Grant Green

CD version. Recorded in March 1965 and released the following year, I Want To Hold Your Hand brings back the trio of guitarist Grant Green, organist Larry Young and drummer Elvin Jones. This time they are joined by tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. The material is a set of well-known songs, a pop hit, a bossa nova and four standards, played with the restraint and harmonic finesse the trio had developed together. It was his last session for Blue Note until 1969.

The session took place on March 31, 1965, at the Englewood Cliffs studio of Rudy Van Gelder, with Alfred Lion producing. The trio had first come together on Green's 1964 album Talkin' About, and a few months later recorded Street of Dreams as a quartet with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. This time the fourth voice is a tenor saxophone. Mobley plays on five of the six tracks and sits out This Could Be The Start Of Something, which is left to the trio. The original liner notes are by Ira Gitler.

The title song by The Beatles is recast as a bossa nova, a choice that sounded odd on paper and works on record. It leads naturally to Antonio Carlos Jobim's Corcovado, played with the same light touch. The rest of the programme comes from the standard repertoire, with Kurt Weill's Speak Low, Victor Young's Stella By Starlight and Cole Porter's At Long Last Love. Green keeps to the clean single-note lines he was known for. Young, rather than pushing the groove as a soul jazz organist would, works as a harmonic partner, and Jones keeps the rhythm supple underneath.

The record came at the end of an extraordinarily busy five years for Green, during which he recorded more than twenty hard bop and soul jazz sessions for Blue Note. Reviewing it for AllMusic, Steve Huey argued that behind the familiar material the playing remains quietly advanced, in the interplay of the rhythm and in the soloists' harmonic choices. When Green came back to the label in 1969 he had moved towards the jazz-funk of his later years.

This is the Japanese Ultimate High Quality CD (UHQCD) issued by Universal Music Japan in 2024 under catalogue number UCCQ-9632. It is remastered by Kevin Gray and comes in a jewel case with obi and the original sleeve notes on the back inlay.