Grant Green - Feelin' the Spirit

[Alexander Hawkins]

I must be preaching to the converted - but just thought I'd say how much enjoyed this album, which I've only recently picked up.

There's a real fervour about the playing throughout, and for me, really 'narrative' improvisation, which makes the quote from Rimsky Korsakov's 'Scheherezade' on the last track so beautifully apposite.

Does anyone have any recommendations for things which are in a similar vein to this album?

Thanks, as always, in advance!

[Alexander]

Similar in what way? Guitar records? Jazz interpretations of spirituals? Albums with Herbie Hancock as a sideman? What?

I agree that this is a terriffic album. One thing I've always loved (can't remember which tune its on now) is that Herbie Hancock sneaks in a quote from "It Ain't Necessarily So". For those who don't know the lyrics to the Gershwin tune from "Porgy and Bess" (I can't imagine that anybody *doesn't* know, but it's possible), the chorus goes:

"It ain't necessarily so...the things that you're liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so..."

To quote that on an album of spirituals seems witty in a very nasty way, and I've always relished it.

Edited March 23, 2003 by Alexander

[vibes]

No additional recommendations, but I did pull this album out and listened to it again after reading this thread. It was very enjoyable, with "Go Down Moses" being my favorite of the tracks. Strangely enough, my wife recognized about half the songs on the album as songs she sang in her high school choir. I'm not familiar with any of them!

[Alexander Hawkins]

Similar in what way? Guitar records? Jazz interpretations of spirituals? Albums with Herbie Hancock as a sideman? What?

OK, fair cop. I guess albums with 'jazz interpretations of spirituals', although generally, albums with the same kind of feel to them.

[jazzbo]

Alexander, I had never thought of that quote in that way; thanks for pointing that out!

This is one of my favorite Blue Notes, and one of my favorite appearances of Hancock as a sideman. The feeling is so wonderful on this. . . . I'm hard-pressed to recommend anything as being "like it" because I really don't think much IS.

[JSngry]

NOTHING at all like Grant's date, but this is another 'jazz interpretations of spirituals' album, and one that led to Max Roach's blacklisting by American record companies at that!

[vibes]

NOTHING at all like Grant's date, but this is another 'jazz interpretations of spirituals' album, and one that led to Max Roach's blacklisting by American record companies at that!

What's the story behind this blacklisting? Sounds interesting...

[JSngry]

Well, I got this from a Max interview in Down Beat, I think it was. Supposedly Max had one album left on his Atlantic contract, and he began to be, as they say, "advised" by the label to "consider" making an album of "familiar" music. Max says that he thought to himself, "Well, what could be more familiar than a program Negro Spirituals? EVERYBODY knows those", and went on ahead and recorded LEVAS, an album that finds the common ground between free jazz and gospel, replete with a non-hesitant, if you know what I man, choral group. The album was not a popular favorite.

Atlantic was not amused, and, after striking what was considered a "militant" profile throughout the 60s into the 70s, Max was dropped by Atlantic and apparently viewed as irrelevant by American record companies, since this was Max's last American release until Bruce Lundvall hooked him up with Columbia about 6 or 7 years later. Plenty of good, new stuff came out in Europe and Japan though!

Edited March 25, 2003 by JSngry