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Grant Green was Feelin’ The Spirit on this deeply soulful 1962 date that is a sibling of sorts to the great guitarist’s sanctified 1961 album Sunday Mornin’. Feelin’ The Spirit, which was the 13th album the remarkably prolific artist recorded during his first two years on the label, found Green interpreting a set of five African American spirituals —“Just A Closer Walk With Thee,” “Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho,” “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Go Down Moses,” “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child,” and “Deep River.”

Joining him was a state-of-the-art modern jazz line-up featuring Herbie Hancock on piano, Butch Warren on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums, with Garvin Masseaux on tambourine. In the original liner notes, writer Joe Goldberg notes that Green approaches these songs “with affection, but as music to be played in his style. The result is a fascinating combination: the techniques of modern jazz, blues, and gospel, all applied to the spiritual.”  — (via Label)

Broadening his musical palette, Grant Green detoured into a number of "theme" sessions in 1962 -- the light Latin jazz of The Latin Bit; the country & western standards of Goin' West; and the best of the bunch, the old-time gospel album Feelin' the Spirit.

For Feelin' the Spirit, Green takes five traditional, public-domain African-American spirituals and gives them convincing jazz treatments in a quartet-plus-tambourine setting. Green's light touch and clear tone match very well with the reverent material, and pianist Herbie Hancock is tremendous in support, serving the needs of the music and nailing the bright gospel style perfectly. Similarly, Green's playing never gets too complicated or loses sight of the melodies, yet he never runs short of ideas -- which goes to show that Feelin' the Spirit is indeed a labor of love.

Opening with a jaunty "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," Green and Hancock work up an impassioned gospel fervor on "Go Down Moses," which is loaded with soulful, bluesy tradeoffs. Yet overall, the mood is fairly reflective, with Green's interpretations of "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jericho," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" pointing up the suffering and sorrow behind these standards -- with the implication that suffering still continued into 1962. That's not to say Feelin' the Spirit is a depressing album, though; it's simply infused with the spirit of the blues, which is part of the reason these songs translate so surprisingly well despite their harmonic simplicity. Green, Hancock, bassist Butch Warren, and drummer Billy Higgins keep the grooves flowing throughout, making Feelin' the Spirit a rousingly successful experiment.— (via Thom Jurek // AllMusic)

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Label: Blue Note ‎Records
Series: Blue Note Tone Poet Series 
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, 180 Gram, Gatefold
Reissued: 2022 / Original: 1963
Genre:    Jazz
Style:    Hard Bop, Soul-Jazz

File under: Blue Note Records
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