BLP 4132

Grant Green - Feelin' The Spirit

Released - September 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 21, 1962
Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; Garvin Masseaux, tambourine #1-3,5.

tk.2 Go Down Moses
tk.3 Just A Closer Walk With Thee
tk.5 Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho
tk.6 Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
tk.7 Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Just a Closer Walk with Thee	Traditional	21 December 1962
Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho	Traditional	21 December 1962
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen	Traditional	21 December 1962
Side Two
Go Down Moses	Traditional	21 December 1962
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child	Traditional	21 December 1962

Liner Notes

Anyone with even a passing interest in the current modes of jazz will be familiar with the theorem that equates the possession of "roots" with the ability to play music derived from the Sanctified Church. The playing of gospels and gospel-type numbers is a later development of the refinements of bop effected by Art Blakey and Horace Silver in the mid-fifties, and undoubtedly the popularity of Ray Charles had much to do with it.

Gospels, in their structure, chord patterns, and message, are quite different from spirituals, and it may be of interest to note that the latter have been almost entirely the province of New Orleans and revivalist musicians, except for a song like "When the Saints Go Marching In," which is allowable even to The Kingston Trio. "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," however, or "Flee As a Bird," have generally been left to Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet, and other elders, and now probably only the English "Trad" bands and George Lewis play them.

Unlike gospels, which are still very functional in church, spirituals have disappeared from common use, perhaps because they are a reminder of slave days. Vocally, they are now almost exclusively restricted to the concert hall. It has been nearly a hundred years since the Fisk Jubilee Singers began their concert tours in 1871, but the auditorium stage is now practically the only repository of the spiritual. The great Mahalia Jackson, more usually a gospel singer, performs them, and Roland Hayes converted them into pure art music. As art music, a Negro concert singer like Paul Robeson or William Warfield may use a spiritual as an encore. Otherwise, the music is rarely heard. Marshall Stearns, in The Story of Jazz, has indicated one possible reason: "The spiritual, as we know it on the concert stage, has the most European and the fewest African qualities of all American Negro music. At the same time, melodies of equal beauty are still being improvised at Negro religious services all over the country today."

All of this is by way of introducing the record contained in this jacket, which is the only instance I know of a group of modern iazzmen performing a program made up exclusively of spirituals. The leader is guitarist Grant Green, who is notable for being one of the most basic current players of his instrument. It is rare for a solo of his not to make reference to the blues; many of his compositions have their origin in blues or gospel. And one of his favorite instrumental techniques is likewise one encountered vocally in Negro church music: the repetition of a single, often simple, melodic phrase, over and over again with gathering intensity, until the tension becomes nearly unbearable.

Green has made no attempt here to recreate the five spirituals he plays in anything resembling their original context, nor has he tried to duplicate their often pallid manifestation on the concert stage. He has approached them with affection, but as music to be played in his style. The result is a fascinating combination: the techniques of modern jazz, blues, and gospel, all applied to the spiritual.

It is surprising that such a thing has not been done before. As everyone knows, there was quite a spate of jazz versions of Broadway shows, and now that trend has been followed up by jazz versions of movie and even television themes. Such non-indigenous material as the theme music from Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Kildare has been recently performed by jazzmen, and there has even been a jazz LP of Jewish music. And, of course, there is the ubiquitous influx of bossa nova and country music. So it seems about time that spirituals had a go 'round.

Much of the credit for the unique quality of this music goes to pianist Herbie Hancock. Hancock, who first came to notice as a member of the Donald Byrd—Pepper Adams Quintet and has recently attracted considerable attention as the composer of "Watermelon Man," is one of the most inventive of the younger pianists. That inventiveness is felt unobtrusively but powerfully throughout this set. As vocally performed, spirituals are nearly arhythmic. With the exception of "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," on which Hancock produces an affecting suggestion of the classic style of spiritual vocal accompaniment, he creates an infectious gospel-like rhythm figure for each number, effectively underpinning it and directing the overall shape of the performance.

By now, the rhythm team made up of bassist Butch Warren and drummer Billy Higgins should be thoroughly familiar to those who follow the fortunes of Blue Note, having appeared together on several releases for the label. Two of their most successful collaborations, however, should be mentioned: Dexter Gordon's Go! (4112) and Jackie McLean's A Fickle Sonance (4089). It is noteworthy, though, that Higgins, one of the most avant garde of jazz drummers (he has worked with Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, and recently recorded a remarkable Indian-influenced duet with guitarist Sandy Bull), should fit so well into a program of this material. To add verisimulitude and rhythmic complexity, some numbers are abetted by the tambourine of Garvin Masseaux, a contributor to Art Blakey's polyrhythmic artillery on the album African Beat (4097).

Surely, all the songs played are too familiar to necessitate comment. Besides "Motherless Child," they include "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen", "Joshua," and "Go Down Moses." It is interesting that both Green and Hancock find occasion to quote from "It Ain't Necessarily So," Gershwin's ironic refutation of scripture case in spiritual form, and that Green several times employs the violin solo from "Scheherzade," who was purportedly the greatest storyteller of all.

But Green himself is an adept storyteller, and with the aid of four sympathetic spirits, he shows that it is possible to feel the spirit in one's own, previously untried way, and have it come out meaningfully.

— Joe Goldberg

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT FEELIN' THE SPIRIT

A recording built around what were then known as Negro spirituals was an oddity indeed when Grant Green recorded Feelln' the Splrlt, although the genre had not been as totally neglected as Joe Goldberg's original liner notes suggest. With so-called soul jazz in ascendance in the early '60s, it was inevitable that other modernists would tap some of the same sources, and Johnny Griffin's 1960 album The Big Soul-Band includes "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and "Deep River," as well as a version of "Wade in the Water" that predates Ramsey Lewis's chart-topping recording by over five years. Vocalists with Jazz connections were also in the game, as witnessed on a 1959 Jimmy Witherspoon disc on Hi-Fi Jazz, which shares both an album title and four compositions with the present collection.

Still, Grant Green was the first instrumentalist to go all spiritual, and he proved to be the perfect musician to take on the challenge for all of the reasons that Goldberg enumerates. Green had joined the Blue Note roster in 1961, and spent the first year of his recording career demonstrating mastery of both funky and more straight-ahead modern jazz situations. In contrast, his 1962 albums were devoted to thematic programs where Green extended his range to encompass other genres, Latin music (The Latin Bit) and country-western (Goin' West) had already been tackled prior to this set, which completes the trilogy with guitar work that allows Green to reveal his musical foundations with complete clarity while maintaining what was already heralded as an unmistakable instrumental personality.

While it is no surprise that Green takes so readily to these venerable melodies, the ability of his accompanists to adapt to material far more traditional than they normally encountered gives the music an equally unimpeachable ensemble character. The flexibility of Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren, and Billy Higgins had been apparent on Donald Byrd's Royal Flush and Free Form, and Hancock's own Takin' Off — the three previous albums on which they are heard together - but they also had a willingness to experiment and push the borders of modern jazz practice. Here, in the last of their joint recorded efforts (and the penultimate of eleven pairings for the Warren/Higgins team), they embrace the atmosphere at hand and deliver heartfelt performances.

Garvin Masseaux contributes as well to the first three tracks. Masseaux had recorded with Green before on The Latin Bit, and was also heard in this period with Yusef Lateef, Art Blakey, Ike Quebec, Charlie Rouse, and Solomon Ilori. Chekere was his instrument on most of these other sessions. Here he is on tambourine, and it is instructive to hear Higgins build a groove around the basic punctuations that Masseaux adds to "Closer Walk," "Joshua," and "Nobody Knows."

Masseaux is not present on the bonus track, "Deep River," which surfaced when the Feelin' the Spirit was initially reissued on compact disc. It can be considered the ballad performance of the album, and its reflective character may be more responsible for its initial omission than any inherent flow in the performance. Another factor might have been at work, however, as it is the only title on the program that was not in the public domain, and therefore the only for which composer's royalties would been assessed. Considerations of this type meant a lot to independent record companies endeavoring to control costs, which make it even more surprising that other labels had not jumped on the public-domain melodies heard here to create similar programs.

As musically successful as this album is, it did not by any means spark a trend. Other modern jazz interpretations of these pieces were heard on occasion (Bobby Timmons played a particularly stirring "Motherless Child" his 1963 Born to Be Blue album), and Donald Byrd (with Hancock and Warren in support) investigated the same emotional terrain on his jazz-and-voices classic A New Perspective three weeks after the present session; but Green returned to more contemporary explorations of soul, and Hancock was soon to join Miles Davis and make more forward-thinking musical history. This is not to suggest that Feelin' the Spirit is in any way a negligible achievement. On the contrary, this collection of universally loved and familiar melodies is an excellent introduction for listeners who are new to jazz, and a tonic for those who know the music and yearn an honest reflection of its emotional foundations.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2004

Blue Note Spotlight - December 2012

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/feeling-the-spirit-grant-green-in-1962/

Nineteen sixty-two saw St. Louis-born soul-jazz guitar hero Grant Green exploring not only the full range of his instrument, as usual, but the full range of his imagination. Over the course of six sessions as a leader for Blue Note that year, Green tried his hand at spirituals, Latin music, cowboy songs, and, of course, standards, not to mention the odd original tune. Notably, on these dates, the six-stringer also distanced himself from the organ sound he had cultivated the year before with Jack McDuff and Baby Face Willette; his partners in harmony during this time were the pianists Johnny Acea, Sonny Clark, and a twenty-two-year-old Herbie Hancock, whose debut album, Takin’ Off, was also a product of the 1962 Blue Note machine. (Green returned the favor on Hancock’s sophomore voyage, 1963’s My Point of View, also on Blue Note.)

Green’s first two 1962 trips to Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ studio, on January 13 and 31, resulted in the LPs Nigeria and Oleo, currently collected on the two-CD set The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark. Also featuring bassist Sam Jones—who made the Nigeria session in the same week he recorded on the Cannonball Adderley classic In New York—and either Louis Hayes or Art Blakey on drums, the magic of the January sessions stems from the synergy between Clark and Green, two down-home players who had found each other in the Big City. The Gershwins’ “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” from Nigeria, is as greasy as it gets, Green’s burning blues licks wiggling and trilling in anticipation of Clark’s deep, behind-the-beat, sleazy-in-a-good-way comping and leads. Sadly, though he would appear on Green’s Born to Be Blue and a few other 1962 sessions, Clark would die of a heroin overdose on January 13, 1963, one year to the day after the recording of Nigeria. Clark, whose music was championed by John Zorn in the ’80s, was thirty-one when he passed.

In April, Green returned to Van Gelder’s spot for The Latin Bit, the first of three concept albums he would record before the end of the year. Brought to life by bassist Wendell Marshall, drummer Willie Bobo, conguero Patato Valdes, Garvin Masseaux on chekere, and Acea on piano, Bit takes a bite out of steamy Latin numbers like “Mambo Inn,” “Besame Mucho,” “Tico Tico,” and Bird’s “My Little Suede Shoes.” After a fairly faithful run-through on the form of “Mucho,” Green and company transform Consuelo Velazquez’s dramatic prelude to a kiss into a slow, sultry swing piece pierced by the leader’s seductive, leisurely runs and the steady push of the Bobo/Valdes/Masseaux percussion trio.

Green’s next journey to Jersey, in November, resulted in Goin’ West, a five-song trek into the country for which he was accompanied by Hancock and two recently freed agents: bassist Reggie Workman, fresh from a fruitful stint with John Coltrane, and drummer Billy Higgins, no longer with Ornette Coleman due to cabaret card issues. Alongside takes on lived-in, happily weary compositions like “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”—yes, the same tune that plays over the opening credits of The Big Lebowski—the quartet dusts off Don Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” a song Ray Charles had taken to the top of the charts earlier that year. Prefaced by a dead-on honky-tonk pickup from Hancock, the song begins with restrained guitar and supportive piano duetting for a sublime few seconds until Workman’s booming half-notes and Higgins’s subtly funky brushwork emerge to help the listener get back in the saddle. Clocking in at under three-and-a-half minutes and featuring very little soloing, “Loving You” also makes a case for the idea that not every jazz song need be a marathon blowout.

Feelin’ the Spirit, Green’s final ’62 session as a boss or otherwise, was realized in December with ample aid from Hancock, Higgins, Masseaux, and bassist Butch Warren, soon to join Thelonious Monk’s quartet. A collection of uncredited spirituals save for Harry Burleigh’s “Deep River,” Spirit manages to extract joyful noises from tunes like “Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” while still maintaining an appropriate air of somberness. “Deep River,” though, is particularly devastating, due in no small part to its intro. Over gorgeously sad piano, Warren’s heartbreaking arco tones, and quiet cymbal taps from Higgins, Green states the lean melody with majesty and grace, revealing a sensitive side that fans of his wilder ’70s albums might not be aware of.

Of course, when not gigging as a leader or heading up recording sessions, Green was busy as a sideman, appearing on four additional Blue Note releases in ’62. Two of the LPs—Preach, Brother! and Elder Don—were under the leadership of Louisiana-born tenor man Don Wilkerson, who filled out the Brother date with Higgins, Warren, and Clark. Green also made it onto female vocalist Dodo Greene’s My Hour of Need and alto authority Lou Donaldson’s The Natural Soul, the latter of which is as juicy a slice of R&B-influenced jazz as there ever was. Green and Donaldson had a special bond—the saxophonist was the one who invited Green to New York in the first place, to audition for Blue Note—and it shows on Natural Soul tracks like the album-opening “Funky Mama,” a backwoods blues where Donaldson lets the rhythm section set things up. On top of Ben Dixon’s loose swing beat and John Patton’s brick wall of organ, Green drops a mind-bendingly simple riff that screams country and aches with depth and wisdom. Like Sweet Lou, Green was all natural and all soul. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.