Green's Blues

Benny Green | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 22, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Telarc
• ASIN: B00005JH7G
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,535 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Green's Blues is the first CD in pianist Benny Green's already distinguished career to feature an entire program of solo piano. That genre offers nowhere to hide, but Green has the necessary chops, imagination, and power to shine in the spotlight--not for nothing is he Oscar Peterson's official protégé. The 12 tracks abound in melodious, swinging enterprise, and despite a suitably contemporary harmonic sophistication, there's a delightfully old-fashioned feel to much of the music. Green eschews the kind of emphasis on rhapsodic, free-wheeling exploration that characterizes the solo performances of Tyner, Jarrett, and Bill Evans, centering his attention instead on the classic patterns of stride and boogie-woogie. His efforts are as convincing as they are affectionate, and they are notably inventive, too: his reading of Garner's "Misty" owes nothing to the composer, while "I Got It Bad" is a nobly individual version of Ellington's incomparable lament. The CD is on the short side at 52 minutes, and a severe critic might add that it will prove but a minor footnote in the literature of solo piano jazz. Maybe so, but that matters little when there is so much pleasure and fine playing on offer. --Richard Palmer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars art and entertainment--no contradiction here, June 28, 2004

By 

ADB (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green's Blues (Audio CD)

Playing exposed without a rhythm section is the ultimate challenge for an improvising soloist. Nonetheless, in the early decades of jazz, players such as Earl Hines, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum established daunting standards, in terms of virtuosity, touch, swing, blues feeling, rhythmic displacement, melodic variation, harmonic richness, improvisational ingenuity, etc. There are only a small number of classics of the solo piano genre in the era of the long-playing record and the CD, in part because sustaining solo invention and variety for 40+ minutes is amazingly difficult. 1968 was for me the watershed year, with arguably the two finest contributions ever to this genre: Bill Evans's "Alone" and Oscar Peterson's "My Favorite Instrument." Since then, my own short list of outstanding solo jazz piano albums includes Peterson's "Tracks," Earl Hines' "Tour de Force," Evans's "Alone (Again)," Hank Jones' "Solo Piano," McCoy Tyner's "Revelations" and "Soliloquy," Roland Hanna's "Duke Ellington Piano Solos," and Marcus Roberts's "Alone with Three Giants." Others might like to add one or more of Keith Jarrett's rhapsodic outings or something by Dave McKenna or Brad Mehldau's "Elegiac Cycle" or . . . Hey, make your own lists!

To my list I've added "Green's Blues."

Benny Green, for some unfathomable reason, remains an underrated player (a number of his excellent Blue Note recordings, for instance, have gone out of print, which is a crime given the garbage that remains in print). No doubt the simplistic notion that Green is "merely" an Oscar Peterson clone has done his reputation damage. But given that Oscar could do it all, that's hardly an insult. Anyone who knows both players well, however, can easily hear the difference. Green's style, for instance, is more consistently funky, demonstrating his debt to other sources, such as players like Wynton Kelly and Bobby Timmons. What Peterson and Green do have in common is mainly sovereign command of their instrument, the whole encyclopedia of jazz styles at their fingertips, and an inspired knack for tight melodic playing and for swinging hard and persuasively.

On "Green's Blues," Green combines stride, swing, and post-bop styles, making for an album that is terrifically joyful and (God forbid!) entertaining. Green's playing occurs in that rare zone where there is no contradiction at all between art and entertainment. You can listen to this album a thousand times with a smile on your face, because Green isn't afraid to make his music sound good--but there is no way you can call playing on this transcendental level some kind of a sell-out. Green doesn't please the musty critics who think that recycling atonal chord clusters from the mid-sixties makes a guy an "innovator." No, Green is a different kind of "post-modern" stylist, one who feels free to draw upon what he sees as the best that the tradition has to offer and to make that into something that's his own.

Green isn't as "intellectual" or "cool" or "subtle" a player as, say, a brilliant contemporary like Brad Mehldau, who has closer affinities to Bill Evans's style. But there are complementary strengths in Green's more vigorous, muscular, extroverted approach, forged from the venerable traditions of stride, swing, and soul jazz and refined by the touch of a classically-trained player. (Interestingly enough, Mehldau and Bill Charlap, whom I take to be Green's finest contemporaries, are also classically trained.)

The fact is, there is so much liveliness, humor, and sheer instrumental panache here that this album cannot help but be an inspiration. There are also all sorts of wonderful and unexpected little touches, like the way Green strums the piano strings near the beginning of "Just You, Just Me" and uses Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time" for the coda of a truly great rendition of Duke Ellington's classic "It Don't Mean a Thing" (which also uses Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So" as a bridge--talk about being "alone with three giants" . . .). Hey, discover the abundant pleasures of this album for yourself!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An intense solo workout!, August 16, 2003

By 

J.D. Woodman (Page, ACT Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green's Blues (Audio CD)

Benny Green is usually a relatively 'busy' player at the piano as demonstrated on the majority of his previous albums, however I disagree with the last review stating that this disc represents nothing more than a showoff. This album shows Green's command over the keyboard, in particular often exercising his stride technique. An inspired rendition of It Dont Mean A Thing is a highlight for me and I can honestly recommend this disc to any jazz lover - especially those who dig Green already.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unremarkable, May 20, 2005

By 

Stephen A. Smith (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green's Blues (Audio CD)

When Benny Green came to Boston with Ray Brown and Russell Malone a few years ago, I attended every set over three nights. I had been blown away by "Testifyin'"; and to this day, "These Are Soulful Days" remains the best piano/bass/guitar album I've heard since Nat Cole and Oscar Peterson. Green is a talented pianist -- and, by the way, a warm, friendly man.

I don't recall Ray Brown doing any solo tunes at the Regattabar, but both Green and Malone took their turns. Malone's ballad arrangements were lyrical, coherent, and clever. They were among his best moments. Green's solos, by contrast, were his weakest. He's a hard-hitting player in a trio; but without that support, he loses some steam. The problem persists here.

In simple terms, he leans too heavily on block chords. Every time he lifts his right hand, he grabs three notes. His rhythm is flawless, but he lacks nuance and grace. It's fine for stride to feel clunky and unwieldy; that's part of its charm. But as soon as he shifts into modern vocabulary, charm becomes sink weight. He never shakes it off.

Maybe as a Boston resident, I'm spoiled. I've heard Dave McKenna play ballads, and I've seen Bruce Katz boogie-woogie. Solo piano is a challenge. There's a lot of space to fill, and it takes a creative ear to know how much space to fill, when, and with what. It's an entirely different sensitivity than playing with bass and drums. And Green isn't quite there yet.

I definitely wouldn't steer you away from Benny Green. "These Are Soulful Days" is a five-star CD, required listening for straight-ahead jazz fans. "Bu's March," a knockout track from his Vanguard CD, raised the eyebrows of everyone who heard it, and for good reason. The man's a monster player -- but solo recital isn't his best profile, and this CD isn't his best work. Check out the aforementioned albums or his work with the Ray Brown Trio. Leave this one on the shelf.