Happy Birthday, Grant Green (1935-1979)

The basic facts about the legendary jazz guitarist Grant Green's life (June 6, 1935-January 31, 1979) and career can be found easily enough. Here's the Wiki entry for him. Here's the complete discography (although I prefer the more colorful version with its thumbnails of album covers, compiled by a Japanese fan). While he was at Blue Note records, he was its most recorded artist.

A technical discussion of Grant's distinctive tone (over the years: tones) is here. Sharony Andrews Green's Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar, his daughter-in-law's biography, fills in the many blanks left by his albums' liner notes. (Here's Bill Milkowski's helpful review.) 

I prefer to devote this birthday tribute to Grant Green by recalling my long road to appreciating his playing.  


I began playing the guitar shortly after the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, and jazz guitar became a topic for me in 1971 when I heard Melvin Sparks on the radio. One by one, I investigated all the names my jazz aficionada mother dropped on me: George Benson, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel. A friend of hers, who had played briefly in the '50s, turned me on to Kenny Burrell, and in his living room I discovered one of the more powerful influences on my playing, Pat Martino. (In my mind's eye, I can still see his Strings! album on Charlie's living room floor.) 


A few months passed, and Grant Green's name was in the air, but I knew of no one who really knew or dug his playing. I took it on faith that he was great, and bought one LP album after the other every payday at J&R's on Park Row. Here are three I remember buying (and still have, but listen to them on my iPod):

Unfortunately for my musical ears at the time, however, nothing "clicked."

I wanted "more" from Grant's playing. More what? More notes. Notes, notes, notes. He was a "single-note" player, that is, you didn't go to him for innovations in voice-leading chord progressions from him. I liked that. But I thought others, Pat Martino, for example, doled out in bushels what Grant Green seemed only to be hinting at. I had thought, and continued to think, that Pat and George Benson "said" more. 

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1 Cor. 13:11)

I was looking for the evidence that others had apparently found. Several times in the early '70s, before Breezin' changed his life, Benson and I -- separately and coincidentally -- would come into the same New York clubs to catch one or more of Pat's shows, which offered me a chance to chat with him. On one of those between-set occasions (at "Folk City" on West Third Street, as I recall), I asked George, seated on a barstool, straight up: 


"What is 'it' about Grant Green? What am I missing?" 


"Aw, man! . . . "


Smiling easily, but unable to hide a "where-do-I-begin?" look, George began to express his apparently limitless admiration for Grant's musicality.  His touch, his taste and, yes, technique were exquisite (not George's exact words, which not even my diary holds, but those were the bases he covered). Grant's "chops" or technique was perfectly suited to his musical intention. (And what are "chops" without that correspondence but so much unmusical showing off?) His intention was simply to groove, high and hard.

Grant with Larry Young on Hammond B-3. The picture was allegedly taken in 1966, 

making a mystery out of the display of the LP of a '63 recording.

I sensed that perhaps George was merely being gracious: if I couldn't hear "it" in Grant's playing, his words weren't going achieve what only further listening, and living, could.


When I made a firm intention in October 2007 to return to jazz guitar with a renewed sense of purpose, I engorged myself on a great deal of music, much of which I had heard decades ago, but never listened to with the ears of someone who intended to do this one day for a living. Tunes became objects of study, not just vehicles for jamming. 


I bring my autobiographical musings to a grinding halt to say that during the next few years I finally "got" Grant Green. After downloading over a dozen of his albums as .mp3's, I understood and respected his ability to express himself in diverse genres in diverse settings, to lead a trio, a quartet, or a hard bop band that could rival Blakey and his Messengers, or to play whatever was called for in someone else's setting. 

Grant with a 22-year-old Herbie Hancock at piano. 

From the Goin' West or Feelin' the Spirit recording sessions.

Most pleasantly, and surprisingly so, I found myself wanting, not to "sound" like Grant Green, but make others feel the way I feel when I listen to him, the joy and happiness carried by those clean, articulate lines.  That's what his playing exudes. But the process of "entering into" the music of another, like entering into the thought of another, is not something done without intention. 


My appreciation of Grant Green has not lessened my regard for anyone else's playing. It is tinged only with the regret that although I have lived simultaneously with his music (albeit it was "below my radar" until 1971), I was never got to hear him "live."


I cannot repay someone on whom I can count to make me happy with his music, but I can try to pay it forward. 

Enough feeling-diluting words! Here is the only known footage of his playing (alongside legends Kenny Burrell [left], Barney Kessel [center]). Grant solos first. Enjoy it, and then with the help of the links provided above, explore and share his legacy!

Baker's, A Hard Bop Home: A Hat Tip to Dennis Coffey

Although I savored every page of Lars Björn and Jim Gallert's scholarly and profusely illustrated Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit last year, its brief mention of Baker's Keyboard Lounge did not make a deep impression.  Ironically, it took a chat with Motown studio legend Dennis Coffey last Saturday to begin to remedy my near-nescience on this under-recognized jazz venue.


Coffey was always in my peripheral vision.  I was never a rocker, having embraced jazz in earnest only in 1971, a few years after my musical interest had shifted from the Beatles and kindred groups to Soul Music, Coffey's bread-and-butter.  I therefore had known his playing, but not as his playing.  He was "Author Anonymous" for me and for millions of others (as were all the "Funk Brothers").  His 1971 debut album, Goin' for Myself, sported this image:

At Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors' "Motor City Soul Review," it was closer to this:

I hope I'll be playing with equivalent conviction and energy when I'm pushing 70. 


As he was packing his gear, the only thing I could think of to ask him about was the Detroit jazz scene.  I broke the ice by mentioning to him that Before Motown leaves the post-1960 period a blank.  Coffey assured me that the scene is alive and well and that he plays "about once a month at Baker's."   A research assignment.


What a revelation!  Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit has been in continuous operation since 1934, and thus its claim to be "the world's oldest jazz club," which it broadcasts on its site.  It may have been in continuous operation since '34, when Chris Baker opened it as a sandwich shop, but his son Clarence (owner since '39) booked no "name" acts, only local jazz talent, until '54.  (What about The Village Vanguard?  It opened in '35 and didn't have a fulltime jazz policy until the late '50s.)  Every jazz great, including every Hard Bop giant, played Baker's.  But why not hear the story from the lips of Clarence Baker himself?



Current co-owner John Colbert proudly drives home the historical importance of Baker's in the following clip (which morphs into a rousing performance of Miles Davis' "Four" by Dwight Adams and his colleagues):





Colbert mentions that the club's original piano is being restored.  This informative Detroit News article notes that it was Art Tatum who had selected it in New York and had it shipped to Baker's!


And so this expansion of my inventory of jazz historical knowledge was occasioned by an unplanned encounter with a soul guitar master.  In a short exchange of e-mails with me yesterday Dennis Coffey recalled having seen, "back in the day," fellow Detroiter Kenny Burrell not only at Baker's but also at the Minor Key (which would have had to be sometime between Winter '58-'59 and 1963, the club's short lifespan).  Coffey also remembers catching Wes Montgomery at a club called "the Drome Lounge . . . a small club on Dexter" (he must have meant the Bowl-o-Drome, which was on Dexter) and hanging out with Joe Pass at his house in Los Angeles. 


I close this post of gratitude to Mr. Coffey (you see why I wasn't so formal until now?) for his graciousness in opening my eyes (and, yes, even my ears) over the past few days by posting a clip of his playing -- his music -- at Baker's this past February.