Quiet-spoken but level with it, Grant Green, who died at the age of 43 in 1979, had no doubt of his genius, ranking himself with Wes Montgomery as the source of guitar knowledge in the mid-twentieth century.
Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) and Slick! (Live at Oil Can Harry's) comprise live and studio sessions that have not seen the light of day until now. The packages, replete with fulsome essay booklets and photos, encapsulate the earliest and and the latest live incarnations of the gifted guitarist as leader. The double-CD set, Funk in France, features vibrant sessions from ORTF studios in Paris, with performances too from the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-Les-Pins. Between both lots of recordings there intervened a period of serious heroin addiction and Green moved to Detroit after 1969 to try and deal with the affliction.
Oil Can Harry's, meanwhile, was the club in Vancouver that hosted Green in 1975. Interestingly both packages contain lengthy versions of Antônio Carlos Jobim's bossa nova classic, How Insensitive (Insensatez). These interpretations reveal Grant's thoughful, tender side which reached its apogee in the utterly perfect Lazy Afternoon, not, incidentally part of the Green repertoire on the occasions documented here.
The musician's stock in trade in 1969 was a kind of restrained funk as evidenced on readings of Now's the Time, Hurt so Bad, Hi-Heel Sneakers. I Wish You Love , meanwhile, is a delicate, lovely thing, featuring Barnel Kessel as guest guitarist in this instance. The tune is better known in its original French incarnation as Que reste-t-il de nos amours, Charles Trenet's and Léo Chauliac's immortal, lovelorn ballad.
Green had a kind of louche grandeur that belied the visionary skill. He had too a kind of mental fixity, a way of staying the course in a long tune, extracting all of its shimmering possibilities, not to speak of that incredible manual dexterity.
He was blessed of course with his sidemen - just listen to Emmanuel Riggins' vibes-like electric piano lines as Insensatez draws to a close on the Slick!/Oil Can Harry disc. Then it's on to some funky, mind-bending sonic effects, signalling the start of Vulcan Princess, the first of a four-tune funk medley which concludes the live disc. By this point in the short, frenetic career the words 'restrained funk' were not in the lexicon.
Recommended, as much for a kind of guitar-playing that is rarely heard anymore as for any other reason.
