Bob Perkins, June 2014
Bob Perkins is a writer and host of an all-jazz radio program that airs on WRTI-FM 90.1 Mon-Thurs. 6 to 9pm & Sun., 9am–1pm.
Grant Green
Life can throw some totally unexpected twists. One positive twist happened to me in the very early part of my career in broadcasting: While struggling to become at least a fair newsman in Detroit where I broke into radio, I often listened to a station in the city that played jazz. One DJ at the station frequently played the music of a guitarist named Grant Green. The name was lyrical, and I thought Green played a mighty fine guitar.
It’s mildly ironic that less than a couple of years later, and after I had moved on and became a DJ at the same station at which I’d heard Grant Green played so frequently…that I, too, was playing the guitarist regularly.
A few years later, I lucked out and was hired as a newsman by a radio station in my hometown of Philadelphia, and soon enjoyed the luxury of being allowed to moonlight, and play jazz at another station in the city one night aweek. And, whose music did I get to play a lot of one night a week? Grant Green, of course.
Grant Green played a different kind of guitar than the more recognized artists like George Benson, Wes Montgomery, and Kenny Burrell. His artistry was like a smoothie—a blend of jazz, blues, soul, gospel and R&B, but the blues and jazz ingredients were always paramount. It may have been this versatility of sound that made his music different and so enjoyable to his coterie of fans.
He was born June 6, 1935, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father bought him a second-hand guitar when he entered elementary school and he learned to play the blues on it. He played drums in his elementary school drum and bugle corps, and sang in the church choir. By age 13, he was playing professionally in churches and with a gospel group. His secular favorites were James Brown, The Beatles, The Jackson Five…and Mozart. Years later, he gravitated to jazz, playing in the bands of Harry “Sweets” Edison, and Jimmy Forrest. So it was natural for him to play in so many genres, because of his early influences, joined by his latter day introduction to jazz.
The legendary drummer Elvin Jones first heard Green play in the mid-1950s and was impressed. Years later, and after Green had passed, Jones, commenting on the guitarist’s artistry said, “I never heard anybody play with that much purity. I always thought this was a great artist.”
Grant’s parents had cleared the way for him to enter music full time by allowing him to quit school and pursue his craft. But along with this freedom he became acquainted with drugs. Still, in 1961 he managed to gain a contract with Blue Note Records, became a staff guitarist, and for five years recorded mightily as a leader and sideman for the label.
His career came to a halt in the late 1960s, when he was arrested and served time for drug possession. Upon his release, he returned with a vengeance, recording with a host of jazz greats, including Yusef Lateef, Stanley Turrentine, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones.
By the mid-1970s, Green’s health began to fail, and he recorded his last album in 1978. Several months later, he suffered a stroke. He refused to follow his doctor’s advice and have heart surgery, choosing instead to drive from New York to a gig in California. On the way back he suffered a heart attack and died. He was only 43.
Many people with unique talent never get due credit during their lifetimes, for any number of reasons. Those who suffer this blind-eye phenomenon may blame themselves, society, or both.
Guitarist George Benson, a jazz great who has made it big time in jazz and other genres of music, had something to say about the oversight. He said, “Guitarists were always trying to learn what [Grant’s] secret was, and there were people who loved his groove. Grant made the guitar come alive and sing…Only he could do that.”
Some of Grant Green’s best offerings can be heard on the box set Grant Green Retrospective.
