You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Grant Green Solo Analysis - #3

Episode Date: August 29, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam break down Grant Green's super-groovin' solo on "Miss Ann's Tempo". See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you season two. Love the season two, man. I do. A couple more days. Then we'll be in the flow.

Yeah, man. How you feeling? I'm feeling good. Me too. Yeah. Ice coffee's working. It's working. I'm in there.

It's a little bit. Yeah. It's a little bit melting. That's okay. Shout out to Squatters. Seriously, Rob and Justin over at Squatters. Can I get a free $4 ice coffee? Please.

Please. They take care of us, though. much every day. Good cabs. So what are we doing today? So today we're going to do our second of what we hope to be weekly. Are we ready to commit to this weekly? I think we should do it weekly. And I think Wednesday, today is the day, right? Yeah. Okay. So this is going to be our solo analysis. Cool. And this is where we take Adam and Peters, Adam or Peters. Might be Adam and Peter sometimes, but for now it's Adam or Peter's favorite solos from yester year or from today year. That's right. And we just kind of break them down and try to share maybe something that you know, something that you don't know, and kind of walk you through it.

We'll do some solos that you've probably heard. We'll probably throw in some that you might not know very well and just kind of talk about them. And this one's fun because this is one that you chose, Grant Green's, the Great Grand Green, St. Louis's own Grant Green, amazing guitarist. And I'd never actually heard this solo, although it's funny because I know I've heard this album, but I didn't know it anyway. So I'm really looking forward to this because I love, you know, his blue note period. I love his playing and his solos. There's so much to glean from them. Yeah, so this is a solo from Miss Anne's Tempo.

This is off his blue note record, Grant's first stand. This solo, this whole tune was so influential to me when I was maybe 15 or 16. Someone said, check out some Grant Green. So I got this record on CD. And it's funny how that happens. Oh, man. Check this out. What if you've been like, man, check out this, you know, this in sync out.

Well, I think people were, and then those don't stick with you. You know what I mean? But this one, for whatever, I mean, I remember, like, having my first crappy car and driving to gigs in St. Louis and just, like, on repeat with this song. And, like, I mean, I could sing the whole thing. That's what you're about to do. I did some recording a couple days ago, and I was thinking about this on the way in, knowing that we would do this.

I did some recording a couple days ago, and, I mean, I played some stuff that I copped from this solo a couple days ago. Like, that's how much that's... Unlike your crappy car. from High Ridge, they didn't survive. The solo did, is what you're saying. Someone probably has that 84 S-10. Nice.

All right, well, I've got it queued up. You want me to kick it off? Let's do it. This is Miss Anne's Tempo, Grant Green. This is Grant Green guitar, baby face, Willett and the organ and Ben Dexon on the drums. That's not the same baby face from the early 90s, the R&B producer- Singer.

When can I see you again? I'm talking about it. All, here we go. Uh-huh. First of all, how great is that blues head? Just like straight off the bat, two statements and then the answer. Right, right, right.

And it's almost like the questions, the statements are so good, it's like you know what the answer is going to be. Yeah. And you wanted it to be. But that's what a great blues head does, man. It's just like, it's like soup. Yes, there's logic.

There's the beauty of it. And then you just lay it out there. Yeah. Okay. Oh, now we let them hear the answer. Do it again. Sounds so good. Let's do it twice.

I'm sorry, sir. All right, so the thing that jumps out to me immediately is how the language he's using is so, you know, blues oriented on this blues. And it's so grooving. And there's these little bebop turns that he has, especially on like the two fives. It's funny because on the ones and the fours, those first eight bars, he's like hitting it straight down the middle with some like, you know, it's at a faster tempo than maybe a lot of blueses. but he is, that sounds like St. Louis to me. You know what I mean? I don't know.

There's like something about that that really feels like home. And then his, of course, his language. And how swinging Babyface Willett and Ben Dixon are on this, you know, really accenting everything with Grant Green. Ben Dixon. Is this from the St. Louis Dixon's? That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know Ben Dixon, actually. Anyway, yeah.

No, it's great what you said about St. Louis because I always think about, like, this is definitely a happy blues. And St. Louis is like a happy blues town. It's a happy blues style. Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, we can do a little bit, but that's not our specialty, the sad blues. You know, this is a real happy, optimistic blues kind of. And, I mean, even before he gets to the four chord, you already know it's a happy blues, you know, both in the solo and in terms of the head and stuff. So that's great.

All right. You want me to take it back a little bit, or you want to keep charging ahead? Let's keep charging ahead, man. Love that look there. Yeah. I think I heard Peter Bursey might cop that. that little leg there. There's definitely some Grant Green and Peter Bernstein, for sure.

Blue scale and then into the domic scale. Oh, yeah. Get a little beboppy there, Grant. I like it. Yeah, just a chromatic thing going down. Yeah. I think, I mean, when you're phrasing and your attack and, you know, obviously the swing and the feel, but like the whole phrasing packages together so well that Grant Green had,

it really opens up some things that in a lesser player could sound corny. Totally. It like opens up some of that great, right. right down the middle kind of melodic stuff. It's really cool. Well, that's why I'm so thankful that this was such an influential solo to me at that stage in my development. Because it really teaches you the importance of sound and feel and time and groove.

And using, you know, I knew the blues scale at this point. So I could kind of make it sound like this, you know, and that was important. I think this is a great first solo to transcribe or in your development if you're starting. Maybe a little on the challenging side. Maybe on the challenge. But if you're ready to take on the tempo, the language is, you know, straight down the middle, but everything feels amazing. Right, right.

Ooh, syncopation. Again with that, reference back. Sounds so good, I'm going to play it twice. Man, talk a little about his, you know, his syncopation. Yeah. Because he's using that a lot, like different melodically, but rhythmically, just a lot of straight, you know, upbeat stuff and then some kind of interesting resolutions. Yeah, he took that phrase that's in the head. that, you know, 4-4 tritone,

and he phrases those upbeats, you know, almost every time he gets to that section, which is... Another thing that I notice Grant Green always does, I don't know if this was conscious or if this is a guitar thing or whatever, but you can hear the top of his, the top of his, like, F7 arpeggio is always the nine. Like, that's where he ends up in that phrase all the time. And whatever the dominant seven arpeggio that he ends up with, it always ends up and turns back on the nine.

And I think that's so interesting. Yeah. It gets you that sound. Coltrane does that a little bit too. Yeah, it's a great kind of, I don't know, I almost feel like it's like a modern blue sound. Yeah, it's like he's playing in C minor over F sometimes. You know what I mean? And he gives it that modality, I guess.

Yeah. But in a very, like in a modern way. And then it enables one to kind of shift in a. and out of like a straight blues sound. Yeah. Over the course, the one chord blues scale in a way that really fits melodically. I mean, it gives you a lot of choices there. Yeah.

It's super cool. Now we're going to get into it. Oh, come on. Check it out. Ah, yeah. So, man, he built up that, you know, repetition and then... That's what I stole the other night, but... Well, no, no, but it's great.

And I think people don't realize until you try to do something like that, how difficult, how difficult that is. Yeah. That da-da-da-da-da-ba-ba-da-da-da-da. And then when he's ready to turn back around, you know, it feels so right. And when you repeat a great phrase like that over and over again, you're up in the game for what you're going to do.

You know, it's like the slam dunk competition. Like, you know, when you do the same dunk over and over again, people like, wow, wow. But then you know at a certain point you've got to do something even better. Between your legs. Yeah. And get your way out of it. Yeah. And get your way out of the whole thing. Grank Green just went between his legs at the end of.

course. Now I think it's interesting here like you know for me I'm kind of hearing stuff you know for the first time in a way not knowing a solo that well but you know he just came off a real kind of peak apex moment with that last chorus of building up yeah and so he does a great thing here he's kind of doing a little bit of like almost called like segue kind of soloing where you're you're you're giving the listener a little bit of a break in terms of you're shuffling it a little bit you're shuffling a little bit yeah I mean good stuff no doubt yeah but you're in the groove but you're not you're letting the soul come to you. You're not chasing it around.

This is an important phrasing note, though, and I think you're spot on and noticed that is he did have that, you know, that sometimes our natural human inclination after we've built that up is then to be like, do, like to go even further, whatever, but he's not doing that. He's laying back.

He knows there's more chopping to be done. Exactly. And he's not throwing, like I think it's important, however you structure your soul, and this is just one way to do it, but when you hit those moments, And yeah, sometimes they're higher notes or sometimes they're louder, but sometimes it's just you repeat a phrase and structurally you fit it within the form in a way that really is a moment.

You know, and it's like let that moment have its moments somehow. Don't try to one up yourself. Relax. Don't turn red in the face and keep, you know what I mean? It's kind of like, yeah, you go up and you make the dunk, just like chill in and take the applause. Don't like take the ball and shove it in the defender's face. Play defense. Yeah, get back. Yeah, I think Graz play a little defense here, actually.

It's great, man. There he goes again. That's his note. And there it is, man. Wow. It's a great well-crafted solo all around. It makes me feel awesome every time I hear it. You look awesome, man.

You look like, I think you had like the flu or something when you came in. It's like you're rejuvenated. It's probably the 200th time I've heard it, and I just can't get enough of it. Yeah. I mean, perfect length to the solo. Yeah. And people always like, well, how long should I solo? Well, it depends on the solo.

But when you hear a solo like this, it's so well-crafted, and you know that that that solo could be. nothing but that exact length, however many choruses it was. And I kind of felt that actually that whole last course, I was like, I know this is the last course because it feels right. I know he's not going to keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff, man. I kind of like solo analysis Wednesday. I'm going to start, is this hump day? I just love listening to music, man. I love listening to talk about it. Yeah, we can call like hump day listening sessions or something. And they pay us for this podcast? Come on. Nobody pays anything for the project. You know what? The music is... But we do have

t-shirts if you want to contribute some. That's right. Good segue. Speaking of Grant Green's great solo. Man, I've seen some great Grand Green T-shirts. I don't know if you know about that. We don't have those. Oh, his album cover T-shirts?

Yeah. He had some of the best blue note. I mean, all the... Oh, yeah. It's that album cover, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it too. Totally.

Well, yeah. So, you know, Grant Green is a little bit slept on. If you haven't checked out of stuff, this is just a small sample of what is a super, you know, straight ahead, into the grooving era, straight down the middle, great language, great sound. Always feels amazing. Check it out.

Love them. So we do have T-shirts, and where would one, where might would? What be going on today? No, where would one find our, you'll hear it T-shirts? Well, there's many different ways. You could go to Google and just search, you'll hear a T-shirts. That's Google.com. Google.com.

Google.com. com. Dot, b.r. For Brazil. No, yeah, you're going to want to go to, for all things, you'll hear it. Just go to you'll hear it. that. But don't put any apostrophes or hyphens or any of that stupid beep. Just put, you'll hear it, no pronunciation. No punctuation. Is that a self-bleep? That was a self-bleep. We don't edit. We

don't edit. Let's talk about that. How many times have we edited on this program in our 180 episodes? Exactly. I think, I think we've done two. Two edits. Two edits. Hard edits. Yeah. Oh, because we said some politically incorrect things. Remember that one? No, we would never do that. They'll never hear it. We're going to change the name of the show. You won't hear it. The outtakes. No, yeah, we don't edit it because we're having fun here. We're doing our thing. So go to you'll hear it.com. You can leave us a comment. You can leave us a voice memo, as you used to love. You can acquire a You'll Hear a T-shirt. As of yesterday, you taught me about the cassette version. I still don't understand that because I don't have one. This is what we're calling it.

The cassette t-shirt, it's big, bold letters right up front. It just says, you know what it is? It just says you'll hear it in big letters. So. Big it in your face. Do you remember you didn't pay attention to pop music, but do you remember... If you're talking about, Mr. Pop music. I didn't pay attention to bad pop music. What do you know about Wham? Oh, I... Wham? Thank you, ma'am.

No, that's not Wham, buddy. Come on. No, of course I know, wham. You know about Wham. That's tears or fears, bro. Oh, that's true. No, wham is, wait me up before you go, go. Wake me up. Before you go now.

So in the video... Yeah, I know, wow. This is why we called the cassette. Dan actually called... So he's got this white t-shirt that just... A little cropped. Choose life or something. A little cropped khaki pants.

Now, we don't offer cropped khaki. You'll hear it pants yet. But those are coming. No, so I told Dan, I was like, we need a choose life, but for you'll hear it. So check that out. I already, I have two on the way, but they're not here yet. Oh, two. One for you, one for me?

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, until tomorrow. You'll hear it.