BLP 4139

Grant Green - Am I Blue

Released - June 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 16, 1963
Johnny Coles, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; John Patton, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Ben Dixon, drums

tk.3 Am I Blue
tk.5 Take These Chains From My Heart
tk.10 Sweet Slumber
tk.23 I Wanna Be Loved
tk.25 For All We Know

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Am I Blue	Harry Akst, Grant Clarke	16 May 1963
Take These Chains from My Heart	Hy Heath, Fred Rose	16 May 1963
I Wanna Be Loved	Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Billy Rose	16 May 1963
Side Two
Sweet Slumber	Lucky Millinder, Al J. Neiburg, Henri Woode	16 May 1963
For All We Know	J. Fred Coots, Sam M. Lewis	16 May 1963

Liner Notes

Without employing full orchestra and chorus, or recording a jazz version of a Broadway show score, Grant Green has admirably managed in each of his successive Blue Note LPs, to find fresh and interesting ways of presenting himself and his music. There are, I suppose, limitations of format involved in being a blues-based guitar player, but if there are, they have certainly not hampered Grant Green so far. To take some of his earlier LPs as examples, Sunday Mornin' (4099) featured, as you might expect, a gospel-type number; The Latin Bit (4111) was just that; Feelin' The Spirit (4132) was an unusual jazz album of spirituals; and Grantstand (4086) was a quiet after-hours conversation featuring splendid work by Yusef Lateef.

This new album, Am I Blue, could perhaps best be characterized as a mood album. But that word has connotations which definitely do not apply here. There are no lush banks of strings, no heavily intricate arrangements; nor is this the kind of mood album sometimes made by jazzmen which consists of several short tracks and a minimum of improvisation. Those attempts at popularization are often excellent in their own way and show that a good jazzman can play the pants off Roger Williams or so-and-so and his shining trumpet, but they are a much different matter than the music contained in this jacket. Listeners hoping for more of Green's basic, extended single-line improvisations will not be disappointed. Nor will those who have come to consider Green's name as being synonymous with "soul" find that their man has altered his approach.

On this session, Green's material and approach are very close to what could have been called rhythm-and-blues before the term became corrupted. "Sweet Slumber," for instance, lists Lucky Millinder as one of its composers, and Millinder had for many years one of those bands, like Buddy Johnson's, which made the kind of music that provides the roots for these performances. Most singers capable of generating straight passion have at one time or another closed with "I Wanna Be Loved." "For All We Know" is more of a "pop" stand, originally made famous by Nat Cole. "Am I Blue" is one of the the most durable of standards, perhaps most indelibly performed by Billie Holiday and later revived by Ray Charles on the album that announced the beginning of his transformation into a "pop" singer. Charles also took "Take These Chains From My Heart" out of its country-and-western rut and made it into a hit all over again.

It may be of some significance that all of these songs, with the exception of "Sweet Slumber," have been associated with famous singers and with singers who arouse a very direct emotional response in their audience. Green, I think, works for the same thing. He is seldom tricky or flashy where it is uncalled for, preferring to state his message simply and with power. For this reason, these "soulful" songs are a very good choice for him and show him off to excellent advantage. Likewise, those songs with arrangements by Blue Note regular Duke Pearson are simple and uncluttered, light sketches, really, allowing full freedom to the soloists.

The soloists, in this case, are extremely interesting and perhaps unexpected choices. No one familiar with Blue Note and Grant Green will need an introduction to drummer Ben Dixon or organist John Patton, whose own first album as a leader, Along Came John (4130) was released not long ago. As is often the case in a combo including an organ, there is no bassist. Tenor Saxophonist Joe Henderson will perhaps be unfamiliar to many listeners. I first heard him on the recent Kenny Dorham album Una Mas (4127), on which I was struck by the force and fire of his lines. Since then, Blue Note has recorded him as a leader (Page One, 4140). Nat Hentoff provides a detailed biography of Henderson on the Dorham album, and for these purposes it should suffice to say that the tenor player is one of several alumni of Wayne State University in Detroit to come under the influence of pianist Barry Harris, the young elder statesman of that city's jazz scene. Coming to New York in 1962, Henderson was helped by Kenny Dorham, recorded on the previously mentioned LP as Dorham's sideman, and the trumpeter also appears on Henderson's debut LP as leader. Charlie Parker, Sonny Stiff and Dexter Gordon are among the men Henderson lists as influences, and one can also hear, as is true of most young tenormen, traces of Rollins and Coltrane. But there is every indication that Henderson is developing into an original and impressive player of his instrument.

The remaining member of the quintet is trumpeter Johnny Coles. To my mind, Coles is a musician whose talent far exceeds his reputation, and it is a great pleasure to find him in this company, in one of his much too infrequent recorded appearances. Leonard Feather, in his Encyclopedia of Jazz, reports that Coles has played with a wide variety of musicians, including Philly Joe Jones, Bull Moose Jackson, Eddie Vinson, James Moody and a group with the intriguing name, Slappy and His Swingsters. But he is undoubtedly best known for his recordings with Gil Evans, and his presence in the short-lived band which Evans brought into the now-defunct Jazz Gallery a few years ago. Not surprisingly, Coles lists Miles Davis as his favorite trumpeter, and it is probably Evans's affection for and familiarity with the Davis approach that led him to use Coles. But Coles is by no means a Davis imitator. Rather, to my mind, he is one of the most personal players on the scene, utilizing a dry, mournful sound that does indeed have its base in Davis in a manner hauntingly reminiscent of the old bluesmen. "Take These Chains, with its gospel overtones, gives Coles the opportunity for his finest work on the set.

To return to where I began, I think that Grant Green has been unusually successful in finding fresh approaches to his music. In this instance, he gives us the added bonus of a chance to hear the work of two musicians who deserve to be better known than they are, Joe Henderson and Johnny Coles. But the album, of course, is Green's, and is dominated by his solos and his style. He has recorded a set almost casual in its relaxation, the kind of music one might hear in a small club late at night when the musicians are playing primarily for themselves. If you enjoy that mood, as I do, I think you will find this album more helpful to your own late-night moods than a stadium full of singing strings.

—Joe Goldberg

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

GRANT GREEN AM I BLUE

While renewed interest in Grant Green's music continues to grow, many listeners still do not appreciate the full range of the his musicianship. For some, Green is the definitive guitarist of the early-sixties organ combos, while others focus on the more extended jamming of his recordings circa 1970 that anticipated "acid jazz." As original annotator Joe Goldberg reminds us in a point worth reiterating, Green was actually an extremely versatile player, and his versatility found a wealth of outlets during his early years as a Blue Note recording artist.

Goldberg stresses the thematic variety of Green's early albums, but the point comes across just as strongly when the focus turns to the various instrumentations in which Green worked. The guitar is an instrument that can function with organ or piano or minus another chording instrument, as Green's Blue Note discography indicates. In 1961 alone, his first full year of recording with the label, he was teamed with organ in trio and quartet settings, fronted piano-bass-drums rhythm sections on two occasions, and led two further dates with just bass and drums in support. In the following year, Green's projects employed piano, and on occasion added percussion, as he explored Latin tunes, spirituals, and standards with country-western associations. By 1963, Green began to augment the front line as well, employing either organ or piano in the rhythm section, to produce the present quintet session as well as the sextets Idle Moments (with tenor sax, vibes and piano) and Solid (cut in 1964 with two saxes and piano),

No wonder that a musician capable of excelling in so many contexts became a mainstay at Blue Note, where Alfred Lion liked to mix and match his artists. This particular session from May 1963 found one of the label's hot new rhythm sections joined by two men who would soon become contract artists themselves. Green, John Patton and Ben Dixon had worked together extensively with Lou Donaldson, and made their first joint appearance on record a year earlier as part of the saxophonist's album The Natural Soul. The chemistry displayed on that occasion and Donaldson's subsequent Good Gracious won Patton his own debut disc in April 1963, Along Came John, with Green and Dixon in attendance. In the same week that the present album was produced, the trio returned to Rudy Van Gelder's studio for Harold Vick's Steppin' Out.

Johnny Coles and Joe Henderson were an underrated "musicians' musician" and an unknown, respectively, at the time Am I Blue was recorded. Each had appeared on Blue Note dates earlier in the year, however, and each would lead his own session in the next two months. Henderson's Page One, cut in June, became a classic debut, and the first of five important Blue Note titles cut by the tenor saxophonist at the time. Little Johnny C, from July, turned out to be Coles's only Blue Note session; but with Henderson again in a supporting role, it did reinforce the compatibility of the hornman, which they displayed again in 1969 as members of the original Herbie Hancock Sextet.

The ambience of what Goldberg calls this "mood album" is quite unusual for a Blue Note date. The program is made up entirely of standards, drawn from the worlds of rhythm-and-blues and country music as well as the usual Tin Pan Alley sources. With trumpet and tenor present, a more hard-hitting approach to the compositions might have been expected, yet Green and arranger Duke Pearson keep things subdued and conversational. Tempos remain in a medium to slow zone, with plenty of space for Green to display his talent for stating and embellishing strong melodies and occasional thoughts by the sidemen interspersed along the way. Things open up in a sense on the lengthy concluding track, "For All We Know," yet even there the established aura is sustained. The result is an album that casts a consistent spell, then wanders almost surreptitiously into a more expansive but by no means disruptive feeling.

If Am I Blue lacks the elevated lyricism and intensity of its immediate successor Idle Moments (also available in the RVG Series), it does find five players communing with great affinity, at the high level that was par for Grant Green's diverse Blue Note course.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2001