Grant Green: under-estimated as Jazz artist, and Blue Note to blame?

[T.D.]

42 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

bad bar rock with poo

I didn't recognize (or recall?) the name GG Allin. Googled. Yikes. Should have let ignorance be bliss.

[JSngry]

4 hours 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. I guess it was the emphatic repetition and inherent earthy blues that enveloped even the filigree that struck me as related.

I still have that thought on occasion. It works until it doesn't, but that's ok. Some things don't work at all, ever.

[sambrasa]

16 hours ago, Niko said:

Attila Zoller... I wouldn't really consider him more post bebop than Jim Hall...

I agree, but as there's exception to every rule, there was a brief moment in history where Attila Zoller dabbled in jazz-rock.

Check out Wolfgang Dauner Et Cetera performance at Altena:

https://www.discogs.com/release/9043491-Various-International-New-Jazz-Meeting-Burg-Altena-1972-1973

 

[Daniel A]

17 hours ago, Niko said:

Attila Zoller... I wouldn't really consider him more post bebop than Jim Hall... 

I consider this to be more post bebop than Jim Hall:

 

[Pim]

I like Green. Not all of it, but quite some. Not so much into the organ stuff. My favorites would be Matador, Idle Moments, Feelin' the Spirit and Alive. I like his contributions as a sideman as well.

[Dub Modal]

I absolutely love Grantstand, the album with McDuff, Hardwood & Lateef.

Also dig his trio record, Green Street (Ben Tucker & Dave Bailey). In one of those tunes he repeats a triplet like 6x in a row. He's got nowhere to hide in this setting and he definitely shines. The blues influence is unmistakable and his sound is incredible. 

Edited May 17 by Dub Modal

[clifford_thornton]

17 hours ago, JSngry said:

I still have that thought on occasion. It works until it doesn't, but that's ok. Some things don't work at all, ever.

to be fair, I have spent many more hours with Mal's music than Grant's.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:14 AM, Dub Modal said:

I absolutely love Grantstand, the album with McDuff, Hardwood & Lateef.

Also dig his trio record, Green Street (Ben Tucker & Dave Bailey). In one of those tunes he repeats a triplet like 6x in a row. He's got nowhere to hide in this setting and he definitely shines. The blues influence is unmistakable and his sound is incredible. 

I really hate that trio date, especially the tune where he gets stuck. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

 

Edited May 18 by Kevin Bresnahan

[JSngry]

What is a "chalkboard"?

[Dub Modal]

50 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I really hate that trio date, especially the tune where he gets stuck. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

That opener is so good though. No. 1 Green Street

[soulpope]

13 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

to be fair, I have spent many more hours with Mal's music than Grant's.

Not a bad choice I believe ....

[Guy Berger]

On 5/17/2024 at 6:44 AM, Daniel A said:

I consider this to be more post bebop than Jim Hall:

 

This is the kind of stuff that I had in mind.  Music that lands in the same place as the Miles 2nd quintet, Coltrane’s classic quartet, the music that Shorter/Henderson/McLean/Hill were recording for Blue Note… it’s telling that these guys never included guitarists in their recordings prior to 1968.

Someone mentioned Larry Coryell upthread - good callout.  I’d put him in the same bucket as Szabo, Zollar.

Edited May 18 by Guy Berger

[ep1str0phy]

Re: adventurous guitarists that might rightly be considered modern jazz or post-bop: Zoller is a great callout. If we're talking early, mid-60's, there is a bit of a recorded scarcity of guitarists operating in more contemporary contexts. In retrospect, I'd assert that the advent of Hendrix really altered the the perceptual range of possibilities for guitar.

Speaking as a guitar player, I think a lot of this has to do with technology and innovation. The vernacular(s) of jazz guitar operate in this liminal space between horns and piano. It isn't an ideal instrument for either expressive melodicism or harmonic density - the guitar can do both, but other instruments are better suited to either extreme. 

It isn't a coincidence that a slew of new, decidedly modernistic guitarists emerged in the 1960s. The minute louder amps and effects pedals became more widely available - and after guitarists like Hendrix established what could be done on the instrument - it became easier for people to find a role for guitar in modern jazz ensembles. 

What many may not understand about gain on guitar is that it compresses your signal. Overdrive/distortion/fuzz are not merely effects - they actually change how lines articulate. A guitarist with a well-controlled fuzz pedal can play as fluidly as a horn player, even with the jazz/high-gauge strings that allow for stability of intonation. All this is to say that a guy like Grant Green may very well not have played like Grant Green had different technology been available in his youth. (And that's the story of music.)

Case in point: consider Ray Russell, a very capable English guitarist who plays in a linear style not fundamentally dissimilar to a Zoller or Coryell (although he's somewhat less fluid and more angular-melodic - more akin to Jim Hall than Tal Farlow): 

This is from '68. You can already hear the inflection of the Coltrane-Miles continuum of modalism - which is to say that he's playing as more of a melodist and less of a vertical (harmonic) improviser. He just hasn't put it all together yet - he's missing that extra layer of expressivity. 

This is from '71:

The fuzz grants Russell and extra layer of expressivity - there are explicit overtures to American fusion and free jazz. This version of Russell (essentially the same that would play "Stained Angel Morning," which by a certain metric might be considered the guitar equivalent of Spiritual Unity) is capable of contributing to a more contemporary ensemble in a meaningful way. See what happened to Derek Bailey toward the end of the '60s, James Blood Ulmer in the '70s, and Sonny Sharrock after his resurgence and you get roughly the same picture.

Edited May 19 by ep1str0phy

[JSngry]

This was my first exposure to Coryell. I thought it was the most schizo playing ever, at least in one solo.

It kinda is, really.

[sgcim]

18 hours ago, JSngry said:

This was my first exposure to Coryell. I thought it was the most schizo playing ever, at least in one solo.

It kinda is, really.

Yeah, he starts off with that burning, driving, articulation, sound and rhythm that first attracted me to his playing, like on"Spaces", and then it's like another guy like Hendrix came in pushed him off his chair, and started freaking out with distortion, playing a different style. Maybe he was just possessed, and needed an exorcism or something.

He did stuff like that on the "Fairyland" album, but more organically.

[Milestones]

For Grant Green's ballad mastery, do not miss "My Funny Valentine" from Grantstand.

[Stevie Mclean]

On 5/17/2024 at 5:08 PM, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I really hate that trio date, especially the tune where he gets stuck. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

 

While on a trip with some jazz-averse friends I made the mistake of putting that song on in our hotel room. They mocked me by crudely "singing" Grant's repeated phrase for the rest of the trip. 
I did catch one of them nodding and patting his foot. I guess it's hard to resist the Grant Green funk.

[Dub Modal]

I think it's the song Green with Envy where he repeats a couplet at least 8 times. 

[Stevie Mclean]

13 minutes ago, Dub Modal said:

I think it's the song Green with Envy where he repeats a couplet at least 8 times. 

The one they attached themselves to is 5 and a half minutes into No. 1 Green Street. Listening back to the album now, there are probably 4 or 5 instances that could be considered "getting stuck" and repeating himself. I choose to believe that they are all intentional, to provide emphasis, but I won't claim that statement to move beyond the realm of belief.

[JSngry]

Listen to Mal Waldron get stuck...

 

[Stevie Mclean]

15 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Listen to Mal Waldron get stuck...

 

Mal must enjoy digging; he seems to always get himself stuck!

[JSngry]

It's "hilarious" really. Repetition has become the lingua franca of propaganda commercial media worms, minimalist classical in all its offshoots, pretty much everything every where, and yet "jazz averse" clowns laugh at the quite intentional use of a deeply rooted African(-American) technique like it's some kind of failure or something.

Ignorance in the service of assumed superiority...

 

[Milestones]

I was struck but some of those repetitions in Green's work, which can sound like "getting stuck."  But then you realize it is an intentional part of his style.  I actually find "No. 1 Green Street" to be my favorite track from that record.

 

 

[Dub Modal]

I never thought of it as him getting stuck. 

[Stevie Mclean]

14 minutes ago, JSngry said:

It's "hilarious" really. Repetition has become the lingua franca of propaganda commercial media worms, minimalist classical in all its offshoots, pretty much everything every where, and yet "jazz averse" clowns laugh at the quite intentional use of a deeply rooted African(-American) technique like it's some kind of failure or something.

Ignorance in the service of assumed superiority...

 

The ultimate irony (tragedy?) of it all is that all those friends exclusively listened to rap music. Playing some grant green was my olive branch to help them find the source of all that's good about hip-hop. I would assume that a repeated phrase wouldn't phase them considering all the rap songs that sample a single phrase or bar from a jazz song and repeat it endlessly over the ENTIRE song.