Grant Green - Idle Moments (Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series LP)

Grant Green - Idle Moments | Vinyl LP - Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series Reissue (BST 84154, all-analogue, mastered by Kevin Gray)

Grant Green was 28 when he recorded Idle Moments across two days in November 1963. He'd been a Blue Note artist for two years, brought to the label by Lou Donaldson after teaching himself guitar growing up in St. Louis, and by this point he'd recorded more sessions for Alfred Lion than almost anyone else on the roster. This one is different from the soul-jazz and organ-trio dates Green is best known for. The sextet has Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and Bobby Hutcherson, who was 22, on vibraphone, and the combination of Green's single-note lines with Hutcherson's crystalline chords and Henderson's warm, slightly oblique phrasing gives the music a quality closer to chamber jazz than hard bop. Duke Pearson plays piano, Bob Cranshaw plays bass and Al Harewood plays drums.

Pearson wrote the title track and "Nomad" and wrote the liner notes. The title track was supposed to be shorter. Because the melody repeats, the musicians confused whether a chorus lasted 16 or 32 bars, and Green ended up soloing for 64 bars instead of 32. Henderson, Hutcherson and Pearson followed, and the result was a nearly 15-minute piece that unfolds with a patience the Blue Note catalogue rarely allowed. John Lewis's "Django," the Modern Jazz Quartet standard, takes up most of side B's opening and gets a bluesy reading that pulls the tune away from its usual classical poise. Green's own "Jean De Fleur" is the most conventional hard bop piece on the record and the only track where the pace picks up.

This is the Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series reissue (BST 84154 / 3579910), mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original master tapes and pressed at Optimal Media on 180g vinyl.