About

Guitarist Grant Green was prolific on Blue Note through the early-60s recording more than 20 hard bop and soul jazz sessions as a leader forthe label between 1961-1965. By the time Green returned to the label in 1969 his musical style had evolved to wholly embrace jazz-funk as first heard on his album Carryin’ On.

As the decade turned to 1970, Green was in back in Van Gelder Studio that January to record his vibrant album Green Is Beautiful, which remains one of the highlights of the era with the guitarist joined by Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Claude Bartee on tenor saxophone, Emmanuel Riggins and Neal Creque on organ, Jimmy Lewis on bass, Idris Muhammad on drums, Candido Camero on congas, and Richie Landrum on bongos. 

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is stereo, all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.  — (via Label) .

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. — (via Steve Huey// AllMusic)

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Label: Blue Note ‎Records
Series: Blue Note Classic Vinyl series
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, 180 Gram
Reissued: 2023 / Original: 1970
Genre:    Jazz
Style:    Jazz-Funk, Jazz-Soul

File under: Blue Note Records
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