The Mystery of Grant Green's Idle Moments
On perfection in jazz
Among the jazz records that really stood out for me as I began to get into the music was Grant Green’s Idle Moments. It’s acknowledged as one of the big releases on Blue Note during its golden era of the fifties and sixties and on that, I wholeheartedly agree.
The album has a sheen or an aura of perfection that is also found on other classics of the era. That is the starting point for the below essay which I hope you will enjoy.
Quick housekeeping note: It will be a bit longer than usual until I am next in touch. Expect to hear from me in two weeks’ time (August 27) with my annual essay on Elvis Presley. This time, I will be looking at his triumphant return to recording after his stint in the US Army, Elvis is Back!
The Mystery of Grant Green’s Idle Moments
By: Robert C. Gilbert
“What does a person usually think during his idle moments?” It’s an intriguing question to ponder and one that pianist Duke Pearson posed at the start of his liner notes for guitarist Grant Green’s Idle Moments.
Pearson provides two possible answers. One is focused on contemplating past moments that may be happy or sorrowful. The other is about dreaming and scheming for the future.
I suppose the more pertinent questions to ask today are if there are any idle moments to grab at all in this age of distraction and if the endless scroll of social media is where all one’s idle moments are now spent.
Maybe it’s best to steer clear of the cultural and sociological consequences of today’s technological onslaught and instead, look at the concept of idle moments from another angle, defining them as pockets of time undisturbed by those pesky screens or other things except perhaps reading in print where music can take centre stage. Jazz is well suited here.
There’s a delight in the brief flashes of sui generis on a jazz recording that can turn heads. I think of Elvin Jones’ sudden tom volley on the repeat of the theme of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Armageddon’ from Night Dreamer or Carmell Jones exploring a nursery-rhyme-gone-sideways phrase on Booker Ervin’s ‘Eerie Dearie’ from the tenor man’s The Blues Book.
These strike as in-the-moment decisions, each made as a response to the composition that was being played. Their innate suitability make them feel as if they may have been composed rather than improvised.
It is the same with Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way which, except for the Joe Zawinul title track which bookends side two, was spontaneously created though there was a theme written for what became ‘Shhh/Peaceful’ that Davis producer Teo Macero left on the cutting room floor. Everything fits just so, never again to be repeated in that exact way as such moments of unmediated perfection could never be recaptured. But it does sound like Davis and company were working off of a score and that suspicion is in no way conjured to the record’s detriment.
Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth feels similarly set apart because of the recurring motif of the musicians often using the concluding phrase of the previous improvisation to start the next one. The most famous solo on the album is Nelson’s statement on the opening ‘Stolen Moments.’ It has such a precision that it too feels as if it was written out. It’s similar to John Handy’s second chorus on Charles Mingus’ 1959 recording of his ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ with the fluttering line on alto that paraphrases the bassist’s melody of his elegy to Lester Young.
These are all moments that feel perfect. It makes the first time hearing them transformational, producing a shiver of bliss that shoots up the body, music as the elixir that cures all that ails the weary listener. In other words, what might be a good definition for jazz.
And yet fixating on these brief glimpses of what may be called picturesque music seems antithetical to the burble that Ethan Iverson wrote about recently in a essay on the centenary of the births of Davis and John Coltrane (read it here). Iverson defines burble as “moving lines, advanced technique and busy harmonic movement. Everything is stated and resolved.” He contrasts that with sleek. That’s defined as “spacious, groovy and fashionable. The sentences are not completed and tensions are not resolved.”
He further posits that musicians mostly prefer the former while listeners mostly gravitate to the latter. A master musician, Iverson states, can provide both and that may be why these moments have such punch. ‘Stolen Moments’ is a modified blues and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ feels adventurous as the opening motif is continually modulated and transformed.
The balance between being challenging and being accessible in jazz is something that has a hold on my imagination. I feel like it is a link shared by many of the recordings that form the music's canon of the early LP era.
Certainly, I think that Green’s Idle Moments belongs among these albums. Recorded over two sessions in November 1963 but only released by Blue Note in February 1965, it was the start of a series of modernist dates by the guitarist—some only released years later—and an embrace of a direction that he had only occasionally turned to after he started recording for the label at the end of 1960.
These sessions almost always had Green fronting a rhythm section—on the absorbing Green Street, that only included bass and drums; in that case, Ben Tucker and Dave Bailey. When Green appeared as a sideman, it was with expanded ensembles, his single-line approach making a unique sound when twinned with Hank Mobley on his Workout or with Ervin on Horace Parlan’s Up & Down.
On Idle Moments, Green’s foils were Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson. Both were players who were pushing Blue Note away from being simply a label primarily dedicated to hard bop to one embracing an edgier, more experimental side of the music.
Henderson, with his self-contained sound on tenor saxophone that could erupt, without warning, into something gruffer, added an arresting counterpoint to trumpet players like Kenny Dorham, Johnny Coles and Blue Mitchell. Hutcherson was integral to Jackie McLean’s thrill rides that rumbled along the edge of the avant-garde: One Step Beyond and Destination…Out!!!
Idle Moments is well within the lines of conventional jazz but as its title implies, it is especially contemplative. The rhythm section on the recording is as steady as it came in 1963: Duke Pearson on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Al Harewood on drums.
Green had recorded with Harewood quite a few times both as a leader and sideman, including on Parlan’s Up & Down and with Stanley Turrentine on a live date from Minton’s. Cranshaw was at the start of a run at Blue Note as a first-call bassist and Pearson had just begun working for the label in artists & repertoire and prior to that, made his mark primarily through his work with Donald Byrd and as a composer of such lines as ‘Jeannine,’ ‘Say You’re Mine’ and ‘Chant.’
Pearson wrote two of the three originals on Idle Moments: the title track, which opens it and ‘Nomad,’ which closes it. His liner notes provide a front-row seat to the making of the album.
They are centred on the recording of the master of ‘Idle Moments,’ a languid, smokey, saloon-type ballad. Pearson writes that it was put on tape at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio well after midnight. The sequence and duration of solos after the theme statement were laid out: Green for two choruses and then Pearson, Henderson and Hutcherson for one each. For Pearson, a chorus meant 16 bars, the length of the composition.
At the start, the theme was stated with studied cool twice. As Green reached the 32nd bar of his improvisation, he continued on. Pearson waited until the guitarist reached the end of his third run around the theme to subtly point out Green was going longer than planned. The pianist began to solo, repeating the riff that Green used to anchor his statement, which continued despite the pianist's light yet insistent entrance. Pearson writes that at this point he realized that Green was treating a full chorus as meaning 32 bars, the length of the opening theme statement.
Not wanting to kill the clearly rarified atmosphere Green and company were enveloped in, Pearson let the take continue to its completion even as Alfred Lion, the producer and head of Blue Note, checked his watch, worried that the music was going on far longer than expected and that it would not fit on the planned LP. Adding to the anxiety was that Henderson soloed for an extra 16 bars meaning that a take that was expected to last seven minute tops went on for just over twice that.
Pearson describes everyone then re-grouping to play a far shorter ‘Idle Moments’ but that the effort was abandoned, it becoming clear that the far-longer-than-expected version had to be the master. He then illustrates the dilemma that the decision created. Two of the masters cut: Green’s ‘Jean de Fleur’ and John Lewis’ ‘Django,’ would have to be re-recorded in shorter versions before the session could end.
It’s a cleaner narrative than what actually transpired. ‘Idle Moments’ was recorded second on the session—after ‘Jean de Fleur’—so it may not have been immediately apparent that there would be a timing problem. As well, the final masters of ‘Jean de Fleur’ and ‘Django’ were recorded at a second sessions scheduled 11 days after the first.
Nitpicking aside, what Pearson wrote is a fitting accompaniment to the music of Idle Moments. And here again, talk of perfection laced with a glorious sheen is most appropriate.
‘Idle Moments’ is spacious. It’s not only because the tempo is extra slow, it is also in how each soloist approaches his improvisation, full of pauses and careful consideration of the pensive motion of Pearson’s line. Green’s is one of his finest, up there with those he played on ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So,’ ‘Blues in Maude’s Flat’ and ‘Lazy Afternoon.’ He incorporates the occasional bluesy aside among his deeply lyrical phrases which never stray too far from the tune’s melody.
Pearson and Henderson’s are notable in that they both steadily build to a climax. The pianist’s is melancholic, full of sustained, sighing chords while the tenor saxophonist’s comes after a sequence in double time, the only one during ‘Idle Moments,’ and ends on a breathy, last note like Ben Webster.
Indeed, Henderson’s tone is remarkable, barely above a whisper, a portrait in sound of a musician playing out his or her pain lighted only by a streetlamp at an hour when only the lonely remain to haunt the city.
Hutcherson’s solo is similarly built to crest at its conclusion.
‘Idle Moments’ is a remarkable recording that sustains its film-noirish mood for a quarter of an hour yet does not feel even remotely that long. It is but the first of four similarly built performances, not necessarily in terms of ambience but in how they luxuriate in the richness of the repertoire played.
Green’s ‘Jean de Fleur’ is a blowing vehicle with a tag. Classic tension and release, and Green, Henderson, Hutcherson and Green again dig deep into it. Pearson, Cranshaw and Harewood provide a rock-solid foundation. There’s also the spark in the opening and closing renditions of the theme as Henderson rides on top of the ensemble and Harewood plays a series of dancing fills.
Lewis’ ‘Django’ is a synthesis of both ‘Idle Moments’ and ‘Jean de Fleur’ with its unforgettable rubato opening, the shift to tempo for the solos where the intensity is slowly ratcheted up to then dissipate against an amen motif and the passage that marks the transition from one soloist to another.
Green’s rendition is looser than the famous 1954 recording by the Modern Jazz Quartet. The motif that marks the end of each solo is played by a different combination of Green, Henderson and Hutcherson depending on who is improvising. It adds a constantly shifting colour as does Green playing the ascent of the harmony for the first part of each solo chorus after he plays the opening statement.
Idle Moments concludes with Pearson’s lengthy ‘Nomad,’ a celebration of everything that distinguishes the album. Like all the precedes it, the composition presents a rich tapestry of material, a quick application of pressure that bursts into harmonically static bliss.
Henderson, Hutcherson, Green and Pearson, in turn, play chorus after chorus investigating this web and there’s deep pleasure hearing each play for an extended period of time. There is both burble and sleekness to savour. When it’s Green’s turn, Henderson and Hutcherson play a striking and very sunny counterpoint that heightens the feeling of camaraderie, of six musicians jelling in a unique way.
They regrouped just before the end of 1963 for Hutcherson’s first date as a leader. It would be locked away for 36 years before coming out as The Kicker. While the simpatico isn’t quite as deep as on Idle Moments, it’s inspiration is most keenly felt on the first recording of Joe Chambers’ ‘Mirrors’ (Green sits out) and on Pearson’s moody ‘Bedouin.’ I recall the excitement of getting it soon after it was released, a chance to hear even more from a group that created one of the moments of perfection in jazz.