Grant Green
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.
