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

3-63522-2

Grant Green - Live At Club Mozambique

Released - 2006

Recording and Session Information

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 1st set, January 6, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

Patches Blue Note rejected
More Today Than Yesterday -
One Less Bell To Answer -
Bottom Of The Barrel -
Jan Jan -
Make It Easy On Yourself -
Farid Blue Note unissued
One More Chance Blue Note rejected

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 2nd set, January 6, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

Patches Blue Note rejected
One Less Bell To Answer -
Bottom Of The Barrel Blue Note unissued
I Am Somebody -
Glenda Blue Note rejected
One More Chance -
Walk On By Blue Note unissued

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 3rd set, January 6, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

Jan Jan Blue Note rejected
More Today Than Yesterday -
One More Chance Blue Note unissued

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 1st set, January 7, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

One More Chance Blue Note rejected
Jan Jan -
More Today Than Yesterday Blue Note unissued
Farid Blue Note rejected

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 2nd set, January 7, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

I Am Somebody Blue Note rejected
Patches -
Bottom Of The Barrel -
Walk On By -
Glenda Blue Note unissued
Make It Easy On Yourself -

"Club Mozambique", Detroit, MI, 3rd set, January 7, 1971
Houston Person, tenor sax; Clarence Thomas, tenor, soprano sax; Ronnie Foster, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Idris Muhammad, drums.

Jan Jan Blue Note unissued
Patches -
I Am Somebody Blue Note rejected
Walk On By -
One More Chance Blue Note unissued

Track Listing

Title	Author	Recording Date
Jan Jan	M. Davis	January 6/7 1971
Farid	Clarence Thomas	January 6/7 1971
Bottom Of The Barrel	Unknown Artist	January 6/7 1971
Walk On By	B. Bacharach-H. David	January 6/7 1971
More Today Than Yesterday	Patrick N. Upton	January 6/7 1971
One More Chance	The Corporation	January 6/7 1971
Patches	G. Johnson-R. Dunbar	January 6/7 1971
I Am Somebody	Arthur Snyder	January 6/7 1971

Liner Notes

Grant Green's Live at Club Mozambique is a long awaited release from the Blue Note vaults. Listed in the Blue Note Discography for years, fans have wondered just what was on those tapes and why they were never issued. The clues were tantalizing; the rhythm tandem of Ronnie Foster and Idris Muhammad, soul tenor star Houston Person, 13 sets recorded at a hip, urban location. Grant had a love affair with both the city of Detroit and Club Mozambique (including the club owner, Cornelius Watts). Grant had moved to Detroit in the late-'60s and used the city as a base (as his gigs were mostly in the industrial north and midwest). That way he could be involved in a thriving local music scene but still be considered a national star. The club itself was central to determined, inner-city working class residents as a venue for beauty pageants, business meetings, and private parties, which were all part of Mr. Watt's social outreach.

So begs the question: Why was this music unreleased for 35 years? Only conjecture will suffice as there are rarely written records as to the decisions of record companies. (Even to this day much of a record company's business is still spoken, as if to leave no clues.) If one were to look at what recorded music Blue Note Records had in the can (unissued, probably 15 Green albums by 1 971 ) and then compare that to what was current at the time (Alive had been recorded just 5 months earlier at a Newark club, and Visions and The Final Comedown, both studio outings, were recorded and 11 months later), the A&R staff probably saw the Mozambique sessions as overkill. But a closer look reveals a distinct change in the repertoire from Alive to Visions. The live recording environments of Alive and Live at Club Mozambique focus on songs that appealed directly to the inner-city audience. The studio recordings, Visions (1971) and Shades of Green (1972), seemed to be shaped by the emerging FM market, a production sound that had to compete with Creed Taylor and the CTI releases at the time (and a socioeconomic demographic shift in the black communities' taste in music). Grant's studio album song list came from Pop-AM-FM playlists. Clearly this distinction may explain the natural suppression of another inner-city live recording in support of a studio-derived pop-crossover recording by a West Coast-based label (where Blue Note had relocated by 1972).

By 1973, after Grant had left Blue Note (literally caught in the middle), the company was now managed in Los Angeles and the A&R focus was firmly established. Any interest in additional Grant Green albums was probably considered unnecessary. With Grant's passing in 1979 and the reconsideration of his talents (with the considerable help of the Blue Note reissued series, some well-informed jazz critics, Mosaic Records, and of course, jazz musicians), the unissued Green material became somewhat hallowed and more often revered. As the nineties brought groove music back into commercial reality, Grant's overlooked and demeaned crossover albums from 1969 onwards became sought after by collectors and DJs, eventually crossing over into mainstream pop with the Us3 hit based on "Sookie, Sookie." Albums of Grant's that would sell for $2 in 1980 now sold for $75 in 1995. With this newfound enthusiasm for Grant's soul-funk period, the lingering curiosity about what could be uncovered in the Mozambique sessions began to mount. And now, here it is...

The band Grant assembled for the session was made up of his working musicians, Clarence Thomas and Ronnie Foster, and augmented for this recording session with Houston Person and Idris Muhammad. Houston had a long-term relationship with Grant and even had Grant guest on his Prestige LP Person to Person (recorded October 1970). Coincidentally, one of Grant's final live recordings would also be for Houston (Eastbound, 1973). Houston is a true soulful tenor giant who can communicate directly with whatever audience for which he performed. His feel has not diminished by the passing years and if one were to compare this recording with any new CD on High Note, one would see the elegance and consistency of a master.

Another master of his art, Idris Muhammad, was flown in from New York (along with producer Frank Wolff and engineer Ed Greene) because this recording had to have "that thing." Idris's style was the signature of the new Blue Note sound that emerged from 1967 onward, a style that brought the label back to the black neighborhoods and to the jukebox dance crowd. It was because of the beat provided by Idris (and other drummers on Blue Note and its competitors) that made the connection between current popular music and jazz return to the urban jazz crowd (even if for a brief fling until the mid-seventies).

Organist Ronnie Foster soon became a Blue Note recording artist in his own right, no doubt due to the support of Grant Green, who "discovered" him. Ronnie's trademark is his strong bass lines that never drop out and always remain bass lines. He and Idris get tight right away and propel the music into a groove paradise. And it's in the pocket all the time. "Unrelenting," as Woody Herman would have said.

Clarence Thomas remains a mystery today, one of many who graced the music scene for a hot minute and then faded away. But his style was concurrent with others who graced Grant's bandstand. Organist Lonnie Smith, upon mentioning Thomas's name, recalls "a cat from Florida" but doesn't remember a cat of that name really sticking out on the scene. He and Houston do make a nice complement, with each sharing a common language yet having distinct traits. Clarence's leanings towards Coltrane would reflect Grant's desire to have some of that energy. After all, Grant did record with McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones.

The songs were again staples of black Urban or crossover radio. Clarence Carter's "Patches" was on both black and white stations at the time as well as "Walk on By: made famous by Dionne Warwick. Not exactly urban, but very soulful nonetheless, "More Today Than Yesterday" was a big interracial hit by The Spiral Staircase (especially in the south during the '60s). "I Am Somebody" was a regional hit for Johnnie Taylor (later of "Disco Lady" fame). Somewhat derived from the James Brown formula, it still carries a lot of groove. "One More Chance" was a hit for the Jackson 5 at the time (and co-written by the Mizell Brothers, later of Donald Byrd Blackbyrd fame). "Farid" is an original by Clarence Thomas. This would be the musician track, or the one song that was not meant for radio. As a result, Grant's playing is looser and more like his work from the mid-sixties. "Jan Jan" is a groove track taken at a brisk tempo. The composer is the mysterious M. Davis (not Miles Davis). "Bottom of the Barrel" is probably an original but there is no listed composer. It is really a jam piece on one chord — but what a chord!

Grant Green sounds like Grant Green. Every note is perfect. Perfect. I've never, ever complained. Why? Because to me, inside those notes are the echoes of beauty and peace that he could only express in the elegance of his music. Not in spoken words. Only musical phrases. Sometimes that's the only way an artist can communicate with the outside world. It's very dangerous due to its nature of insularity, but for the most part it's unavoidable. For Grant, you can hear, in the notes, something innocent but surrounded by avarice. His way of dealing with the world was by way of a connection with eternal music. The melody. And the way he soloed, like a long-form melody. So his melodies became the elixir for the avarice that surrounded him. In the end, melodies are not enough. I think he just gave up.

It is difficult to discuss in detail the actual music on this CD. Feeling can't be quantified nor qualified. My only suggestion is to listen from all places. It is the past and the present because you are hearing this for the first time. But this recording has no past, as time has not allowed contemplation. You have it all to yourselves...and Grant Green!

Bob Belden, 2006

8-21284-2

Grant Green - Standards

Released - 1998

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 29, 1961
Horace Parlan, piano #1; Grant Green, guitar; Wilbur Ware, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

Love Walked In rejected
tk.5 I'll Remember April
tk.6 You And The Night And The Music
tk.9 All The Things You Are
tk.13 If Had You (alternate take)
tk.14 If Had You
tk.15 I Remember You
tk.17 You Stepped Out Of A Dream
tk.18 Love Walked In

See Also: GXF-3071

Track Listing

Title	Author	Recording Date
You Stepped Out Of A Dream	G. Kahn-M.H. Brown	August 29 1961
Love Walked In	G. Gershwin-I.Gershwin	August 29 1961
If I Had You	Irving Berlin	August 29 1961
I'll Remember April	Raye-De Paul-Johnston	August 29 1961
You And The Night And The Music	A. Schwartz-H. Dietz	August 29 1961
All The Things You Are	J. Kern-O. Hammerstein	August 29 1961
I Remember You	J. Mercer-V. Schertzinger	August 29 1961
If I Had You (Alt Tk)	Irving Berlin	August 29 1961

Liner Notes

For all its beauty and fresh sounding vitality, the music in this album ultimately proves a sobering listening experience. Sobering because it reminds us anew of the great, thrilling promise that was implicit in Grant Green's earliest work, a promise that for a number of reasons, most of them having little to do with music, failed to develop beyond the levels achieved in his first few years of performing and recording. As this group of performances reasserts, the early to middle 1960s, following the guitarist's move to New York City, can be seen as having comprised the most productive, consistently creative period of Green's two-decade career in jazz' major leagues.

A mature, seasoned veteran with more than 15 years' performing experience in both jazz and rhythm-and-blues groups, Green was nearly 30 when he made the move to the East Coast. Born June 6, 1931, in St. Louis, Mo., he had begun guitar studies while still in elementary school, and by age 13 had graduated to full professionalism. "The first thing I played was boogie woogie," he noted of these early experiences. "Then I had to do a lot of rock and roll. It's all the blues, anyhow. Everything comes in handy in music," he added pragmatically. "A musician should be able to play anything when the situation calls for it."

It was in late 1959 that Green, having moved to Chicago, had made his first recording — for the small Delmark label — a date under the leadership of tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest in whose combo Green had performed when both were St. Louis residents. Following this he worked for a brief time in mid-1960 with organist Sam Lazar with whose quartet he recorded an album for the Chess jazz subsidiary Argo Records. Then at summer's end it was off to New York City where, thanks to his experience and versatility, he found ready employment, most often with the small organ-led combos then in vogue, the best known of which was Jack McDuff's.

During this time alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson introduced the guitarist to Blue Note's Alfred Lion and before the year was out Green found himself under contract to the label. Green's first Blue Note recording session, a Donaldson-led quartet date that also included organist Baby Face Willette and drummer Ben Dixon, took place early in 1961, and was followed within a week by his own first session as a leader, with Willette and Dixon on board, and appearing on the organist's debut recording for the label. The next few months saw the guitarist participating in a dizzying succession of record dates, performing on sessions led by Jack McDuff (on which he was reunited with Jimmy Forrest) for Prestige Records; tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, a "live" recording made at Minton's Playhouse that resulted in two LPs; tenorist Hank Mobley, leading a quintet that included Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones; Green's second album as leader, with bassist Ben Tucker and drummer Dave Bailey, as well as Willette's second LP; a Horace Parlan quintet date; a second album with McDuff, again for Prestige; Green's third LP session, with Yusef Lateef, McDuff and Al Harewood and, finally, the present recording which, admitted excellence not-withstanding, is here released for the first time.

What is perhaps most interesting about the six performances, taped in late August of 1961, just about a year after his arrival on the New York scene, is their conventionalism — what they reveal about Green's easy mastery of mainstream modern jazz guitar as it had been practiced over the preceding decade or so. The most widely held view of Green was that fostered by the majority of recordings on which he had appeared; that he was fundamentally a swinging blues-based player, master of funk and like earthy musics.

Which, of course, he was; his effortless, creative command of these forms is documented on album after album from every stage of his recording career. But that's not all Green was or aspired to. As is so well attested by these (and other) performances, the guitarist was an eloquent, thoughtful, imaginatively resourceful player of standard ballads, his handling of which evidenced both melodic fertility and a thoroughgoing mastery of harmony.

Green was, in fact, a complete guitarist and had developed his approach to the instrument through conventional music studies. As for most electric guitarists, Charlie Christian had been his earliest inspiration — "You can't get around him," Green emphasized — and, through recordings, chief stylistic model as well. While Christian's singing, single-note approach was the fundamental source of Green's, it is instructive to note that of modern, post-Christian players of the instrument Green cited Jimmy Raney as a major influence on the shaping of his own mature style. Raney, it will be recalled, has been highly regarded for the uncommon lucidity and intelligence of his musical thought, the breadth of his knowledge of harmony and the elegant, thoughtful melodism of his approach to improvisation, all qualities Green sought to emulate in his own handling of the more sophisticated ballad form. Kenny Burrell, with a style that also fused elements of Christian and Raney, was another guitarist Green admired.

Few guitarists, Christian and Raney included, develop mastery of the instrument without reference to at least some earlier approaches; however, once this is achieved, the guitarist may look beyond the instrument for further inspiration. Green, for example, observed in the early 1960s, "I don't listen to guitar players much. I dig horn players. I was very much influenced by Charlie Parker — very much."

This set of well-chosen ballads combines all of these elements. Christian's crisp, swinging attack and impeccable time sense find contemporary echoes in Green's — "If I Had You" is a particularly good example which even on legato statements possess an incisive staccato quality. Also, like Parker, there is always an underlying blues tonality to the strong clearly focused command of melodic invention and its anchoring knowledge of harmony that characterize his approach to improvising. The influence of Raney and other modern guitarists is to be seen in the choice of material, its harmonic reordering and the emphasis on lucidity and intelligence in organizing solos. What these performances most clearly indicate, however, is how fully Green had become his own man, with a sound, attack and approach to improvisation uniquely his own as well as a maturity of conception that placed him among the foremost, fluently creative guitarists of the day.

Commenting on his first guitar-bass-drums trio recording [Green Street, Blue Note 4071], John S. Wilson described Green's approach to the instrument: "His notes are clean, deliberate and full-bodied, avoiding both the clangor of some post-Christian guitarists and the muddiness of recent soul-influenced guitar men. He plays with a strong, swinging quality on both ballads and up-tempo swingers. His ideas are fresh without stretching for effect. He is working time-worn and time-proved jazz territory in a manner that shows how lastingly useful the basic elements of jazz can be in firmly creative hands." The description can stand for these selections as well, taped only five months later.

For one thing, the group heard here was an exemplary version of the guitarist's favored instrumentation. "Guitar and organ go well together," he has said of the setting in which he was most frequently obliged to perform and record in the early 1960s. "But my favorite trio is guitar, bass and drums. You can really stretch out and nothing gets cluttered up." In stating this preference, Green might have been talking about this specific trio, for in nonpareil bassist Wilbur Ware and brisk, tasteful drummer Al Harewood he had found virtually the ideal playing partners. Thoughtful, sensitive, empathetic and, above all, venturesome musicians, Ware and Harewood were truly the guitarist's peers not only in their command of their respective instruments but on the conceptual level as well. As a result, this particular unit, despite its ad hoc nature, achieved phenomenal levels of ensemble integration and artistic success. Theirs was not simply the standard soloist-with-accompaniment format but, rather, represented a genuinely collective approach to improvisation among three perfectly matched, like-thinking and responsive musicians united in common cause.

These performances strike and maintain unusually high levels of interactive artistry, and in fact the most notable feature of the trio's work is the consistency of its rapport. It's hard to single out individual performances for special mention, although Love Walked In" and "I'll Remember April" might serve to typify a number of the elements that make the trio's work so special. Taken at bright medium-up tempos, the pieces crackle with barely suppressed excitement right from the outset, as though Green and company couldn't wait to get started on their recasting of the songs' melodic-harmonic potentials.

Once past the theme statement, the guitarist usually builds his solos slowly, his opening chorus invariably fairly conservative in character, with each succeeding one building in greater melodic-rhythmic complexity, ever richer imaginative resourcefulness and mounting, spark-producing intensity. It's as though the very act of playing enlivens and sets free his imagination, triggering a cascading flow of invention. Green's second chorus on Love Walked In," for example, consists of a gracefully shaped, virtually seamless improvised line that runs uninterrupted for almost the entire length of the chorus. The final bars of this solo, leading directly to Ware's perfect one-chorus statement, make use of a device Green often favoured: that of repeating a phrase several times, with only slight variations, building an effective charge of tension he then defuses. On his unrelenting inventive "I'll Remember April" solo is to be found a fine example of call-and-response phrasing, another device he used in constructing his improvisations.

Following him on the piece, Ware contributes a buoyant solo that, possibly taking a page from Green's book, gets under way with a telling use of repetition and then strides into a dancing, surprise-filled set of inventions demonstrating both breathtaking technical mastery and unerring musical intelligence, and employing a number of the characteristic devices for which he was noted among his peers -double-stops, complex rhythmic displacements, rests and in general an uncommonly effective use of space.

Then too, there's Green's beautifully conceived solo on "You and the Night and the Music," variations organized three distinct ways: those conceived primarily as permutations of the song's melodic contour, those stemming directly from its harmonic armature and, third, those with a predominantly rhythmic basis, taking their impetus from the cadential character of the theme materials. While all three modes are present simultaneously in every improvisation, Green has so ordered his solo on this selection that we are able to discern his reliance on each as it assumes primacy in his mind, making for an instructive as well as immensely pleasurable listening experience. We literally can hear him think his way through the piece. But then, each of his, Ware's and Harewood's contributions —individually and collectively — to these six performances reveal to us men engaged by and responding to their art and its materials with fervent, spirited creativity, keen intelligence and utter rapport.

Although not released during their lifetimes, these selections add richly to the discographies of Green and Ware both of whom, it will be recalled, died in 1979. Considering the vastness of his talent, the bassist left behind a pitifully meagre body of recordings, which is swelled considerably by his work on this session, for his contributions were pivotally important to the artistic success this trio achieved in its short existence. Green, too, is well served by these performances, far better in fact than by most of the recordings he made during the last decade-and-a-half of his life when the exigencies of keeping a group working, no less than self-imposed, external and often conflicting pressures towards the production of music of a more commercially-oriented nature, resulted in a large number of insipid performances of unworthy material. Even more sadly for Green, the popular success he and his producers sought so determinedly failed to materialize, so the guitarist had trivialized his music for nothing. Fortunately for us, however, the true nature of his artistry has been well documented on his Blue Note recordings from the early to middle 1960s, to the best of which can now be added this splendid, recently discovered trio session. Like his finest work from this period, this music will endure.

Pete Welding

5-21438-2

Grant Green - Blues For Lou

Released - 1999

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 20, 1963
John Patton, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Ben Dixon, drums.

tk.6 Look At The Girl
tk.10 Personality
tk.11 The Surrey With The Fringe On Top
tk.15 This Little Girl Of Mine
tk.24 Have You Ever Had The Blues
tk.28 Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying
tk.31 Big John

I'm Just A Lucky So And So rejected

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 7, 1963
John Patton, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Ben Dixon, drums.

tk.26 Blues For Lou

Track Listing

Title	Author	Recording Date
The Surrey With The Fringe On Top	R. Rodgers-O. Hammerstein II	February 20 1963
Blues For Lou	Grant Green	June 7 1963
Big John	John Patton	February 20 1963
Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying	Joe Greene	February 20 1963
Look At That Girl	Ben Dixon	February 20 1963
This Little Girl Of Mine	Ray Charles	February 20 1963
Personality	H. Logan-L. Price	February 20 1963
Have You Ever Had The Blues	H. Logan-L. Price	February 20 1963

Liner Notes

ON June 6, 1999, I turned on the local jazz station and was treated to a birthday celebration of Grant Green's music. Within days, I received the biography of Grant Green — Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar; and a call to do the liner notes for this unreleased 1963 Grant Green material.

A momentous week for me because I had been thinking about Grant a lot recently, specifically about our meeting in 1972. I was privileged to introduce Grant on his last Blue Note album — Grant Green Live At The Lighthouse; we did an interview and hung out after rehearsals preceding the date. The gig was an unforgettable party. So, to be able to become a part of the Blue Note liner note luminaries who have lauded the guitar genius of Grant Green is monumental to me.

Grant is joined in this session by his buddy organist Big John Patton and drummer Ben Dixon. They debuted as a trio on Donaldson's The Natural Soul album. And when you give this newly released material an earnest listen, you can feel just that in their playing.

The mix is a blend of jump, blues, cha cha, ballads, swing, R&B, and bop, including the compositions of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Ray Charles, Lloyd Price, Joe Greene, and the trio themselves. It was Lou Donaldson who had introduced Green and Patton to Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. In Grant's biography, he speaks of this meeting by saying that he had been presented to the "Gods of Jazz who knew music and loved the business." So, it is fitting this CD be titled as a tribute to Lou.

"The Surrey With The Fringe On Top" has never been done as robustly as this. It's frantically boppish and full of interplay. Definitely not your Broadway rendition!

"Blues For Lou" was recorded four months after the rest of the material here at the end of a Donaldson session that is now available on his A Man With A Horn CD. The trio swings bluesily in that slow, funky groove that Lou always loves.

"Big John," in a finger-poppin' "Along Came John" pocket, is reminiscent of the gospel song "This Little Light Of Mine." And do they ever shine on this one.

This is the most out-of-sight version of "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying" since Ray Charles's. Grant leads off slowly and then boppishly swings with Ben's brisk brushes underneath. Then Big John makes his statement assertively. This is indeed my favorite on the CD.

"Look At That Girl" is boogie woogie, jitterbug, and jump all tied into one furious fling. You can see the swing dancers flipping and turning each other head over heels. Grant takes the girl and whirls until Big John cuts in, not to be outdone.

"This Little Girl Of Mine" is Ray Charles's soulful variation on "This Little Light Of Mine." This version moves to Dixon's tambourine stick rhythms with sanctifying testimonials by Reverends Green and Patton.

"Personality" is the '50s R&B hit, as sung and written by Lloyd Price with whom Patton was pianist for five years. It's done a little differently here as Grant and Big John sway together in a two-step mode.

"Have You Ever Had The Blues" was also a '50s R&B B-side hit by Price that was fairly popular down south and in the midwest. Dixon shuffles the tempo as Green and Patton rock steadily in their solos. Grant Green, Big John Patton and Ben Dixon were always soul mates when they recorded. Every album, be it a Green or Patton date, or backing up Lou Donaldson, Harold Vick or Don Wilkerson, had a musical magnetism between them that was unsurpassed. Alfred Lion captured it each time they stepped into Rudy Van Gelder's studio. It's too bad they never recorded live. It would have been a combustive, vibrational experience. I'll always remember what Grant said to me about his music, "I get a big charge out of playing, Ed. I strive to get that natural feeling — to be able to play anything. I put my soul in there; I always put some green soul in my music."

Whenever you listen to Grant Green's guitar on the recordings left for posterity, you'll understand why Lou Donaldson chose to bring him to Blue Note — he was a soulful natural on guitar. He was affable, personable, serious about his music, and dug the color green. It is my favorite color and I am happy to say I got a chance to meet and hear live a man who always played with a green heart of gold — Grant Green.

-ED HAMILTON, 1999
(Author of The Jazz Bass Clef)

GXF-3071

Grant Green - Remembering

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 29, 1961
Grant Green, guitar; Wilbur Ware, bass; Al Harewood, drums.

tk.5 I'll Remember April
tk.6 You And The Night And The Music
tk.9 All The Things You Are
tk.14 If Had You
tk.15 I Remember You
tk.18 Love Walked In

See Also: 8-21284-2

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
All the Things You Are	Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern	August 29 1961
If I Had You	Irving King	August 29 1961
Love Walked In	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	August 29 1961
Side Two
I'll Remember April	de Paul-Johnston-Raye	August 29 1961
You and the Night and the Music	Howard Dietz, Arthur Schwartz	August 29 1961
I Remember You	Johnny Mercer, Victor Schertzinger	August 29 1961

Liner Notes

For all its beauty and fresh sounding vitality, the music in this album ultimately proves a sobering listening experience. Sobering because it reminds us anew of the great, thrilling promise that was implicit in Grant Green's earliest work, a promise that for a number of reasons, most of them having little to do with music, failed to develop beyond the levels achieved in his first few years of performing and recording. As this group of performances reasserts, the early to middle 1960s, following the guitarist's move to New York City, can be seen as having comprised the most productive, consistently creative period of Green's two-decade career in jazz' major leagues.

A mature, seasoned veteran with more than 15 years' performing experience in both jazz and rhythm-and-blues groups, Green was nearly 30 when he made the move to the East Coast. Born June 6, 1931, in St. Louis, Mo., he had begun guitar studies while still in elementary school, and by age 13 had graduated to full professionalism. "The first thing I played was boogie woogie," he noted of these early experiences. "Then I had to do a lot of rock and roll. It's all the blues, anyhow. Everything comes in handy in music," he added pragmatically. "A musician should be able to play anything when the situation calls for it."

It was in late 1959 that Green, having moved to Chicago, had made his first recording — for the small Delmark label — a date under the leadership of tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest in whose combo Green had performed when both were St. Louis residents. Following this he worked for a brief time in mid-1960 with organist Sam Lazar with whose quartet he recorded an album for the Chess jazz subsidiary Argo Records. Then at summer's end it was off to New York City where, thanks to his experience and versatility, he found ready employment, most often with the small organ-led combos then in vogue, the best known of which was Jack McDuff's.

During this time alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson introduced the guitarist to Blue Note's Alfred Lion and before the year was out Green found himself under contract to the label. Green's first Blue Note recording session, a Donaldson-led quartet date that also included organist Baby Face Willette and drummer Ben Dixon, took place early in 1961, and was followed within a week by his own first session as a leader, with Willette and Dixon on board, and appearing on the organist's debut recording for the label. The next few months saw the guitarist participating in a dizzying succession of record dates, performing on sessions led by Jack McDuff (on which he was reunited with Jimmy Forrest) for Prestige Records; tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, a "live" recording made at Minton's Playhouse that resulted in two LPs; tenorist Hank Mobley, leading a quintet that included Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones; Green's second album as leader, with bassist Ben Tucker and drummer Dave Bailey, as well as Willette's second LP; a Horace Parlan quintet date; a second album with McDuff, again for Prestige; Green's third LP session, with Yusef Lateef, McDuff and Al Harewood and, finally, the present recording which, admitted excellence not-withstanding, is here released for the first time.

What is perhaps most interesting about the six performances, taped in late August of 1961, just about a year after his arrival on the New York scene, is their conventionalism — what they reveal about Green's easy mastery of mainstream modern jazz guitar as it had been practiced over the preceding decade or so. The most widely held view of Green was that fostered by the majority of recordings on which he had appeared; that he was fundamentally a swinging blues-based player, master of funk and like earthy musics.

Which, of course, he was; his effortless, creative command of these forms is documented on album after album from every stage of his recording career. But that's not all Green was or aspired to. As is so well attested by these (and other) performances, the guitarist was an eloquent, thoughtful, imaginatively resourceful player of standard ballads, his handling of which evidenced both melodic fertility and a thoroughgoing mastery of harmony.

Green was, in fact, a complete guitarist and had developed his approach to the instrument through conventional music studies. As for most electric guitarists, Charlie Christian had been his earliest inspiration — "You can't get around him," Green emphasized — and, through recordings, chief stylistic model as well. While Christian's singing, single-note approach was the fundamental source of Green's, it is instructive to note that of modern, post-Christian players of the instrument Green cited Jimmy Raney as a major influence on the shaping of his own mature style. Raney, it will be recalled, has been highly regarded for the uncommon lucidity and intelligence of his musical thought, the breadth of his knowledge of harmony and the elegant, thoughtful melodism of his approach to improvisation, all qualities Green sought to emulate in his own handling of the more sophisticated ballad form. Kenny Burrell, with a style that also fused elements of Christian and Raney, was another guitarist Green admired.

Few guitarists, Christian and Raney included, develop mastery of the instrument without reference to at least some earlier approaches; however, once this is achieved, the guitarist may look beyond the instrument for further inspiration. Green, for example, observed in the early 1960s, "I don't listen to guitar players much. I dig horn players. I was very much influenced by Charlie Parker — very much."

This set of well-chosen ballads combines all of these elements. Christian's crisp, swinging attack and impeccable time sense find contemporary echoes in Green's — "If I Had You" is a particularly good example which even on legato statements possess an incisive staccato quality. Also, like Parker, there is always an underlying blues tonality to the strong clearly focused command of melodic invention and its anchoring knowledge of harmony that characterize his approach to improvising. The influence of Raney and other modern guitarists is to be seen in the choice of material, its harmonic reordering and the emphasis on lucidity and intelligence in organizing solos. What these performances most clearly indicate, however, is how fully Green had become his own man, with a sound, attack and approach to improvisation uniquely his own as well as a maturity of conception that placed him among the foremost, fluently creative guitarists of the day.

Commenting on his first guitar-bass-drums trio recording [Green Street, Blue Note 4071], John S. Wilson described Green's approach to the instrument: "His notes are clean, deliberate and full-bodied, avoiding both the clangor of some post-Christian guitarists and the muddiness of recent soul-influenced guitar men. He plays with a strong, swinging quality on both ballads and up-tempo swingers. His ideas are fresh without stretching for effect. He is working time-worn and time-proved jazz territory in a manner that shows how lastingly useful the basic elements of jazz can be in firmly creative hands." The description can stand for these selections as well, taped only five months later.

For one thing, the group heard here was an exemplary version of the guitarist's favored instrumentation. "Guitar and organ go well together," he has said of the setting in which he was most frequently obliged to perform and record in the early 1960s. "But my favorite trio is guitar, bass and drums. You can really stretch out and nothing gets cluttered up." In stating this preference, Green might have been talking about this specific trio, for in nonpareil bassist Wilbur Ware and brisk, tasteful drummer Al Harewood he had found virtually the ideal playing partners. Thoughtful, sensitive, empathetic and, above all, venturesome musicians, Ware and Harewood were truly the guitarist's peers not only in their command of their respective instruments but on the conceptual level as well. As a result, this particular unit, despite its ad hoc nature, achieved phenomenal levels of ensemble integration and artistic success. Theirs was not simply the standard soloist-with-accompaniment format but, rather, represented a genuinely collective approach to improvisation among three perfectly matched, like-thinking and responsive musicians united in common cause.

These performances strike and maintain unusually high levels of interactive artistry, and in fact the most notable feature of the trio's work is the consistency of its rapport. It's hard to single out individual performances for special mention, although "Love Walked In" and "I'll Remember April" might serve to typify a number of the elements that make the trio's work so special. Taken at bright medium-up tempos, the pieces crackle with barely suppressed excitement right from the outset, as though Green and company couldn't wait to get started on their recasting of the songs' melodic-harmonic potentials.

Once past the theme statement, the guitarist usually builds his solos slowly, his opening chorus invariably fairly conservative in character, with each succeeding one building in greater melodic-rhythmic complexity, ever richer imaginative resourcefulness and mounting, spark-producing intensity. It's as though the very act of playing enlivens and sets free his imagination, triggering a cascading flow of invention. Green's second chorus on Love Walked In," for example, consists of a gracefully shaped, virtually seamless improvised line that runs uninterrupted for almost the entire length of the chorus. The final bars of this solo, leading directly to Ware's perfect one-chorus statement, make use of a device Green often favoured: that of repeating a phrase several times, with only slight variations, building an effective charge of tension he then defuses. On his unrelenting inventive "I'll Remember April" solo is to be found a fine example of call-and-response phrasing, another device he used in constructing his improvisations.

Following him on the piece, Ware contributes a buoyant solo that, possibly taking a page from Green's book, gets under way with a telling use of repetition and then strides into a dancing, surprise-filled set of inventions demonstrating both breathtaking technical mastery and unerring musical intelligence, and employing a number of the characteristic devices for which he was noted among his peers -double-stops, complex rhythmic displacements, rests and in general an uncommonly effective use of space.

Then too, there's Green's beautifully conceived solo on "You and the Night and the Music," variations organized three distinct ways: those conceived primarily as permutations of the song's melodic contour, those stemming directly from its harmonic armature and, third, those with a predominantly rhythmic basis, taking their impetus from the cadential character of the theme materials. While all three modes are present simultaneously in every improvisation, Green has so ordered his solo on this selection that we are able to discern his reliance on each as it assumes primacy in his mind, making for an instructive as well as immensely pleasurable listening experience. We literally can hear him think his way through the piece. But then, each of his, Ware's and Harewood's contributions —individually and collectively — to these six performances reveal to us men engaged by and responding to their art and its materials with fervent, spirited creativity, keen intelligence and utter rapport.

Although not released during their lifetimes, these selections add richly to the discographies of Green and Ware both of whom, it will be recalled, died in 1979. Considering the vastness of his talent, the bassist left behind a pitifully meagre body of recordings, which is swelled considerably by his work on this session, for his contributions were pivotally important to the artistic success this trio achieved in its short existence. Green, too, is well served by these performances, far better in fact than by most of the recordings he made during the last decade-and-a-half of his life when the exigencies of keeping a group working, no less than self-imposed, external and often conflicting pressures towards the production of music of a more commercially-oriented nature, resulted in a large number of insipid performances of unworthy material. Even more sadly for Green, the popular success he and his producers sought so determinedly failed to materialize, so the guitarist had trivialized his music for nothing. Fortunately for us, however, the true nature of his artistry has been well documented on his Blue Note recordings from the early to middle 1960s, to the best of which can now be added this splendid, recently discovered trio session. Like his finest work from this period, this music will endure.

Pete Welding