Idle Moments [Remaster]

Performer: Grant Green
Artist: Joe Henderson; Bobby Hutcherson; Duke Pearson
Engineer: Rudy Van Gelder
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: The Rudy Van Gelder Edition of IDLE MOMENTS includes an essay by Bob Blumenthal. Personnel: Grant Green (guitar); Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone); Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone); Duke Pearson (piano); Bob Cranshaw (bass); Al Harewood (drums). Producer: Alfred Lion. Reissue producer: Michael Cuscuna. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on November 4 & 11, 1963. Includes liner notes by Duke Pearson and Bob Blumenthal. Digitally remastered using 24-bit technology by Rudy Van Gelder (Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey). This is part of the Blue Note Rudy Van Gelder Editions series. It was always a part of Blue Note's development and marketing to introduce new artists as sidemen on more well-known leaders' projects before giving them dates of their own. The system worked pretty well, and the irony is that a release like 1963's IDLE MOMENTS looks likes more of an all-star session in retrospect. Sure, we get to hear Grant Green stretching out. But we also get Bobby Hutcherson and Joe Henderson, who were just winning their first Downbeat polls at the time. Green himself had come through this system, appearing with organ combos and on other hard bop sessions, before graduating to his own Blue Note dates. IDLE MOMENTS may be one of his finest dates in the studio, simply on the strength of the elegant melancholy of the title cut and the deep groove the band settles into on "Django." Green's playing has much in common with that of such labelmates as saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and pianist Gene Harris. He manages to bring solid bebop sensibilities to a spare, down-home approach and delivers it all with an oaken tone at once dry, dark, and full of character.

St. Louis-born guitarist Grant Green was a giant of what came to be known as soul-jazz. His singular style incorporated the influences of Gospel, blues, and R&B, and defined a unique post-bop language for electric guitar. His classic early-1960s Blue Note recordings are high-water marks of both the soul-jazz sound and of jazz guitar in general. Drug abuse sadly hampered his later career; he died in 1979, but his son, the jazz guitarist Grant Green, Jr., continues his legacy.

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