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*** Grant Green

FIRST SESSION

(Blue Note)

Guitarist Grant Green died in 1979, a decade before his soulful, bell-clear, single-string guitar riffs came into vogue with the acid-jazz set; and listeners today probably have those fashionable funksters and Japanese jazz hounds to thank for the rekindling of his impressive 1960s output for Blue Note. This 1960 date was recorded before what has been considered his first outing as a leader, Grant’s First Stand, and at times that shows. Occasional cuffed notes or tentativeness surface on the standard “Just Friends” and elsewhere. But the seductive beauty of the slow blues “Seepin’ ” and Green’s build-up to a mesmerizing peak on “Sonnymoon for Two” put this disc up there with the seemingly endless solid small-group sessions from Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio. No doubt this is due in great part to Green’s accompanists, including pianist Wynton Kelly, whose every solo is as dazzling as crystal. Kelly, like bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb, was in the Miles Davis Quartet at the time of this session. The disc is rounded out with two versions of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ’n’ You” from a year later, with another trio of Blue Note stalwarts including drummer Billy Higgins.

— Bill Kisliuk