HutchFan Posted May 15 Report Share Posted May 15 5 hours ago, mjazzg said: My introduction to GG was when a DJ played 'Windjammer' from 'Live At The Lighthouse'. I then bought 'Idle Moments' so I quickly got both ends of his spectrum. Both work for me and both are definitely Jazz. I've subsequently bought a good number across his stylistic spectrum. I feel the same. I like ALL of GG's various styles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ep1str0phy Posted May 15 Report Share Posted May 15 16 hours ago, mjzee said: I think GG was primarily a "licks" player. He had a certain number (not that many) of riffs that he'd recycle in his solos. I don't think he had the chops to be a full-time improvising jazz musician. As for Idle Moments being such a great record, credit should probably go to Duke Pearson. Don't get me wrong: I have most of what GG recorded and enjoy it, but I recognize his limitations. I don't think that this is a fair assessment. Jim's statement applies - most jazz players are licks players. In Green's case, the reliance on riffs is stylistic rather than a reflection of any intrinsic limitations. He tends to lean on certain phrases because they're structurally sound and give his solos rhythmic and melodic cohesion. Considering the fact that he's mostly playing mid or downtempo hard bop, it's a sound approach. There's an additional (practical) consideration, which is that Green is a largely linear/melodic improviser. In sideman contexts, he's generally employed as a frontline instrument and has to compete with horn players and drums (re: My Point of View, Search for the New Land, etc.). So it's partially an issue with volume and attack. He tends to favor shapes that project easily and sit well on guitar: quartal phrases, arpeggios, short chromatic phrases, and - yes - riffs. With the benefit of hindsight, people like Wes feel like an exception - most of the guitarists of the era who played more fluidly than Green didn't have to contend with drummers like Elvin, Tony, or Philly Joe. Which is not to say that Grant couldn't play more inventively. His simplicity was a strength, and when he did go to bop phrasing, it was doubly effective. Look at measures 12-14 in the transcription below. He starts with some simple (mostly) stepwise motion on the G7b9 - the nested triplet has a ton of character. He follows this with a really simple triadic phrase (which he favored). He then plays a really beautiful phrase over the Fm6-G7b9, playing the double neighbor of the root tonic before resolving to the 13th of the next chord (the Ab7#11). Pure "riff" players can't execute this - you need to know some vocabulary in order to pull this off effectively over a chord progression at a glacial tempo. https://youtu.be/9hqGQxl_TlQ?si=qvUm4scVhfjbJ3J_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted May 15 Report Share Posted May 15 Great post Mr. e, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted May 15 Report Share Posted May 15 47 minutes ago, ep1str0phy said: ... you need to know some vocabulary in order to pull this off effectively over a chord progression at a glacial tempo. Exactly. Grant is not a simple "riff player", he's a language player. Language. Complete sentences in a group conversation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ep1str0phy Posted May 15 Report Share Posted May 15 Exactly. There's a reason that Booker Ervin exists. I don't want Booker to sound like Joe Henderson - they're different players that operate effectively in different contexts. It's worth mentioning that a ton of our knowledge about Grant is based on his recordings. Firsthand accounts are sparse. Grant's career mostly coincides with an era when amplifiers were not designed to compete with the (often) punishing volume levels of modern jazz. This dude was playing with organs in loud clubs. It may not be immediately evident if you don't have firsthand, experiential knowledge of playing guitar on stage, but you can't simply turn an amplifier up. There are certain gestures and registers that will invariably project better in a loud room. I can more or less guarantee that Grant's style played better in live environments than the approach favored by many of his contemporaries. He's comparable in this way to someone like Buddy Guy, who often sounds pinched and thin on records but who has probably destroyed every single room he ever played. For reference: there's all that talk about how Wes played with the Coltrane band. I can absolutely understand why this might be the case. Wes's harmonic vocabulary was surpassing, but he also figured out how how to solo with octaves in an era when people hadn't yet developed a facility with that technique. I can't imagine too many other players who were able to play over Elvin in an era before good live sound and freely available gain/distortion options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevie Mclean Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 8 hours ago, JSngry said: Exactly. Grant is not a simple "riff player", he's a language player. Language. Complete sentences in a group conversation. Thanks for the reminder, almost forgot to listen to this today... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gheorghe Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 17 hours ago, mhatta said: My personal favourite BN Grant Green is not the hard bop playing Green, but the funky Green, like Alive!, Live at the Lighthouse or Live At Club Mozambique, Green Is Beautiful is good too. I feel like he speaks his own language on them. And "speaking his piece" is my definition of jazz. I think I have one Green album from about 1969 from the style of clothes and the hairdo on the cover photo, and it sounds like some very early jazz rock. But once again: I´m sure he was not mentioned here in Viena in jazz rock fan circles. We all heard and studied what was around, but as for electric jazz our men were Miles, Herbie, RTF, Tony´s Lifetime and so on. Our listening habits were splitted between late Free Jazz or Post Coltrane and early electric/funk jazz. So I´m sure that a lot of those attempts of BN in the early 70´s to record a lot of electric stuff with all those many instruments, like they also did with Lou Donaldson, was not noticed here. It did not sell here, while all the albums of Miles from Bitches Brew on, and all the Headhunters and RTF stuff and Lifetime stuff sold extremly well....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 37 minutes ago, Stevie Mclean said: Thanks for the reminder, almost forgot to listen to this today... And the Lord said, let there be FLAYVA. And it was so. Talk about everybody having a good day...and Ben Dixon framing everything! Don't think that this was ever a 45, but if it was, I want it, and a jukebox to put it in. And the scratchier, the better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulpope Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 @ "ep1strOphy" : insightful thoughts, appreciated .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ep1str0phy Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 BTW - thanks for the kindness, guys. I've definitely missed being here! Having a kid has completely recalibrated so many of my old habits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevie Mclean Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 8 hours ago, JSngry said: And the Lord said, let there be FLAYVA. And it was so. Talk about everybody having a good day...and Ben Dixon framing everything! Don't think that this was ever a 45, but if it was, I want it, and a jukebox to put it in. And the scratchier, the better. I've always loved how Ben accents with the bell of the ride cymbal. Especially like how he swings those off-beat quarter notes at the end of the head phrase on Whatever Lola Wants. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeweil Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 On 5/15/2024 at 3:02 AM, JSngry said: Truth be told, most jazz players are licks players. The art is in how the licks are utilized. 👍 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Berger Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 7 hours ago, ep1str0phy said: BTW - thanks for the kindness, guys. I've definitely missed being here! Having a kid has completely recalibrated so many of my old habits. Congrats!!! A few quick reactions to reading this thread. 1) he recorded a lot of music for Blue Note! A lot of his contemporaries would have dreamed of that opportunity (though I am guessing it might have been low-paying, high volume) 2) For a guy with his “stylistic comfort zone”, he got to record across a very wide range of contexts! I don’t think they were holding him back in that respect. 3) His batting average over a very large number of recordings is quite high Fwiw, it’s interesting that until John McLaughlin came on the scene there was no big-name post bebop guitarist, in contrast to other major jazz instruments. GG was the guy that BN chose to experiment with that space. 16 hours ago, ep1str0phy said: For reference: there's all that talk about how Wes played with the Coltrane band. I can absolutely understand why this might be the case. Wes's harmonic vocabulary was surpassing, but he also figured out how how to solo with octaves in an era when people hadn't yet developed a facility with that technique. I can't imagine too many other players who were able to play over Elvin in an era before good live sound and freely available gain/distortion options. Don’t we have more recorded evidence of GG in adventurous contexts than WM? I think it’s telling that WM quickly left JC’s band, it’s hard to imagine him fitting in with most of their post-1960 recordings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stompin at the Savoy Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 3 hours ago, Guy Berger said: Fwiw, it’s interesting that until John McLaughlin came on the scene there was no big-name post bebop guitarist, in contrast to other major jazz instruments. GG was the guy that BN chose to experiment with that space. Really? That doesn't seem right to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjazzg Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 Pat Martino? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felser Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 4 minutes ago, mjazzg said: Pat Martino? Wonderful guitar player, but at that time he was not a big name on the level of Montgomery or McLaughlin (or even Kenny Burrell or Green or George Benson for that matter). I agree with Guy's statement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 George Benson? Freddie Robinson? Joe Beck? Jimi Hendrix? There's so many more people I'm forgetting... The statement didn't feel quite right to me either.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 I don't know if I would make this statement today, but when I started to give GG (Grant Green, not GG Allin) a listen, the first comparison that came to mind was a guitar-playing Mal Waldron. I guess it was the emphatic repetition and inherent earthy blues that enveloped even the filigree that struck me as related. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevie Mclean Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 Just now, clifford_thornton said: I don't know if I would make this statement today, but when I started to give GG (Grant Green, not GG Allin) a listen, the first comparison that came to mind was a guitar-playing Mal Waldron. I guess it was the emphatic repetition and inherent earthy blues that enveloped even the filigree that struck me as related. That's a very interesting connection to make. I cannot say that I have felt the same, but I can see where you are coming from. To me Grant is all about flowing lines that fall like calm waves breaking and forming a nice beach. Mal sounds more like stormy waves hitting from all angles aggressively cutting away from the shoreline. Both are repetitive and come from the same source, however the way that they influence the environment is very different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasing the Korean Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 58 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said: I don't know if I would make this statement today, but when I started to give GG (Grant Green, not GG Allin) a listen, the first comparison that came to mind was a guitar-playing Mal Waldron. Curious, what was the first comparison that came to mind when you started to give GG Allin a listen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Berger Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 1 hour ago, Niko said: George Benson? Freddie Robinson? Joe Beck? Jimi Hendrix? There's so many more people I'm forgetting... The statement didn't feel quite right to me either.... Hendrix was not a jazz guitarist. Benson was a soul jazz guitarist, and Beck also strikes me as a fairly conservative player. Sonny Sharrock was an avant-gardist. Two folks who do fit into the bucket imho are Atilla Zollar (sp?) and Gabor Szabo, but they were relatively marginal in terms of importance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stompin at the Savoy Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 (edited) Jim Hall? Joe Pass? Tal Farlow? Kenny Burrell? Howard Roberts? Barney Kessel and Johnny Smith could be considered bop but had long careers post-bop. Edited May 16 by Stompin at the Savoy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 5 minutes ago, Guy Berger said: Hendrix was not a jazz guitarist. Benson was a soul jazz guitarist, and Beck also strikes me as a fairly conservative player. Sonny Sharrock was an avant-gardist. Two folks who do fit into the bucket imho are Atilla Zollar (sp?) and Gabor Szabo, but they were relatively marginal in terms of importance. Attila Zoller... I wouldn't really consider him more post bebop than Jim Hall... Szabo reminds me of the fact that there was Larry Corryell as well, both with Chico Hamilton... I find your story of "from a market and sales perspective GG partly filled a postbop void that was there until John McLaughlin appeared" really interesting... But is it true or almost true? I wouldn't consider Benson more "Soul Jazz" than Green, just like Beck he recorded with Miles... (For Beck I was mostly thinking of Songs for Wounded Knee w Richard Davis which is clearly postbop imho) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said: Curious, what was the first comparison that came to mind when you started to give GG Allin a listen? bad bar rock with poo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasing the Korean Posted May 16 Report Share Posted May 16 26 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said: bad bar rock with poo That's generous! I'd have said much worse! 😹 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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