GRANT GREEN

Although Grant Green recorded more than 100 albums, including 30 as the group leader, his career was overshadowed by more successful jazz guitarists, particularly Wes Montgomery and George Benson. Known for his clear, single-note, melodic style of playing with a pick, Green avoided the chords and octaves favored by his contemporaries and was renowned for his unique tone. He was a major force in the evolution of the guitar as a lead instrument and he influenced a generation of guitar players including Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Benson himself. Green always played to his audience, with a variety that ranged from straight-ahead jazz standards, bebop, soul, gospel, Latin, country-western, to funk. He covered the Beatles, James Brown, The Jackson 5, and Mozart. But whatever he played, his music remained rooted in the blues. Green played a green guitar, wore green suits, drove a green Cadillac, and his song and album titles often played on his name. During the 1990s Green was rediscovered and dubbed the father of “acid jazz” and his recordings reissued.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 6, 1935, Grant was the only child of Martha, a homemaker, and John Green, a laborer, security guard, and parking-lot owner. Grant’s father bought him a beat-up guitar and amplifier and, together with an uncle, taught him to play the blues. Grant plucked his ukulele in his elementary-school classroom, played drums in the school drum and bugle corps, and sang in the choir. His early influences included pioneering electric guitarist Charlie Christian, but he mainly listened to horn players, especially Charlie Parker, the originator of bebop.

By the age of 13, Grant Green was playing guitar professionally in churches, with a gospel group, and with accordionist Joe Murphy. Although he briefly studied guitar with Forest Alcorn, Green was primarily self-taught. With his parents’ support, he dropped out of school before the ninth grade.

Green married Annie Maude Moody. Among his well-known tributes to her were “Miss Ann’s Tempo” and “Blues in Maude’s Flat.” Their first child, Gregory, was born in 1956, and the couple would have three more. Gregory Green and his three younger siblings were raised primarily by their two sets of grandparents in St. Louis. Green’s personal life was filled with conflicting issues. He was using heroin by his late teens, and later drugs and his gigs kept him from spending much time with his family. But Green was not an apathetic person; he held strong beliefs and was among the musicians who founded the first St. Louis chapter of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist Islamic sect.