Grant Green

CD version. Feelin' The Spirit is the album on which Grant Green took five African American spirituals and played them as modern jazz. Recorded in December 1962 and issued by Blue Note in 1963, it is a close relative of his 1961 album Sunday Mornin', another set rooted in church music. Green treats these old songs as material for his own language. The blues are never far away.

The session took place on 21 December 1962 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with Alfred Lion producing and Rudy Van Gelder at the controls. Green chose a young and very current rhythm section. Herbie Hancock is on piano, Butch Warren on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, while Garvin Masseaux adds tambourine, a sound borrowed straight from the church. By the label's count, this was the 13th album Green had recorded in his first two years with Blue Note.

The five pieces are long, from six to over nine minutes, and they leave room for extended solos over gospel-inflected grooves. Just A Closer Walk With Thee opens the record at an unhurried, swaying pace. The guitar stays close to the melody before it opens out into the blues. Joshua Fit De Battle Ob Jericho picks up the tempo, and Hancock's comping gives the old tune a modern harmonic frame. The closing Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child runs past nine minutes. It is the most inward performance of the set.

In his original 1963 liner notes, Joe Goldberg wrote that Green approached these songs "with affection, but as music to be played in his style." He heard in the result a combination of modern jazz technique, blues and gospel, all applied to the spiritual. Green's clean, horn-like single lines suit that idea well.

This is the Japanese Ultimate High Quality CD (UHQCD) issued by Universal Music Japan in 2024, catalogue number UCCQ-9703, with remastering credited to Kevin Gray. It comes in a jewel case with an obi strip, and the original sleeve notes are reproduced on the back inlay.