“For this writer, Johnny Griffin became a formidable present on the scene in the 1950s - through a series of steaming Blue Note albums, and as one member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers who could be just as overwhelming as the volcanic leader. Then there was a Griffin stretch - and he was stretched - with Thelonious Monk, followed by a musically rambunctious period of touring with Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis. It was amply clear by then that Johnny Griffin was going to be one of those long-distance swingers - an improviser who would be holding and riveting audiences for a long time to come, no matter what new styles or turns jazz took.
“The problem for us turn out to be, however, that this mighty shouter chose to do that swinging outside the States. Starting in 1962, Griffin became an expatriate, working in France with the Kenny Clarke-Francy Bolland big band and moving all over Europe as a free-lancer. In the 1970s Griffin moved his base to Holland, where he even acquired his own farm. The traveling and recording continued, and the albums that were released in the States demonstrated two things: 1) Griffin had kept on growing as a player in terms of conception and time-flexibility, while losing none of the sweeping ardor that had characterized his work at the start; and 2) he had been underestimated during his years here. That is, although Griffin was appreciated for his fire back then, it took his long years away for many of us to recognize how consistently and deeply satisfying a player he is.
“There is a lot more to ‘The Little Giant’, as he came to be known, than the first Roman-candle-like impact he always makes. There is substance, a lot of substance, to those long, spiraling solos. And there is a great deal of musical integrity. Now that we have more than two decades of Griffin on records to assess, it is unmistakably evident that he has created - and continues to create - one of the most durably fulfilling bodies of work in the canon of jazz tenor saxophone.
“At last, in September, 1978, Johnny Griffin came home to remind us natives of how much we had lost when he decided to change continents. Starting at the Monterey Jazz Festival and then moving around the country - at other festivals and at clubs - ‘The Little Giant’ was sure to create a greatly broadened audience for his music and a corollary appetite for his recordings.
“Inner City has already released one hotly distinctive Johnny Griffin set, ‘Blue for Harvey’ (IC 2004), a session recorded in Copenhagen. ‘Down Beat’ gave it five stars, noting that ‘with his big sound, flawless technique and perfect sense of swing, Griffin’s energetic ebullience evokes sheer joy.’
“Now, in your hands, is a two-volume celebration of ‘The Little Giant’s’ prowess - a recording of an April 23, 1976 concert in Tokyo with pianist Horace Parlan, bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Art Taylor.
“First of all there is - throughout these persistently compelling performances - Griffin’s total command of the horn. All registers, from the deep bottom to way on high. Part of that command is the clarity of articulation. There is no fuzziness. Griffin’s attack is clean, clear and unfailingly coherent. He doesn’t blur or coast; and indeed, one of the marvels of his work is that as hard and fast as he drives, his ideas do not flag. He think as swiftly as he swings.
“Furthermore, in the midst of his leaping maturity, Griffin plays with more sensitivity to dynamics than in the past. And with more overall care for nuances - as in his long, unaccompanied passage in ‘All the Things You Are’.
“Another element in Griffin’s work is his depth of emotion - soul, as they used to say. There are players who finger fast and furiously but their emotive content is about an inch thick. Griffin is always ‘saying something’, always telling a story. And the tales, moreover, are not safely predictable. These are true improvisations, and in them, ‘The Little Giant’ continually takes risks. Like Roy Eldridge, whatever fitting idea hits him in mid-flight, he’ll try to incorporate in the narrative, however far-flung the chances he has to take.
“There is also, of course, Johnny Griffin’s pulse. He is one of those players who work, in any context, is the very definition of swinging. But the bigness of his spirit - as shown in his ideas and his tone - leads to a largeness and depth of swinging that is one of the delights of jazz. Add to that a remarkable resiliency of time-sense, and you get instant wonders of the way he plays with the beat in his exchanges with Art Tayor.
“With regard to ballads - as in Griffin’s own graceful, hauntingly affecting ‘When We Were One’ - it is there that ‘Little Giant’s’ essential romanticism becomes clear. He has become a most thoughtful, lyrical and tender spinner of ballad lines; but then, being protean of skills, Griffin roars into the sizzling ‘Wee’. Set at a ferocious tempo, it results in one of the more incandescent performances in recent recorded jazz history.
“One of the reasons Griffin can so hold, and even shake, an audience is the way he -builds- throughout his solos. It is this quality of cohesiveness, fired by ceaseless intensity, that leads the listener through climax after climax. And part of experiencing each climax is the anticipation of the next one. It’s like a kinetic mystery drama, and the way it works is shown with particular vividness in ‘The Man I Love’. But on this track too, there are, as I’ve noted, interludes in which the contours of Griffin’s space change. Long, unaccompanied flights during which the intensity takes on softer colors and cadences. And that shift in mood is also part of the building, part of the constantly unexpected, that accounts for Griffin being able to sustain interest over such long performances as are in this set.
“Yet another dimension of ‘The Little Giant’s’ sensibility is his own ‘Soft & Furry’ - with its wary, cat-like beginning and its ruminative probings of the intriguing, slightly mysterious theme. And once again, Griffin’s solo work has an immediacy, a freshness, that is a fusion of highly personal ideas, sound, and a time that breathes along with each change (harmonic as well as melodic).
“It should also be noted that ‘The Little Giant’, strong and expressively wide-ranging as he is, benefits from superior support in this concert. Horace Parlan, an expatriate since 1973, made a durable mark before he left through his work with Charles Mingus, the Johnny Griffin-Lockjaw Davis hurricane, and Roland Kirk. An acutely attentive accompanist, he is also an incisive soloist and on ballads, a romantic one. Mads Vinding (who is on Griffin’s ‘Blues for Harvey’ album on Inner City) is a bassist with depth. Depth of sound and time. And clarity, as in his arrestingly, serenely structured solo in ‘Soft & Furry’.
“The most valuable sideman here is Art Taylor. Yet another expatriate, and the recent author of unprecedentedly candid interviews with jazz musicians, Taylor for a long time was one of the busiest record session drummers in New York. And during much of that time, I reviews most of the current jazz recordings for ‘Down Beat’. At night, in that period, I also covered the clubs, and Taylor was nearly always working in one of them. Despite all that constant exposure to Art Taylor, I was never less than fascinated by his work, ensemble and solo. He is not only an extraordinarily supple technician, possessed of flawless time, but he also plays with a snap, crispness, wit and just plain excitement that continue to make him one of the front-ranking, world-class jazzmen.
“In fact, those qualities also identify Johnny Griffin, and the two - along with Parlan and Vinding - have created an album that will retain its zest as long as you do yours.” (Nat Hentoff. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Johnny Griffin (t-sx), Horace Parlan (pi), Mads Vinding (bs), Art Taylor (dr)
A. All The Things You Are
B1. When We Were One
B2. Wee
C. The Man I Love
D. Soft And Furry
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