The title track on this Grant Green record runs almost fifteen minutes. I have never once wanted it shorter.
Here is the thing. It was never supposed to be that long.
Duke Pearson wrote the tune. Pearson explained in the original liner notes what went wrong: the musicians repeated the main melody twice, and there was confusion about whether one chorus was sixteen bars or thirty two. So every solo ran double. Nobody stopped the take. When it ended they had a version pushing fifteen minutes.
Alfred Lion liked it and still asked for a retake, because he wanted something closer to seven minutes that would sit comfortably on a side. They tried, but no later take got the same feeling, so the long one is the one you hear.
That created a real problem. Fifteen minutes eats most of an LP side. So the band came back eleven days later, on November 15, 1963, and cut shorter versions of Jean De Fleur and Django just to make the album fit. The longer first-session versions of both eventually surfaced as CD bonus tracks.
The lineup is stacked: Grant Green on guitar, Joe Henderson on tenor, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Duke Pearson on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Al Harewood on drums. Six players, and on the title track nobody is in a hurry. Alfred Lion produced the first session on November 4, 1963 at Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, and the record came out in February 1965.
What gets me is the restraint. The tempo sits low and stays there. Green plays clean single lines, no chords piled up, no showing off. Henderson comes in and keeps the same temperature. Hutcherson's vibes are the secret weapon. They hang over everything and give the track its late night sound at eight in the morning.
Monday works for this record. You are not ready for The Sidewinder yet. You need something that moves but does not push, and this is that. The title track alone runs longer than most people's drive to work.
Quick word on Joe Henderson. He had cut his own debut, Page One, five months before this, in June 1963. The guy was everywhere at Blue Note that year and he never sounds like a sideman. His solo here is patient in a way young players usually are not.
The rest of the album earns its place too. Jean De Fleur is a Green original that picks the pace up. Django is the John Lewis tune, and this version is worth hearing next to the Modern Jazz Quartet original. Nomad is another Pearson tune that runs past twelve minutes. Nothing on the record feels like filler.
If you only know Grant Green from the funky stuff he did later, this is a different player. This is the hard bop Green, and a lot of people think it is the best album he ever made. I am one of them.
One long accident, kept on purpose, and nobody in that room ever improved on it.