Grant Green: Blue Breakbeats (Blue Note 1998) CD

Grant Green – Blue Breakbeats

Label:Blue Note – 7243 4 94705 2 1

Series:Blue Breakbeats

Format:CD, Compilation

Country:Europe

Released:1998

Genre:Jazz, Funk / Soul

Style:Jazz-Funk, Soul-Jazz

Tracklist

1. Ain't It Funky Now

Bongos – Richard Landrum

Congas – Candido Camero*

Drums – Idris Muhammad

Electric Bass – Jimmy Lewis (2)

Guitar – Grant Green

Organ – Earl Neal Creque*

Tenor Saxophone – Claude Bartee

Trumpet – Blue Mitchell

Written-By – James Brown

2. Cantaloupe Woman

Congas – Ray Armando

Drums – Idris Muhammad

Electric Bass – Chuck Rainey

Electric Piano – Emmanuel Riggins

Guitar – Grant Green

Vibraphone – Billy Wooten

Written-By – Ben Dixon

3. The Windjammer

Bongos – Richard Landrum

Congas – Candido Camero*

Drums – Idris Muhammad

Electric Bass – Jimmy Lewis (2)

Guitar – Grant Green

Organ – Earl Neal Creque*

Tenor Saxophone – Claude Bartee

Trumpet – Blue Mitchell

Written-By – Neal Creque

4. Sookie Sookie

Congas – Joseph Armstrong

Drums – Idris Muhammad

Guitar – Grant Green

Organ – Ronnie Foster

Tenor Saxophone – Claude Bartee

Vibraphone – Willie Bivens

Written-By – Don Covay, Steve Cropper

5. Ease Back

Drums – Idris Muhammad

Electric Bass – Jimmy Lewis (2)

Electric Piano – Clarence Palmer

Guitar – Grant Green

Tenor Saxophone – Claude Bartee

Vibraphone – Willie Bivens

Written-By – Neville*, Porter*, Modeliste*, Nocentelli*

6. The Final Comedown

Drums – Grady Tate

Electric Bass – Gordon Edwards

Guitar – Grant Green

Keyboards – Richard Tee

Percussion – Ralph MacDonald

Rhythm Guitar – Cornell Dupree

Soprano Saxophone – Harold Vick

Trumpet – Irv Markowitz*, Marvin Stamm

Woodwind – Phil Bodner

Written-By – Wade Marcus

Companies, etc.

• Marketed By – EMI
• Distributed By – EMI
• Phonographic Copyright ? – Capitol Records, Inc.
• Copyright © – Capitol Records, Inc.
• Copyright © – Mosaic Images
• Recorded At – Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
• Recorded At – Cliche Lounge
• Recorded At – A&R Studios
• Pressed By – EMI Uden
• Glass Mastered At – EMI Uden

Credits

• Art Direction, Design – Patrick Roques
• Compiled By, Liner Notes – DJ Smash
• Design – Rudie "Rude Boy" Ruderman*
• Photography By – Francis Wolff
• Producer [Original Sessions] – Francis Wolff (tracks: 1, 3 to 5), George Butler (tracks: 2, 6)
• Producer [Series Producer] – Bob Belden
• Recorded By – Don Hahn (tracks: 6), Rudy Van Gelder (tracks: 1 to 5)

Notes

Track 1 recorded on January 30, 1970, originally issued on Green Is Beautiful
Track 2 recorded on May 21, 1971, originally issued on Visions
Track 3 recorded on January 30, 1970, originally issued on Green Is Beautiful
Track 4 recorded on August 15, 1970, originally issued on Alive!
Track 5 recorded on June 12, 1970, originally issued on Carryin' On
Track 6 recorded on December 13, 1971, originally issued on The Final Comedown - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, except track #4 recorded live at 'Cliche Lounge" in Newark, New Jersey
and track #6 recorded at A&R Recording Studios, New York, NY.
©? 1998 Capitol Records, Inc.
Front cover photo © Mosaic Images 1998

Printed and made in E.U.

Issued in a standard jewel case with 4-page booklet. Note front cover title is "Breakbeats". Traycard and disc include the full "Blue Breakbeats" title as per all other releases in the series.

Biography / The Vogue

Grant Green (St. Louis, Missouri, June 6, 1935 – New York, January 31, 1979; some sources erroneously give the birth year as 1931) was a jazz guitarist and composer.

Recording prolifically and almost exclusively for Blue Note Records (as both leader and sideman) Green performed well in hard bop, soul jazz, bebop and Latin-tinged settings throughout his career. Critics Michael Erlewine and Ron Wynn write, “A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar … Green’s playing is immediately recognizable — perhaps more than any other guitarist.” Critic Dave Hunter described his sound as “lithe, loose, slightly bluesy and righteously groovy”. He often performed in an organ trio, a small group with an organ and drummer.

Apart from Charlie Christian, Green’s primary influences were saxophonists, particularly Charlie Parker, and his approach was therefore almost exclusively linear rather than chordal. The simplicity and immediacy of Green’s playing, which tended to avoid chromaticism, derived from his early work playing rhythm and blues and, although at his best he achieved a synthesis of this style with bop, he was essentially a blues guitarist and returned almost exclusively to this style in his later career. Green used a Gibson ES-330, then a Gibson L7 with a Gibson McCarty pickguard/pick-up, an Epiphone Emperor (with the same pick-up) and finally had a custom built D’Aquisto. George Benson said he would turn all the bass and treble off the amp, and max the midrange. This way he could get his signature punchy, biting tone.

Green was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He first performed in a professional setting at the age of 12. His influences were Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Ike Quebec, Lester Young, Jimmy Raney, Jimmy Smith and Miles Davis, he first played boogie-woogie before moving on to jazz. His first recordings in St. Louis were with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest for the Delmark label. The drummer in the band was Elvin Jones, later the powerhouse behind John Coltrane. Grant recorded with Elvin again in the early Sixties. Lou Donaldson discovered Grant playing in a bar in St. Louis. After touring together with Donaldson, Grant arrived in New York around 1959-60.

Lou Donaldson introduced Grant to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records. Lion was so impressed with Grant that, rather than testing Grant as a sideman, as was the usual Blue Note practice, Lion arranged for him to record as a bandleader first. Green’s initial recording session went unreleased until 2001, however, owing to a lack of confidence on Green’s behalf.

Despite the shelving of his first session, Green’s recording relationship with Lion and Blue Note was to last, with a few exceptions, throughout the Sixties. From 1961 to 1965, Grant made more appearances on Blue Note LPs, as leader or sideman, than anyone else. Grant’s first issued album as a leader was Grant’s First Stand. This was followed in the same year by Green Street and Grantstand. Grant was named best new star in the Down Beat critics’ poll, 1962, and, as a result, his influence spread wider than New York. He often provided support to the other important musicians on Blue Note, including saxophonists Hank Mobley, Ike Quebec, Stanley Turrentine and Harold Vick, as well as organist Larry Young.

Sunday Mornin’ , The Latin Bit and Feelin’ the Spirit are all loose concept albums, each taking a musical theme or style: Gospel, Latin and spirituals respectively. Grant always carried off his more commercial dates with artistic success during this period. Idle Moments (1963), featuring Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson, and Solid (1964), featuring the Coltrane rhythm section, are acclaimed as two of Grant’s best recordings.

Many of Grant’s recordings were not released during his lifetime. These include Matador, in which Grant is once again in the heavyweight company of the Coltrane rhythm section, and a series of sessions with pianist Sonny Clark. In 1966 Grant left Blue Note and recorded for several other labels, including Verve. From 1967 to 1969 Grant was, for the most part, inactive due to personal problems and the effects of heroin addiction. In 1969 Grant returned with a new funk-influenced band. His recordings from this period include the commercially successful Green is Beautiful and the soundtrack to the film The Final Comedown. Grant was also a huge influence on guitarists, from George Benson to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Still to this day guitarists try to get his signature sound, Idle Moments is considered one of the top 100 jazz albums of all time.

Grant left Blue Note again in 1974 and the subsequent recordings he made with other labels divide opinion: some consider Green to have been the ‘Father of Acid Jazz’ (and his late recordings have been sampled by artists including US3, A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy), whilst others have dismissed them (Michael Cuscuna wrote in the sleeve notes for the album Matador that “During the 1970s he made some pretty lame records”).

Grant spent much of 1978 in hospital and, against the advice of doctors, went back on the road to earn some money. While in New York to play an engagement at George Benson’s Breezin’ Lounge, Grant collapsed in his car of a heart attack in New York City on January 31, 1979. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, and was survived by six children. Since Green’s demise, his reputation has grown to legendary status and many compilations of both his earlier (post-bop/straight ahead and soul jazz) and later (funkier/dancefloor jazz) periods, exist. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Biography / Blue Note

Grant Green was born in St. Louis on June 6, 1931, learned his instrument in grade school from his guitar-playing father and was playing professionally by the age of thirteen with a gospel group. He worked gigs in his home town and in East St. Louis, IL, until he moved to New York in 1960 at the suggestion of Lou Donaldson. Green told Dan Morgenstern in a Down Beat interview: “The first thing I learned to play was boogie-woogie. Then I had to do a lot of rock & roll. It’s all blues, anyhow.”

His extensive foundation in R&B combined with a mastery of bebop and simplicity that put expressiveness ahead of technical expertise. Green was a superb blues interpreter, and his later material was predominantly blues and R&B, though he was also a wondrous ballad and standards soloist. He was a particular admirer of Charlie Parker, and his phrasing often reflected it. Green played in the ’50s with Jimmy Forrest, Harry Edison, and Lou Donaldson.

He also collaborated with many organists, among them Brother Jack McDuff, Sam Lazar, Baby Face Willette, Gloria Coleman, Big John Patton, and Larry Young. During the early ’60s, both his fluid, tasteful playing in organ/guitar/drum combos and his other dates for Blue Note established Green as a star, though he seldom got the critical respect given other players. He was off the scene for a bit in the mid-’60s, but came back strong in the late ’60s and ’70s. Green played with Stanley Turrentine, Dave Bailey, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones.

Sadly, drug problems interrupted his career in the ’60s, and undoubtedly contributed to the illness he suffered in the late ’70s. Green was hospitalized in 1978 and died a year later. Despite some rather uneven LPs near the end of his career, the great body of his work represents marvelous soul-jazz, bebop, and blues.

A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar. Like Stanley Turrentine, he tends to be left out of the books. Although he mentions Charlie Christian and Jimmy Raney as influences, Green always claimed he listened to horn players (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis) and not other guitar players, and it shows. No other player has this kind of single-note linearity (he avoids chordal playing). There is very little of the intellectual element in Green’s playing, and his technique is always at the service of his music. And it is music, plain and simple, that makes Green unique.

Green’s playing is immediately recognizable — perhaps more than any other guitarist. Green has been almost systematically ignored by jazz buffs with a bent to the cool side, and he has only recently begun to be appreciated for his incredible musicality. Perhaps no guitarist has ever handled standards and ballads with the brilliance of Grant Green. Mosaic, the nation’s premier jazz reissue label, issued a wonderful collection The Complete Blue Note Recordings with Sonny Clark, featuring prime early ’60s Green albums plus unissued tracks. Some of the finest examples of Green’s work can be found there.

~ Michael Erlewine and Ron Wynn