Grant Green

Grant Green有厚实的节奏蓝调的背景，同时也有很扎实的bop爵士的技巧。他所欣赏的爵士乐前辈，大多是一些管乐器的音乐家，因此他常喜欢以单音弹奏来表现，这样的即兴演奏在吉他手之中是很不同的。 他的父亲也是一位吉他手，Grant Green 在13岁时就已经可以与福音乐团做很专业的演出。1960年在萨克斯风手Lou Donaldson的建议下来到纽约市。50年代时的合作乐手有Jimmy Forrest、Harry Edison以及Lou Donaldson。 60年代的Grant Green显得更加成熟与流畅，能像他如此精於标准爵士乐与抒情曲的吉他手是很少的，虽然乐评尚未给他很高的评价，这点它的确是被被低估与忽略，不过此时他已经是一位吉他明星。接下来的主要合作乐手有Stanley Turrentine、Dave Bailey、Yusef Lateef、Joe Henderson、Hank Mobley、Herbie Hancock、McCoy Tyner以及Elvin Jones。60年代时因吸毒而中断一些时间，也让他在健康上受到很大的影响。
 
Grant Green was born in St. Louis on June 6, 1931, learned his instrument in grade school from his guitar-playing father and was playing professionally by the age of thirteen with a gospel group. He worked gigs in his home town and in East St. Louis, IL, until he moved to New York in 1960 at the suggestion of Lou Donaldson. Green told Dan Morgenstern in a Down Beat interview: The first thing I learned to play was boogie-woogie. Then I had to do a lot of rock & roll. Its all blues, anyhow.
 
His extensive foundation in R&B combined with a mastery of bebop and simplicity that put expressiveness ahead of technical expertise. Green was a superb blues interpreter, and his later material was predominantly blues and R&B, though he was also a wondrous ballad and standards soloist. He was a particular admirer of Charlie Parker, and his phrasing often reflected it. Green played in the 50s with Jimmy Forrest, Harry Edison, and Lou Donaldson.
 
He also collaborated with many organists, among them Brother Jack McDuff, Sam Lazar, Baby Face Willette, Gloria Coleman, Big John Patton, and Larry Young. During the early 60s, both his fluid, tasteful playing in organ/guitar/drum combos and his other dates for Blue Note established Green as a star, though he seldom got the critical respect given other players. He was off the scene for a bit in the mid-60s, but came back strong in the late 60s and 70s. Green played with Stanley Turrentine, Dave Bailey, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones.
 
Sadly, drug problems interrupted his career in the 60s, and undoubtedly contributed to the illness he suffered in the late 70s. Green was hospitalized in 1978 and died a year later. Despite some rather uneven LPs near the end of his career, the great body of his work represents marvelous soul-jazz, bebop, and blues.
 
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 Greens playing, and his technique is always at the service of his music. And it is music, plain and simple, that makes Green unique.
 
Greens playing is immediately recognizable — perhaps more than any other guitarist. Green has been almost systematically ignored by jazz buffs with a bent to the cool side, and he has only recently begun to be appreciated for his incredible musicality. Perhaps no guitarist has ever handled standards and ballads with the brilliance of Grant Green. Mosaic, the nations premier jazz reissue label, issued a wonderful collection The Complete Blue Note Recordings with Sonny Clark, featuring prime early 60s Green albums plus unissued tracks. Some of the finest examples of Greens work can be found there.