Johnny Griffin Quartet - J.G.
Released 1958
Recording and Session Information
Chicago, 1956
Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophone; Junior Mance, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; Buddy Smith, drums
I Cried for You
Satin Wrap
Yesterdays
Riff Raff
Bee-Ees
The Boy Next Door
These Foolish Things
Lollypop
| I Cried for You | G. Arnheim, A. Lyman, A. Freed | 1956 |
| Satin Wrap | J. Griffin | 1956 |
| Yesterdays | J. Kern, O. Herbach | 1956 |
| Riff raff | W. Ware | 1956 |
| Bee-ees | J. Griffin | 1956 |
| The boy next door | V. Youmans, S. GReene, J. Strachey | 1956 |
| These foolish things | H. Link, E. Maschwitz, J. Strachey | 1956 |
| Lollypop | J. Griffin | 1956 |
Liner Notes
There is in Chicago, a long curving boulevard down which flows more traffic per minute than goes through many a healthy sized town in an entire day. This boulevard, called South Parkway, passes by more churches, bars, kitchenettes and people per square inch than perhaps any other street in the United States. South Parkway is a busy street and it was on this busy street that I called to Johnny Griffin one afternoon after DuSable High had Ict out for the summer. "Hey Johnny, where you goin'!" "To music lessons"' He yelled over the dominant sevenths, flatted fifths and wild D minors of the wailing jitney cabs and Chicago Motor Coach horns. And the little boy with the slicked back wavy hair and the horn case that was almost as big as he was cut through the crowd of cabs and vanished around Forty-Sevcnth Street — to lessons.
That was nearly fifteen years ago and we, Johnny and I, were both fourteen years old and drapes were the coolest thing on the scene. Johnny's hair isn't slicked back anymore and his horn, which wailed even then (enough to prompt Lionel Hampton to hire him before he was eighteen) knows who's boss. Johnny is not "little Johnny Griffin" anymore. His sound is his and nobody else's. His ideas come when he calls them. Johnny Griffin knows his horn and plays as if he does, — with power, assuredness and, when he wants to, as fast as any tenor man alive.
Things have happened to Johnny since those days in the big gymnasium-looking band room of DuSable's Captain Walter Dyett: fame, experience, much travel and of course some bad things too. For if you cross Chicago's South parkway often enough or New York's Lenox Avenue or Kansas City's Eighteenth and Vine, the bad things are bound to happen and these too were Johnny's lessons...bitter, but there.
There is anger in Johnny Griffin's sound, the surge — without waiting — around the chord changes, the piling of idea upon idea, the stacking of climax upon climax: this is an exciting sound, an angry sound. When you hear Johnny Griffin on this album, you shall be hearing the cry of an Angry Young Man — angry but ever so down-with-the-game of the big city blues. Here is the sound of a man with a full grown soul. Johnny Griffin has something to say — listen and you shall hear.
FRANK LONDON BROWN
Frank London Brown, is 31, a Roosevelt graduate and an ex-jazz singer . His forth-coming novel, "Trumbull Park", has won for him the coveted "John Hay Whitney" award for creative writing for 1957... He is currently featured at the Joe Segal-sponsored Monday nite jam sessions at the "Gate of Horn" doing his fictional "Readings In Jazz" to improvised musical background...
Many important events have taken place since this ARGO LP was cut; events which, to Johnny Griffin have meant the difference between spending his entire musical career playing in one South-side club after another, or, as is now the case, garnering some of the much deserved fame and fortune that every truly creative jazz artist should taste of before his days are over! Such important things as a very worthwhile stint with Art Blakey's Messengers; numerous recording dates; a rebuilding strictly along Jazz lines of his repetoire and approach, a currently fruitful N. Y. stand with Thelonious Monk and most recently, his making fourth position in the "new star" tenor division of the 1958 Down Beat Critics poll...
Julian Junior Mance, a veteran of an early Lester Young group, and most recently known as the groovily comping piano-man with the hard-swinging "Cannonball" Adderley quintet is one-third of Johnny's rhythm section...
Bassist Wilbur Ware, who has, since these sides were cut, gained nation-wide stature as the bass-man of today from whom tomorrows stylings will derive, readily exhibits the talents that make the aforementioned comments so appropriate...The international Down Beat Critics poll of 1958 has placed him first in the new star division...
And, the important percussion chair is most capably manned by Chicagoan-by-adoption, Buddy Smith, originally from New Orleans...
I Cried For You: First made popular, jazz-wise, in the early thirties by Benny Goodman's small group version, I Cried For You, has maintained its standing among succeeding generations of ballad improvisors...
In his interpretation, Johnny Griffin chooses a relaxed, softly swinging approach that enhances the original melody; until Mance's urgent comping sends him into a gradual finger-snapping shout of Johnny Get Your Gun; which he does, in no uncertain terms! Jr's. ringing piano solo leads to a bass walk-out and into thc ensemble statement of the rousing, rocking ending...
Satin Wrap: Johnny's original, Satin Wrap follows, and after the beautifully simple statement of the theme, Wilbur Ware takes over melodically to walk matters right into Junior's Country Gardens, which JG coolly enters and proceeds to raise the temperature to a driving riff figure that gives way to the once again simply stated theme figure...
Yesterdays: a classic in popular music annals, is given a one chorus treatment by Johnny, in which, with his tone-wise reminder that Coleman Hawkins is one of his favorites, "says more", perhaps, than many a tenor man will during an entire career. His explosive change runnings and always lyrical plaintifness end the tune with an extended tag not unlike those which endeared Billy Eckstine with so many fans of yore...
Riff Raff: The flavor of the great Thelonious Monk permeates the proceedings of Riff Raff, a Wilbur Ware original...Most reminicent of Well You Needn't...The changes are pretty, and challenging, and each man has a ball with them, especially Mance, who in one part of his solo calls the thoroughbreds to the starting gate. Ware's solo here, indicates just exactly why he has since been termed "Monk of the Bass"... And so ends Side one...
Bee Ees: another Griffin original opens the second side, with Johnny's singing sound dominating throughout...Buddy's sizzle-work behind Johnny's first chorus, his appropriate "toning down" behind Mance's bright solo, and his humorous drum break after Johnny's second run-filled chorus, label him as one of the more tasteful drummers on the scenc today.
The Boy Next Door: Long has been one of Johnny's most requested in-person tunes. He takes this ever-green at a medium bounce tempo, and embellishes to just the right degree the already lovely melody...Johnny's "Boy" turns out to be simultaneously quite strong, and engagingly tender. Mance's locked-hands offers an interesting conceptual contrast to that of Griffin.
These Foolish Things: A six note quote from Bird's immortal BeBop solo; one from Rhapsody In Blue, and another from, Can't Help Lovin' That Man, dot this 1 1/2 chorus soul-felt rendition of These Foolish Things, in which Johnny's big-toned tenor runs rampant from logically sequenced runs to stretches of straight melody, and ends most humorously with yet another quote, from an old German beer song, I believe...
Lollypop: Just as a good set in any jazz club will close with a strong-swinging rocker, so does this LP, with yet another Griffn original, Lollypop Johnny's muscular tenor sets the groove with Mance soloing in his own style and then "Basieing" it behind Wares walking bit...Johnny really wails it into Buddy's drum break, and the ensemble brings this swinging set to a happy close...
I imagine a musician of Johnny's stature, when finally he receives some public recognition, after having had years of scuffle and experience poured through his horn and whole being, must feel as though a tremendous weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Having known Johnny for many of those "nothing" years, I have the same feeling; people no longer look at me in that strange "who?", or "so-what" manner when I extol one of my very favorite tenor saxophonists...Finally, they have come to realize, that what they've been hearing and taking so much for granted for so many years, was, when they first heard it, a signal of things to come And, by gosh, they've finally caught up to the improvising genius that is Johnny Griffin.
JOE SEGAL
Chicago Columnist,
Metronome Magazine
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