Jean De Fleur

Joe Henderson (tenor sax), Grant Green (guitar), Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone), Duke Pearson (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass) and Al Harewood (drums). From the album Idle Moments (1965).

Grant Green was an underestimated jazz guitarist and American composer who played blues, rhythm and blues, bebop, hard bop, soul jazz and Latin jazz. He combined rhythm and blues with bebop, putting expressivity before technical experience. He was a magnificent blues player and a wonderful soloist of ballads and standards. His first influences were Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney and Charlie Parker. At the age of 13 he played with a gospel group and then with Harry “Sweets” Edison and Lou Donaldson, among others.

In 1960 he moved to New York with Donaldson, who introduced him to Alfred Lion, founder and director of Blue Note Records, who was so impressed that hired him immediately to work as both a leader and a studio musician. His way of playing fluently and with good taste in organ, guitar and drums trios and his Blue Note recordings led Green to fame. In 1966 he left Blue Note and from 1967 to 1969 he was sick from drugs. He then recovered and during the 1970s played with Stanley Turrentine, Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Yusef Lateef, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson and Elvin Jones. He died in 1979 of a heart attack at the age of 43.

The theme is very stimulating at medium-fast tempo and has a creative melody. The first one to make his solo is Green with a very well articulated and structured melodic line. His phrases are swift and flexible, but not overwhelming. Then the group plays a riff to give way to Henderson’s solo, whose intrepid discourse leads us through narrow and unknown paths. Next Hutcherson enters playing with spontaneity and dexterity. After that, Green returns with a brief second loose and dynamic solo before the group re-exposes the theme fading out.