Grant Green was, along with Wes Montgomery, the top new jazz guitarist to become prominent in the early 1960s. Due to his single-note style (Green rarely every played a chord) and his ability to create fast lines on the spot, Green was in some ways the Charlie Parker of the guitar. He gained experience playing in St. Louis in the 1950s including with Jimmy Forrest, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Lou Donaldson, moved to New York, and immediately became Blue Note's house guitarist.

When it came to playing soul jazz with organ combos, jamming bebop with a quartet, caressing ballads or Coming up with fresh approaches to Latin jazz and spirituals, the versatile Green was at the top of his field. But among his many recordings, Grant Green's most vital and adventurous was Idle Moments. With such inspiring sidemen as Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson and Duke Pearson, Green is heard at the absolute apex of his creativity throughout this stunning set.

He builds up statements like a masterful speaker, sounds both passionate and thoughtful at every tempo, and never runs out of brilliant and personal ideas to express. Every phrase leads to the next one yet all of his solos are spontaneous. While the other musicians are inspired and in top form, Idle Moments is particularly notable as the height of Grant Green's musical genius.

This pressing is on SRX Vinyl. SRX stands for “Silent Running Xperience.” SRX is our own proprietary formula, conceived and developed by Rick Hashimoto of Record Technology and manufactured by Neotech. Its noise floor is fathoms lower than any other vinyl we know of out there past or present. Records pressed with it look like normal black discs until you hold them up to the light and see that they are translucent and smoky, silvery gray in color. The near-perfect silence of SRX Vinyl virtually frees the music from groove noise and draws you further into the listening space, setting it in relief so distinct, full and spacious it’s nearly sculptural. You hear more of what’s on the original tapes, not only of the notes played on the instruments but the experience of the event itself. That's why we call it Silent Running Xperience.

Like all Music Matters Jazz releases, this is cut from the original analog tapes, mastered by Ron Rambach and Kevin Gray at Cohearant Audio, and pressed at Record Technologies Inc (RTI). The gorgeous gatefold jacket is from Stoughton Printing in City of Industry, California and includes exclusively licensed photos from the original session inside.

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See more Grant Green records here.