarist and group leader, 1960–65, 1969–72; New York, NY, New
Jersey, Detroit, MI, and California, jazz and funk guitarist, 1960–79;
recording artist, various labels, 1965–78.
Awards:Down Beat critics' poll, New Star Award for guitar, 1962; Guitar Player Editors Award for Lifetime Achievement, 1996.
However by 1970 Green had made enough money at Blue Note to leave New
York and buy a home in Detroit, Michigan, where his children joined
him. The family played music in their basement and Green became a local
star. His friends included city commissioners and Coleman Young,
Detroit's first black mayor, and he played regular benefits for local
black organizations. Green continued to follow Muslim traditions, for a
time eating mostly kosher and East Indian foods. However his penchant
for women made him unwelcome at the black Muslim mosque. Around this
time, drugs again distracted Green when he took up using cocaine and a
codeine syrup.
His Health Deteriorated
In 1971 Green was asked to record the soundtrack for the film The Final Comedown. He began dreaming of becoming an arranger and producer. His last album for Blue Note, Live at the Lighthouse, was recorded in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1972.
By the mid-1970s Green's health was in serious decline, in part from
his long battle with drugs. His failure to become a big name in music,
with the accompanying financial rewards, and a series of failed
relationships, further demoralized him. Green married Karen Duson
Wallace, a nurse, in 1974. By 1977 the marriage had failed. Dorothy
Malone became his constant companion until his death.
Green recorded his last album, Easy, in April of 1978. That
autumn he had a minor stroke that left him temporarily paralyzed on his
left side. A blood clot was found near his heart and the doctors ordered
triple-bypass surgery, but Green refused. Instead, he drove across the
country for a gig in California. After the long drive back to New York,
he suffered a heart attack and died on the way to Harlem Hospital on
January 31, 1979. He was 43.
Rediscovered in the (1990s)
At the end of the 1980s, hip-hop musicians and rappers began using
rhythm and blues and jazz from the 1960s and early 1970s, including the
music of Grant Green. In the 1990s, the London hip-hop group Us3
digitally fused Green's 1970 live recording of "Sookie, Sookie" and
turned it into a worldwide hit for Blue Note. Critics hailed Green as
the father of acid jazz. His recordings began to be reissued and his
original vinyl records became increasingly valuable among collectors.
Green's reissues were top sellers. In December of 1994, more than 30 years after Green recorded Idle Moments, the album was number 9 on Rolling Stone
magazine's alternative chart of music played on college radio stations.
His music was heard on movie soundtracks and "Sookie, Sookie" became a
theme song on Home Box Office. Green's oldest son Gregory, a guitarist
who sometimes performed under the name of his younger brother, Grant
Green, Jr., could be heard on a tribute album featuring his father's
compositions. During the 1990s, at least six other albums included
tributes to Green.
Guitarist George Benson told Sharony Green: "People were always all
over Grant. He was an icon…. Guitar players were trying to learn what
his secret was, and there were people in general who just loved his
groove. Grant made the guitar come alive and sing…. Only he could do it
like that."
Selected works
Albums as leader
Grant's First Stand (includes "Miss Ann's Tempo"), Blue Note, 1961, 1999.
Grantstand (includes "Blues in Maude's Flat"), Blue Note, 1961, 2003.
Green Street, Blue Note, 1961, 2002.
Sunday Mornin', Blue Note, 1961, 2005.
Born to Be Blue, Blue Note, 1962, 1989.
Feelin' the Spirit, Blue Note, 1962, 2005.
Goin' West, Blue Note, 1962, 2004.
The Latin Bit, Blue Note, 1962, 1996.
Nigeria, Blue Note, 1962.
Am I Blue, Blue Note, 1963, 2002.
Idle Moments, Blue Note, 1964, 1999.
Solid, Blue Note, 1964, 1995.
Talkin' About, Blue Note, 1964, 1999.
His Majesty King Funk, Verve, 1965.
I Want to Hold Your Hand, Blue Note, 1965, 1997.
The Matador, Blue Note, 1965, 1990.
Iron City, 32 Jazz, 1967, 1997.
Carryin' On, Blue Note, 1969, 1995.
Alive! (includes "Sookie, Sookie"), Blue Note, 1970, 2000.
The Final Comedown, Blue Note, 1971.
Visions, Blue Note, 1971.
Live at the Lighthouse, Blue Note, 1972, 1998.
The Main Attraction, KUDU, 1976.
Easy, Versatile, 1978.
Street Funk & Jazz Grooves (The Best of Grant Green), Blue Note, 1993.
Green is Beautiful, Blue Note, 1994.
The Best of Grant Green, Vols. I and II, Blue Note, 1995, 1996.
Jazz Profile—No.11, Blue Note, 1997.
Blue Break Beats, Blue Note, 1998.
Standards, Blue Note, 1998.
Street of Dreams, Blue Note, 1998.
First Session, Blue Note, 2001.
Ballads, Blue Note, 2002.
Retrospective 1961–66, Blue Note, 2002.
Ain't It Funky Now: Original Jam Master GG Vol. 1, Blue Note, 2005.
For the Funk of It: Original Jam Master GG Vol. 2, Blue Note, 2005.
Mellow Madness: Original Jam Master GG Vol. 3, Blue Note, 2005.
Albums as sideman
(Jimmy Forrest) All the Gin is Gone, Delmark, 1959.
(Jimmy Forrest) Black Forrest, Delmark, 1959.
(Sam Lazar) Space Flight, Argo, 1960.
(Lou Donaldson) Here 'Tis, Blue Note, 1961.
(Stanley Turrentine) Up at Minton's, Blue Note, 1961.
(Reuben Wilson) Love Bug, Blue Note, 1969.
Rusty Bryant Returns, Prestige, 1969.
The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Grant Green with Sonny Clark, Blue Note, 1997.
Sources
Books
Christiansen, Corey, Essential Jazz Lines in the Style of Grant Green for Guitar, Mel Bay, 2003. Green, Sharony Andrews, Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar, Miller Freeman, 1999.
Periodicals
Down Beat, July 19, 1962. Guitar Player, January 1975; February 1997; March 2000.
Grant Green (June 6, 1935 – January 31, 1979)[1] was an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Recording prolifically and mainly for Blue Note Records as both leader and sideman, Green performed in the hard bop, soul jazz, bebop, and Latin-tinged idioms throughout his career. Critics Michael Erlewine and Ron Wynn
write, "A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green
is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar ... Green's playing is
immediately recognizable – perhaps more than any other guitarist."[2] Critic Dave Hunter described his sound as "lithe, loose, slightly bluesy and righteously groovy".[3] He often performed in an organ trio, a small group with an organ and drummer.
Apart from guitarist Charlie Christian, Green's primary influences were saxophonists, particularly Charlie Parker, and his approach was therefore almost exclusively linear rather than chordal. He thus rarely played rhythm guitar except as a sideman on albums led by other musicians.[4] The simplicity and immediacy of Green's playing, which tended to avoid chromaticism, derived from his early work playing rhythm and blues
and, although at his best he achieved a synthesis of this style with
bop, he was essentially a blues guitarist and returned almost
exclusively to this style in his later career.[5]
Biography
Green was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He first performed in a professional setting at the age of 13 as a member of a gospel music ensemble.[6] His influences were Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and Jimmy Raney, he first played boogie-woogie before moving on to jazz. His first recordings in St. Louis were with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest for the United label. The drummer in the band was Elvin Jones, later the powerhouse behind sax player John Coltrane. Green recorded with Elvin again in the early 1960s. Lou Donaldson discovered him playing in a bar in St. Louis. After touring together with Donaldson, Green arrived in New York around 1959–60.
Lou Donaldson introduced Green to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records.
Lion was so impressed that, rather than testing Green as a sideman, as
was the usual Blue Note practice, Lion arranged for him to record as a
group leader first. However, due to Green's lack of confidence the
initial recording session was only released in 2001 as First Session.[7][8] Despite the shelving of his first session, Green's recording
relationship with Blue Note was to last, with a few exceptions,
throughout the 1960s. From 1961 to 1965, Green made more appearances on
Blue Note LPs, as leader or sideman, than anyone else. Green's first issued album as a leader was Grant's First Stand. This was followed in the same year by Green Street and Grantstand. Grant was named best new star in the Down Beat critics' poll, in 1962. He often provided support to the other important musicians on Blue Note, including saxophonists Hank Mobley, Ike Quebec, Stanley Turrentine and organist Larry Young.
Sunday Mornin' , The Latin Bit and Feelin' the Spirit are all loose concept albums, each taking a musical theme or style: Gospel, Latin and spirituals respectively. Grant always carried off his more commercial dates with artistic success during this period. Idle Moments[9] (1963), featuring Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson, and Solid[10] (1964), are described by professional jazz critics as two of Green's best recordings.
Many of Grant Green's recordings were not released during his lifetime. These include McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones (also part of the Solid group) performing on Matador (also recorded in 1964), and several albums with pianist Sonny Clark. In 1966 Green left Blue Note and recorded for several other labels, including Verve. From 1967 to 1969 Green was, for the most part, inactive due to personal problems and the effects of heroin addiction. In 1969 Green returned with a new funk-influenced band. His recordings from this period include the commercially successful Green Is Beautiful and the soundtrack to the film The Final Comedown.
Green left Blue Note again in 1974 and the subsequent recordings
he made with other labels divide opinion: some consider Green to have
been the 'Father of Acid Jazz' (and his late recordings have been sampled by artists including US3, A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy),[11] while others have dismissed them (reissue producer Michael Cuscuna wrote in the sleeve notes for the album Matador: "During the 1970s [Green] made some pretty lame records").
Green spent much of 1978 in the hospital and, against the advice
of doctors, went back on the road to earn money. While in New York to
play an engagement at George Benson's
Breezin' Lounge, he collapsed in his car of a heart attack and died on
January 31, 1979. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in his hometown of
St. Louis, Missouri, and was survived by six children. Since Green's
demise, his reputation has grown and many compilations exist, of both
his earlier (post-bop/straight ahead and soul jazz) and later
(funkier/dancefloor jazz) periods.
Equipment
Green used a Gibson ES-330, then a Gibson L7 with a Gibson McCarty pickguard/pickup, an Epiphone Emperor (with the same pickup) and finally had a custom-built D'Aquisto. According to fellow guitarist George Benson,
Grant achieved his tone by turning off the bass and treble settings of
his amplifier, and maximizing the midrange. This way he could get his
signature punchy, biting tone.
"To hear [Grant] comp [i.e., play rhythm guitar] behind a soloist you have to check his sideman dates..." Sharony Andrews Green (1999), Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar, Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard, p. 224.
Though Grant’s First Stand was guitarist Grant Green’s maiden release for Blue Note Records it wasn’t his debut recording session for the famous New York jazz label. The St Louis guitarist had, in fact, gone into Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary studio
at Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey – where Blue Note did the majority of
their recordings from 1959 onwards – on two previous occasions. For some
reason, however, the music recorded on two days across October and
November 1960 was shelved. It wasn’t until Saturday, 28 January 1961,
that Green got to lay down the six tracks that became his debut album
for the label.
Grant Green may have been only 25 when he recorded Grant’s First Stand
but, despite his surname, he wasn’t a greenhorn. He had been playing
professionally in the American Midwest since he was a teenager, and had
cut his teeth performing in both local jazz and R&B groups. Green
recorded as a sideman with saxophonist Jimmy Forrest in 1959, and the
following year came to the attention of Blue Note via a recommendation
by alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who had been impressed by Green while
hearing him play in an East St Louis club. Donaldson told Green that he
should try his luck in New York, and so, in the summer of 1960, the
young guitarist ventured to the Big Apple for the first time. Blue
Note’s boss, Alfred Lion, took a instant liking to Green and his lean,
no-frills guitar style, which would become an essential component of
many Blue Note recording sessions during the early 60s (in his first
year with the label, the prolific Green appeared on 17 Blue Note
sessions).
Green came from the Charlie Christian school of jazz guitar,
approaching the instrument as if it was a horn and preferring to play
single-note melodic lines rather than chords. His sound was clean and
uncluttered, and, on Grant’s First Stand, producer Alfred Lion
placed him in an organ trio context, knowing that it would allow the
guitarist space to express himself and shine. The organist was Roosevelt
“Baby Face” Willette, a church-raised gospel-influenced
musician who brought a sanctified soulfulness to the session (two days
later, Green would return the favour and appear on Willette’s Blue Note
debut, Face To Face). Completing the trio was Ben Dixon, a drummer from South Carolina, who would also join Green on Willette’s debut session.
A highly personal musical manifesto
Grant’s First Stand opens with a mellow swinger: a Grant
Green tune called ‘Miss Ann’s Tempo’, named after his wife. Propelled by
Dixon’s brisk yet subtle drums and Willette’s pedalled organ bassline,
it begins with Green presenting a blues-infused theme which he then
develops with an inventive solo. Willette, whose accompaniment up to
this point has been beautifully understated, then breaks out for a spell
of improvisation before Green returns, playing some fleet-fingered
melodic lines.
The Tin Pan Alley tune ‘Lullaby Of The Leaves’ was a sizeable hit for
George Olsen and his orchestra in 1932, and in the 50s was revived in
the jazz world by singer Anita O’Day and saxophonist Illinois Jacquet.
Green renders it as a tasteful midtempo jazz-blues groove with a gently
swinging rhythmic undertow. Ben Dixon also gets to contribute a short
solo alongside longer spells of extemporisation from Green and Willette.
There’s a gospel-style character to the effervescent Green-written
swinger ‘Blues For Willarene’. It begins with a simple blues motif from
Green’s guitar, which is then answered by Dixon and Willette in a
classic call-and-response configuration. After this, the trio establish a
simmering groove that features some deft guitar and organ solos.
More mesmeric is ‘Baby’s Minor Lope’, written by Willette, while the tempo slows for a plaintive rendition of the Billie Holiday-associated
song ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do’, on which the then 27-year-old
organist states the main melody (while Green supplies soft background
chords) before taking the first solo. The tempo drops several more
notches for the slow ballad ‘A Wee Bit O’ Green’, which closes the album
with a sleepy, late-night blues feel. The three-way sense of musical
simpatico established by Green, Willette and Dixon is simply sublime.
A significant work
After two false starts in the studio, Grant’s First Stand,
released in May 1961, finally got Grant Green’s Blue Note career
underway. Not only did the label’s bosses dig his mellow style and
ability to groove, but other musicians did, too: by 1966, when his first
stint with the label came to an end, the guitarist had appeared on a
colossal 68 albums.
After a three-year spell away from Blue Note, Green returned to the label in 1969, though by that time he had added a James Brown-influenced
element of funk to his repertoire. After his final recording for Blue
Note, in 1972, Green only recorded two more albums before his early
death, in 1979, at the age of 43.
Given how prolific he was at Blue Note – he recorded 30 albums for the label between 1960 and 1972 – Grant’s First Stand
often gets overlooked, even by some of the musician’s biggest fans. But
it remains a significant entry in his catalogue. Not only was it the
album on which the wider world first got to hear his unique approach to
the guitar, but it also functioned as highly personal musical manifesto
that became Green’s stylistic blueprint during his first – and arguably
most satisfying – stint at Blue Note.
PREPARED GUITAR: Grant Green interview by Ed Hamilton
November 20, 2015
Grant Green interview by Ed Hamilton
Blue Note Records has had their share of guitarists: Kenny Burrell, Thornel Schwartz, George Benson, yet when album sessions had to be counted, Grant Green was
nonpareil in having recorded almost 3 times as many as all put
together...100 albums recorded from 1961 to 1972. Hands down or hands
on---he was Blue Note’s House Guitarist...from 1961 his first session
with Lou Donaldson who discovered him in St. Louis, to his last
Lighthouse session in 1972, Grant Green had recorded 100 sessions for
Blue Note: sessions with Lou Donaldson, Duke Pearson, Big John
Patton, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, Lee Morgan, Yusef Lateef,
Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Stanley Turrentine, Harold Vick, Art Blakey. And these are just to name a few.
In 1972, Grant had a weeklong gig at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. George Butler was Blue Note’s new executive producer. I went 3 times and we talked about a live session that was pending that week by Butler. I enjoyed 3 nights of rehearsals with Grant and his group that included Wilton Felder on Fender, Claude Bartee on tenor, Shelton Laster on organ, Gary Coleman on vibes, Bobbye Hall on congas and Greg Williams on drums.
I was offered the opportunity to MC a part of this 2 disc album the
night of the session. I had a ball--- the session was astoundingly a
magnificent live recording July 17, 1972---Grant’s last Lighthouse
recording (His previous was Grant Green Alive at the Lighthouse in 1970).
Opening night, Grant and I reflected on his Blue Note career from the start after Lou Donaldson heard him in East St. louis in 1960, brought him to Alfred Lion of Blue Note who signed him to his first recording Here Tis with Lou Donaldson, and as leader on Grant’s First Stand. ED: How do you stream the music through your fingers? Grant: I strive to get that natural
feeling. That’s what I strive for to get that natural feeling and to
be able to play anything. Always play the best I can.
His Pop interpretations include Beatles “A Day in A Life,” Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back” to the traditional “Go Down Moses/Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho”..Dionne Warwick’s “Never Walk This Way” to James Brown’s “Make It Funky.”
I noticed you took a J5 (Jackson Five) tune and turned it inside out. Too bad the 5 wasn’t here. Grant: See I dig that ED--that’s a challenge for me brother.
It's no challenge it’s just all there for you to do... Grant: I've played everything and
to take tunes like that..it’s just beautiful man, I just get a charge
out of that..I think that we are possibly going to do a live recording
here at the Lighthouse. The last week on Friday and Saturday..
Got to have the folks out here for that. Grant: Yeah we got to have a lot of folks out here for that. We was just talking about it with Producer George Butler. How long have you been playing? Grant: Man I’m in my 22nd year with Blue note.
Your 22nd year---I’m gonna give you a play. Grant: Right I’m in my 22nd year man and it’s getting better and better. (He just finished a film score for the movie Iron City.)
How
would you describe the music that you are playing now? ‘cause right
after your second set, I said some of it was reminiscent of your blues
self with Horace Parlan, Al Harewood, Yusef, Ben Dixon...Blues in Maude’s Flat..
Grant: Hey man--you gone way back on me man..
Yeah that's part of you too..
Grant: Yeah man that’s the roots. That was Yusef Lateef, Al Harewood, Horace Parlan and that was a beautiful date man. Jack McDuff and myself. We really got into a thing---and Horace Parlan. That's right. And I’m planning to do the date here live. We gonna try to get a winner.
Are
you playing all the music the way you really like to play it now?
Because throughout all the years you've been with Blue Note, there
hasn't been a guy at Blue Note like George Butler to produce you. And
for those who don’t know George Butler, he's the new producer for Blue
Note. What
has new producer George Butler contributed to your music? (All the
years at Blue Note, there hasn’t been a person to produce Grant like
George Butler.) Describe what George Butler has done for you.
Grant: George has taken a lot of
jazz artists and made them appeal to the majority of people. We were
appealing to a minority of people and now he’s kinda got us a vast well
rounded audience where he takes artists like myself and groom us into
playing the numbers like the latest album--Visions. We were very successsful with Visions---and this one looks good. The Shades of Green with the Wade Marcus big
band. And these are the kind of things I think are the ways to get
everyone--- even the kids who like the Jackson 5. They like that. And
an album should be well rounded. I try and strive to get that natural
feeling and play anything.
Like I said, you turned it out.
Grant: I got some young kids in Detroit who simply just nut up.
Detroit’s home?
Grant: Definitely.
Are
there some types of new idioms inside your head that you want to play?
Is there a certain definite type of music you haven’t played yet?
Grant: Yes. Oh yes. I got some more
stuff in my head that I’m laying dead to play. And you know quite
naturally, you do everything in degrees---in small degrees and you’ll
get around to it thru the years. I got a whole lot of music up there
man. I got a lot of good experience. I’ve played with everybody.
You are a veteran, brother. Grant: Definitely. I’m a pro---I’ve played with everybody and got good experience and you can’t beat that.
Ed, How long you been in the business?
Well I’ve been a music lover since I was living in Cleveland---since 1950 and on the air for 8 yrs. Grant: I want to see how much time you got in on me man. EDH:
You see there aren’t many out there communicating and trying to get to
musicians like yourself who've been out there. My thing is, I
appreciate music and I take my tape with me and I get out there, I grab
the person like a Grant Green. I missed you last time, so I
said I’m gonna catch you this time opening night here at the
Lighthouse. And I did. So you can get more exposure so that those who
aren't exposed to Grant Green will definitely get exposed to Grant
Green.
Grant: I want all the people to come out and to buy the record Shades of Green.
Got anything to do with the green shades you wear? Grant: That’s me. It’s all green and I put my soul in it. I got some green soul in there. You seem to function funkily well with organ, bass, drums, yourself and a tenor man. Do you like this makeup? Grant: I like it. It’s good for
me. I got Claude Bartee on tenor, Shelton Laster organ, Greg Williams
on drums, Wilton Felder bass, Bobby Hall congas, Gary Coleman on vibes
and we are also at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.
We’ve been talking with Grant Green--- a vibrant veteran guitarist and anytime he’s in L.A., he’s always welcome...
In
1979, after playing his last gig at the Lighthouse, Grant was driving
back to New York pulling a trailer with a Hammond B 3 and had a heart
attack. It was January 31, 1979. He’d just spent 10 weeks in the
hospital after a stroke. The doctors found a blockage and told Grant
without an operation he wouldn’t last a month. So he told his manager to
give him his clothes. He left and went out to California for his last
Lighthouse gig.
While
he was doing the Lighthouse gig, George Benson told him: “You’re a
better guitar player than me, it’s not right, Grant. But they have made
me greater than you. I can’t go around saying I’m the number 1 jazz
guitar player and I know you are No. 1.”
At the 2009 Montreal Jazz Festival, George and I reminisced about Grant and his guitar that George was rumored to have found.
I asked George, ‘You still got Grant Green's guitar? Because I interviewed Grant on his last recording Live at the Lighthouse (Blue Note, 1972). And I heard you got it.’
George
replied, “Is that right, man? Yeah, I was there for that gig at the
Lighthouse. Grant drove all the way out and picked me up. Yes I do. I
have the one that was made for him by D'Aquisto, the foremost acoustic-
electric guitar maker. Not too long ago, he passed away. I became good
friends with him before he died. And I came across Grant's guitar in a
store and I had to have it, man.”
You can also add some Green Soul to your ears with Grant Green
Alive, Grant Green Live At the Lighthouse, Feelin’ the Spirit, The Way I
Feel, Natural Soul, Idle Moments, Rough and Tumble, Live At Club
Mozambique, Up At Mintons (Grant’s first recording w/Stanley Turrentine and Horace Parlan), Search for the New Land (w/Lee Morgan).
As I wrote in the liners Blues For Lou---Grant Green was indeed
Blue Note’s House Guitarist---and everybody at Blue Note came to the
House of Grant Green to record ‘cause he truly played his heart out
with a lot of Green Soul and everybody wanted to feel that spirit of
Green---
Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings
May 29, 2018
Grant Green: Funk in France
Blue
Note Records probably owes Grant Green's family an apology. The
guitarist was the finest jazz guitarist of the 1960s, topped only by Wes
Montgomery. Today, virtually Green's entire discography has made it
into the digital age. But it may surprise many that a good number of his
albums for Blue Note weren't released during his lifetime, including
his first. By my count, nine as a leader were shelved for reasons that
escape me. These albums include First Session, Remembering, Gooden's Corner, Nigeria, Oleo, Born to Be Blue, Blues for Lou, Matador and Solid. Perhaps
there were flaws in the music or recordings I can't detect. Or perhaps
Blue Note recorded him so often as a sideman that they figured his
leadership releases would saturate the market and could wait. Or perhaps
Blue Note had released too many albums and couldn't afford to support
them all. I can only assume that holding back so many leadership albums
can do a number on an artist's head. Either way, holding back so many
leadership recordings seems unfair and was likely solely a business
decision without regard for the artist. Between
1967 and '69, Green succumbed to drug problems, resulting in an arrest
and a prison sentence. When Green was released in '69, he needed income
to get back on his feet. So he re-joined Blue Note and began recording
the more lucrative form of jazz-funk that the label had pioneered in the
mid-1960s when the boogaloo took hold. Green, a soulful master of the
single-note jazz guitar, transitioned beautifully, and many of his
albums and singles released between 1969 and '73 did well on the R&B
charts. These albums include Carryin' On, Green is Beautiful, Alive!, Visions, Shades of Green, The Final Comedown and Live at the Lighthouse, followed by additional albums on other labels after he left Blue Note for a second time. During
that pivotal year between 1969 and '70, Green toured in Europe. While
there, he recorded in Paris in October 1969 and was taped live at the
Antibes Jazz Festival on the Côte d'Azur in July 1970. Both recordings
appear now on the new two-CD release, Grant Green: Funk in France
(Resonance). We have these recordings thanks to the close relationship
developed by Resonance Records and producer Zev Feldman with France's
Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA). The
Paris studio material in '69 was recorded at the Office de
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF). The session featured Green
(g), Larry Ridley (b) and Don Lamond (d), with Barney Kessel (g) added
on I Wish You Love. It's largely a jazz set with one jazz-funk tune added: James Brown's I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open the Door I'll Get It Myself). The rest of the songs were Sonny Rollins's Oleo, Antonio Carlos Jobim's How Insensitive, Untitled Blues, Sonny's Sonnymoon for Two and Charles Trenet's I Wish You Love. The
live Antibes Jazz Festival material featured Green (g), Claude Bartee
(ts), Clarence Palmer (org) and Billy Wilson (d). The game-changer for
Green between the two recordings was Upshot, a huge jazz-funk hit off his Carryin' On
album that had been released just months earlier. That album launched
the jazz-funk phase of Green's career, which would last until his death
in 1979. The other tracks from the Antibes' sets were Little Anthony and the Imperials' 1965 hit Hurt So Bad, Tommy Tucker's Hi-Heel Sneakers and a second 20-minute performance of Upshot. Listening
to this Resonance release, the jazz-funk tracks sound so much freer and
alive for Green, who clearly was tiring of the kind of straight-up that
dominates the Paris studio recordings. Listening to him peck away on
the Antibes material, particularly Hi-Heel Sneakers and the longer version of Upshot.
They are a revelation. Jazz-funk allowed Green to express himself more
soulfully and connect with his St. Louis roots. What's most remarkable
about Green is that he had three enormous careers in all—a prolific jazz
sideman, a vastly under-released jazz leader and a pioneering jazz-funk
avatar. Hopefully,
live recordings from the early '70s of Green in his jazz-funk prime
will surface. For now, these are a remarkable find, since they allow us
to hear the bridge Green crossed from threadbare jazz to the much more
dynamic and emotional jazz-funk.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Grant Green: Funk in France (Resonance) here.
JazzWax clip:Here's a mini documentary from Resonance on Grant Green's embrace and expansion of jazz-funk...
And thanks to
Murari Venkataraman for reminding me about this three-part documentary
on Grant Green as his son, Grant Green Jr., goes in search of his
father...
THE
MUSIC OF GRANT GREEN: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH GRANT GREEN:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Grant Green 
