Green Is Beautiful

Performer: Grant Green
Artist: Blue Mitchell; Idris Muhammad; Candido Camero
Engineer: Rudy VanGelder
Producer: Francis Wolff
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Grant Green (guitar); Claude Bartee (tenor saxophone); Blue Mitchell (trumpet); Earl Neal Creque, Emanuel Riggins (organ); Jimmy Lewis (electric bass); Idris Muhammad (drums); Richard Landrum (bongos); Candido Camero (congas). Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on January 30, 1970. Originally released on Blue Note (84342). Includes liner notes by Morton Roth. Personnel: Grant Green (guitar); Claude Bartee, Jr. (tenor saxophone); Blue Mitchell (trumpet); Neal Creque, Emanuel Riggins (organ); Jimmy Lewis (keyboards, electric bass, bass guitar, fretless bass); Idris Muhammad (drums); Candido Camero (congas); Richard Lendrum, Richard Landrum (bongos). Recording information: Englewood Cliffs, NJ (01/30/1970). Illustrator: Bob Venosa. The second album of Grant Green's thorough jazz-funk makeover, Green Is Beautiful finds the guitarist growing more comfortable with harder, funkier R&B than he seemed on the softer-hued Carryin' On. The switch from Fender Rhodes electric piano back to the more traditional Hammond organ certainly helps give the session a little extra grit, but it doesn't return Green to the land of soul-jazz by any means. Green Is Beautiful is still explicitly commercial and accessible to non-jazz audiences, and (purist objections notwithstanding) that's not necessarily a bad thing. Green's take on James Brown's "Ain't It Funky Now" is one of the funkiest items in his rare-groove period; it may be chordally very simple, but the groove is tight and percolating, and Green, tenor saxophonist Claude Bartee, and trumpeter Blue Mitchell all come up with hot, exciting solos. The album also benefits from Green's discovery of composer and occasional organist Earl Neal Creque, who contributes two bright, slinky, horn-driven originals: "The Windjammer," which became one of the signature tunes of Green's late period, and "Dracula." They help give the album a more original voice, and indicate that Green was actively making himself at home in his new musical environment, not just mixing dull originals with phoned-in covers of pop and R&B hits (as he and many other '70s Blue Note artists were accused of doing). Of course, there are still pop covers present -- the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" is a mellow, mid-tempo groove, and Bacharach's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" doesn't stray far from the melody. Even if those aren't particularly distinctive, the remainder of Green Is Beautiful proves that Green's reinvention as a jazz-funk artist wasn't the misguided disaster it was initially made out to be. ~ Steve Huey

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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