Grant Green: Visions [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This 180g EU pressing brings back Grant Green's breezy 1971 soul jazz set. "Maybe Tomorrow" later turned up as a sample on a 2012 Kendrick Lamar track, which tells you how well this groove has aged.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Stereo
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

By 1971 Grant Green had been playing Blue Note sessions for a decade, and he knew exactly what a good groove needed: room to breathe. Visions was cut in a single day, May 21, 1971, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, with Green's clean, singing guitar taking the pop hits of the day and stretching them out into warm, rolling soul jazz.

The band is built for it. Chuck Rainey's electric bass and Idris Muhammad's drums lock in tight, Emmanuel Riggins colours everything with electric piano, and Billy Wooten's vibes add a shimmer on top, with Ray Armando's congas and Harold Caldwell's extra percussion keeping the hips moving. Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" opens the set, the Jackson 5's "Never Can Say Goodbye" and the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" get the Green treatment, and "Maybe Tomorrow" slips in a melody from Ravel's Pavane for good measure.

Then there's the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40, turned into something you could happily play at a backyard barbecue. Wolfgang never got a conga player, which, frankly, was his loss.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# 6514861), a reissue of the 1971 album.