5-27548-2

 Grant Green - First Session

Released - 2001

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 26, 1960
Wynton Kelly, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.2 Just Friends
tk.4 Sonnymoon For Two
tk.7 He's A Real Gone Guy
tk.11 Seepin'
tk.12 Grant's First Stand

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 27, 1961
Sonny Clark, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

tk.4 Woody'n You (take 4)
tk.7 Woody'n You (take 7)

Also:
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 26, 1960
Wynton Kelly, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

A Night In Tunisia rejected
Jordu rejected

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Title	Author	Recording Date
He's A Real Gone Guy	Nellie Lutcher	November 16 1960
Seepin'	Grant Green	November 16 1960
Just Friends	J. Klenner, S. Lewis	November 16 1960
Grant's First Stand	Grant Green	November 16 1960
Sonnymoon For Two	Sonny Rollins	November 16 1960
Woody 'N' You (Take 4)	Dizzy Gillespie	October 27 1961
Woody 'N' You (Take 7)	Dizzy Gillespie	October 27 1961

Liner Notes

GRANT GREEN'S music was beautiful and his soul and spirit emanated from each note he played. Initially hailed by critics and fans alike, his contribution to the jazz language was eventually forgotten until many years after his death in 1979. Robert Levin described Green as being in the lineage of Charlie Christian and Eddie Lang, who were from the "single-string school," which could be interpreted as a horn-like approach to soloing. When Grant Green was developing as a guitarist, he absorbed much of the jazz tradition in his hometown of St. Louis. He had remarked to Mr. Levin in the notes to his debut release on Blue Note (Grant's First Stand) that "l don't listen to guitar players much — just horn players. I used to sit up all night copying Charlie Parker solos note for note." Grant had already apprenticed in rhythm and blues groups in the Midwest as well as the groups of Jimmy Forrest and Sam Lazar when he caught the ear of a touring Lou Donaldson.

It was at Donaldson's recommendation that Grant was signed to Blue Note Records. Alfred Lion went into the studio with Grant on November 16, 1960 to record what would have been Grant's Blue Note debut. Lion surrounded Grant with the best rhythm section of the day — musicians associated with Miles Davis (who had a tremendous admiration for Grant and had the most popular small group in jazz at the time). Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers were in the current Davis band and Philly Joe Jones was a recent alumnus. However, the results of this day were not released at the time. Clearly, the date was not as strong as most Blue Note sessions of the period. This same rhythm section had participated in Hank Mobley's magnificent Roll Call date five days earlier and perhaps Lion had hoped that the same magic would emerge on Grant's debut session.

Nellie Lutcher's "He's A Real Gone Guy" is the one performance that Lion thought was completely successful. It is a blues and Grant starts swinging hard. Philly Joe kicks into a shuffle (a style he learned from his days working with the Joe Morris band in the late forties) midway into Grant's solo. Kelly follows Grant with another of his patented 'good feeling' solos, which could lift the dark clouds off of a rainy day. After Kelly's solo ends, there is a little uncertainty, but the band falls back into the groove in just a few beats. Grant plays an out-chorus solo leading back into the melody (as Jones drive it home with his patented shuffle beat). The band swings out with a shout chorus tag and an almost Red Garland-type ending.

"Seepin"' is a slow blues that is the perfect kind of gravy song for Grant. He digs deep into the blues with a late night, smoky club groove. This was the kind of tempo that separated the men from the boys! Jones doubles the tempo in the middle of Grant's solo, which allows the guitarist to extend his melodic conception into a more boppish groove. Kelly turns the blues into a pretty woman by using major and suspended dominant fourth chords instead of the dominant seventh chords usually associated with the blues. Chambers get his turn to sing the blues with a beautifully melodic solo, then Grant returns for one more drink of the blues as Philly Joe goes to the sticks and the song climaxes to a typical blues ending. At just under 12 minutes, it is a wonderful compliment to Grant's understanding of the blues and Lion's desire to capture the essence of Grant.

"Just Friends" reveals how uneasy Grant was in his recording debut as a leader. His notes are not as smooth and he seems nervous. The intensity of the rhythm section was in many ways opposite to the natural setting that Grant had come up in, i.e., the organ group. After a first try at "Just Friends," the band kicked off the master at a brighter tempo. Grant still seemed uncertain. But the band swings hard and the Kelly-Chambers-Jones team is splendid. This rhythm section created a happy, buoyant groove that Grant had yet to get used to.

"Grant's First Stand" was rerecorded on Grant's official recording debut (Grant's First Stand), but it is interesting to hear the difference between this initial recording and the second version. The form is a standard minor blues and you can hear Grant echoing his patented blues lines as well as making a reference to Bizet's Carmen (an oft used "quote"). There is some nice interplay between Grant and Kelly at the end of Grant's first solo section. Jones drops his dynamic and explosive snare hits during Kelly's solo as only Jones can do and Chambers plays (as usual) a well-proportioned solo. Grant and Jones get into a little interplay on the second guitar solo (this is a common format used by Grant in most of his recordings).

"Sonnymoon For Two" kicks off into a great blues - four feel and finds Grant in his element. His solo contains the elements that were to be found in his recordings from this point on; a strict regard to the blues scale, the use of motifs around that scale, the repetition of a phrase (sometimes transposed to allow for a harmonic variation) and a strong sense of swing and economy. Grant already knew how to make everything he played personal. Kelly provides some responsive comping and Philly Joe's explosive drumming adds to the intensity of this performance.

Lion shelved this recording session and waited until January 1961 to record Grant again; a span of seven days when Lou Donaldson's Here 'Tis, Grant's Grant's First Stand and Baby Face Willette's Face To Face would all be recorded with the Green-Willette-Ben Dixon rhythm section. Grant would then become the house guitarist for Blue Note for the next four years, recording with Stanley Turrentine, Hank Mobley, Horace Parlan, Ike Quebec, Dodo Greene, Don Wilkerson, Jimmy Smith, John Patton, Herbie Hancock, Harold Vick, George Braith, Lee Morgan, Larry Young and Donald Byrd. He was the guitarist of choice if you wanted something that had soul and feeling, and his contributions to those sessions are remarkable.

Grant had an uncanny rapport with the pianist Sonny Clark. They recorded six sessions together (most under Grant's leadership) and Lion knew that he had a good team when they recorded together. Clark was another musician who died young and fell into obscurity until the mid-seventies when Japan rediscovered him and critics started listening to him again. "Woody 'N' You" is all that came out of the October 27, 1961 session by Grant with Clark, Butch Warren and Billy Higgins. They also attempted, but never completed, a version of Tadd Dameron's "Lady Bird" before the rest of the session was called off. The performances are a little loose but when the band gets swinging the groove won't stop.

Grant recorded for Blue Note until 1966. After that, he went into semi-retirement until 1969 when he reemerged as a leader for Blue Note. He began performing more funk and rhythm and blues material/ and soon he was absorbed into the inner-city music circuit.

John Scofield remembers that as a young student at Berklee in the early seventies, "Grant was almost completely unknown. At that time speed was everything and the main guys on guitar were George Benson, Pat Martino, Tal Farlow and John McLaughlin. Grant played everything as if it were slowed down. It was only later that I realized that he swung hard. I saw him at Connelley's in Boston with an organ group and it was mostly funk. He was playing the 'chitlin' circuit' and most musicians didn't pay much attention to that scene. The first recording of him that I heard was Larry Young's Info Somethin' and one of my favorites was Lee Morgan's Search For The New Land. He had unstoppable swing."

But by the end of the eighties, there was a resurgence in Grant Green's jazz output. The acid jazz movement of the early nineties pushed Grant's funk catalog into the forefront of popular culture (Us3 used the introduction to Grant's version of "Sookie, Sookie" on one of their hit albums for Blue Note) and soon everybody was digging Grant. Now there are countless guitarists who are deeply influenced by Grant and his music is being reevaluated as never before. This CD marks the beginning of a great musician's journey.

—BOB BELDEN