Grant Green - Am I Blue

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s

Time: 41:43

Size: 95.5 MB

Styles: Hard bop, Guitar jazz, Soul-jazz

Year: 1963/1994/2007

Art: Front

[ 6:52] 1. Am I Blue

[ 6:08] 2. Take These Chains From My Heart

[ 7:34] 3. I Wanna Be Loved

[ 7:12] 4. Sweet Slumber

[13:57] 5. For All We Know

A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar. Like Stanley Turrentine, he tends to be left out of the books. Although he mentions Charlie Christian and Jimmy Raney as influences, Green always claimed he listened to horn players (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis) and not other guitar players, and it shows. No other player has this kind of single-note linearity (he avoids chordal playing). There is very little of the intellectual element in Green's playing, and his technique is always at the service of his music. And it is music, plain and simple, that makes Green unique. ~Blue Note

This quintet date by guitarist Grant Green was one of the last of his Blue Note albums to be reissued on CD, and it is somewhat clear why. The musicians (Green, trumpeter Johnny Coles, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, organist John Patton, and drummer Ben Dixon) play well enough, but there are few inspiring moments. The material is not all that exciting, and the laid-back feeling sometimes leads to dull moments. Most of the fire is provided by Henderson, but such songs as "Am I Blue," "I Wanna Be Loved," and a nearly 14-minute version of "For All We Know" are a bit sleepy. Although certainly listenable enough, this is one of Grant Green's lesser efforts from the 1960s. ~Scott Yanow

Am I Blue

---