GXF-3065

Grant Green - Oleo

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 31, 1962
Sonny Clark, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Sam Jones, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.

tk.4 My Favorite Things
tk.5 Hip Funk
tk.6 Oleo
tk.11 Little Girl Blue
tk.15 Tune Up

Session Photos

Sam Jones

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Oleo	Sonny Rollins	January 31 1962
Little Girl Blue	Lorenz Hart-Richard Rodgers	January 31 1962
Tune Up	Miles Davis	January 31 1962
Side Two
Hip Funk	Grant Green	January 31 1962
My Favorite Things	Oscar Hammerstein II-Richard Rodgers	January 31 1962

Liner Notes

The business of jazz is extremely difficult to describe to someone not involved in it. Most fans are aware of the qualities that made a great jazz musician: an individual sound; the ability to improvise melodically ("telling a story," in Lester Young's phrase); to swing, etc. There are any number of great jazz musicians who may be deficient in one of these areas, but generally they make up for it by doing one of the other things much better than other players. Yet in all this discussion, there has been no mention of playing melody. Name me a great jazzman who couldn't take a melody and make it uniquely his own.

Grant Green was widely known for his ability to play melodies. It didn't really matter what kind of melodies because Grant could do Latin tunes (See Blue Note 84111 — The Latin Bit); Gospel songs (Blue Note 84132 — Feelin' The Spirit); Western melodies (Blue Note 84310 — Goin' West); as well as standards, blues, or jazz tunes. He had a great guitar sound and knew instinctively how to make melodies come alive.

Grant really arrived in 1961. He had made records in 1959 with his hometown friend, Jimmy Forrest, for Delmark and the following year he recorded with organist Sam Lazar, another St. Louis musician, for Argo. But when Lou Donaldson heard him playing in East St. Louis, he convinced Grant and clubowner Leo Gooden to come to New York and talk with Alfred Lion of Blue Note. From 1961 through 1965, Grant Green made more Blue Note lps as leader and sideman than anyone else. Clearly, he was a favorite, not only of Lion, but of Ike Quebec who did much of the A&R work for Blue Note until his death in 1963.

Considering Grant's versatility, it is not unusual that Blue Note used him in a variety of contexts: Herbie Hancock, Lee Morgan, John Patton, Lou Donaldson, Ike Quebec.

At a time when Down Beat was still giving New Star awards, Grant won in 1962. But critical raves have never helped in earning a living. Grant worked often with Jack McDuff during those early years, and was really scuffling for money. In addition to everything else, Grant had a narcotics habit. Now it may be hard to understand in the jazz world of 1979 when musicians have generally learned to avoid the excesses of heroin and get their business together, but jazz players were very low in the economic strata of the early 60s, and one consistent source of revenue was the record company. It seems likely that Blue Note recorded Grant frequently during those years because he was always drawing money from Blue Note. Grant did at least six LP sessions under his own leadership for Blue Note in 1961! The furious recording pace continued right into 1965, and try as they might, Blue Note could never issue the LPs as fast as Grant could record them!

In a sense, Grant's situation and that of Sonny Clark were similar. They had the identical problems and each was a Blue Note favorite.

The initial pairing of these two talents came just before Christmas, 1961, and resulted in the album, Gooden's Corner. Sam Jones and Louis Hayes were still members of Cannonball Adderley's band at the time, and their appearance together is another reminder of Blue Note's care in assembling rhythm sections. Alfred Lion's choice of bass and drums almost always reflected an ability to play together in support of the leader, rather than to demonstrate individual brilliance.

The tunes played here are not unusual for Grant, although it should be noted that he had an attraction for Sonny Rollins lines. He also recorded "Solid" and "Sonnymoon For Two" during this period. A later version of "My Favorite Things" was issued on the Matador album.

Grant never does get the tricky theme of "Oleo" exactly right, but it doesn't deter him from fashioning a solo of lightning-like inventiveness. Sonny Clark has always been considered a disciple of Bud Powell and perhaps the chief reason for that is the dynamic flow of his ideas. When playing standards, he sometimes would adopt a lighter touch (reminding one of Hank Jones in his delicacy), but his work throughout this session is in the cooking Powell mode.

If Grant has problems with "Oleo", he has none with "Tune Up." The melody, introduced and long-credited to Miles Davis, was actually written by saxophonist-bluesman Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, who gave the tune to Davis during a period when he — Vinson — was not recording. Virtually the same thing happened with another Vinson composition, "Four."

Green was always at home with the blues and "Hip Funk" is his adaption of the classic form that was definitely hip (meaning fashionable) for 1962. Sonny Clark was also a blues master as his work ably demonstrates.

Hearing the music on this album (and Gooden's Corner) makes one immediately interested in hearing more. Alas, there is no more by the quartet, but a bit more than a month later, these same four players joined forces with Ike Quebec for an album that will be forthcoming on Blue Note.

Between 1965 and 1968, Green was still active as a performer, but his recorded appearances were few. When he returned to Blue Note in 1969, he had rid himself of the narcotics problem, but had acquired a new attitude toward music. The huge success of Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and George Benson was very much on his mind. He considered himself the musical equal of all of them, yet he was the only one not to have made a significant commercial breakthrough.

His repertoire tended more toward rhythm & blues during his late Blue Note period. He would use repetitive vamps rather than chord changes as a harmonic underpinning and his attention to phrasing melodies (always an outstanding feature of his work) become even more pronounced. And the commercial break happened for him! From 1969 to mid-1974, his Blue Note LPs were consistent best sellers and he was a popular attraction at clubs across the USA. He split with Blue Note shortly thereafter and made an LP for Kudu and another for Versatile.

Grant spent much of 1978 in the hospital with a variety of ailments, and he was not a well man when released in December, 1978. His doctors advised him to rest, but there were expenses to meet, so he want back on the road almost immediately. He died of a heart attack on January 31, 1979 - seventeen years to the day of this recording.

During 1969 and 1970 when I was producing records for Prestige, I got to know Grant Green well. He played on albums with Rusty Bryant, Don Patterson, Charles Kynard, and Houston Person which I supervised. I used to marvel at the ease with which this man with enormous hands could make that guitar sing. At one session, during a break, he treated everyone to a solo rendition of "Oleo" which was stunning. After his death, I though many time of how his career would be judged by historians, since so much of his later recordings were in a commercial vein. But with albums such as Matador, Gooden's Corner, and now Oleo, his stature is assured. Without question, Grant Green was one of the major artists on the guitar during his lifetime. His friend, Lou Donaldson, put it best when he said:

"All the top guitarists who came later — like George Benson and Pat Martino they've got some of Grant's stuff."

— BOB PORTER

75th Anniversary CD Reissue Notes

This was the third of four amazing sessions, which remained unissued for almost 20 years, made within three months with Sonny Clark, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes (with Art Blakey sitting in on the second session and Ike Quebec added on the fourth). The first was the excellent "Gooden's Corner".

"Oleo" is as good if not better. Green and this rhythm section blend perfectly and inspire each other. The guitarist's choice of material from jazz classics like "Oleo" (Grant loved to play Sonny Rollins tunes) and "Tune Up" to originals like "Hip Funk" to standards like "Little Girl Blue" and "My Favorite Things" is a wonderfully balanced program that shows off each musician's considerable range.

Playing this version of "My Favorite Things" and then the version Grant Green made two-and-a-half years later with McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw and Elvin Jones makes for fascinating comparative listening.

Michael Cuscuna