Grant Green: Green Is Beautiful (Blue Note Classic Vinyl series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl series reissue is on 180g vinyl, pressed in Germany. AllMusic's Steve Huey heard Green growing more comfortable with harder, funkier R&B here.

This edition

• Blue Note Classic Vinyl series
• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

By 1970 Grant Green had spent a decade as one of Blue Note's finest guitarists in the bebop and soul jazz mould. Then he went funky, and Green Is Beautiful is where he leaned all the way in, swapping standards for the soul and pop hits of the day. He recorded it at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on January 30, 1970.

The band cooks: Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Emmanuel Riggins and Neal Creque on organ, Jimmy Lewis on electric bass, Idris Muhammad on drums and Candido and Richie Landrum on congas and bongos. They open with a long, simmering take on James Brown's "Ain't It Funky Now," then turn The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" into a slow-burning groove. "The Windjammer" rides Creque's organ, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" (from the musical Promises, Promises) gets a light, easy touch, and "Dracula" closes things on a heavy strut.

It's the sound of a great guitarist having a whale of a time, and it's catching. Green Is Beautiful, as titles go, is also refreshingly hard to argue with.

Also at Kops: more Grant Green on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 4859545), a reissue of the 1970 album.