Rare And Obscure Argo Recordings (XI)

Johnny Griffin Quartet

Johnny Griffin

This is Griffin's first date featured the saxophonist in the company of Junior Mance on piano, bassist Wilbur Ware, and session drummer Buddy Smith. The program features eight tunes that were fairly standard fare for jazzmen in 1956, such as "These Foolish Things", Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays", and the Youmans-Greene nugget "The Boy Next Door". These are played with the requisite verve and mastery of harmony, rhythm, and melodic changes, but they don't really stand out. What does stand out in this program are Griffin's originals, such as "Satin Wrap", which has since been covered by any tenor player worth his mouthpiece. It's a funky blues number that does not fall headlong into the hard bop swinging that would be so pervasive in the tenorist's style. Instead there are more formalist notions that suggest Paul Gonsalves and Coleman Hawkins. In addition, the album-closer, "Lollypop", comes out swinging hard with an R&B hook that digs in. Mance propels Griffin with fat, greasy chords that suggest a Chicago bar-walking honk frenzy, but Griffin's own playing is too sophisticated and glides like Lester Young around the changes. Also notable here is Ware's beautiful bop run "Riff Raff". The bassist knew not only how to write for but arrange for horns. Mance and Griffin are in it knee-deep, note for note, with Mance adding beefy left-hand clusters to the melody as Ware and Smith play it straight time until the solo, when the middle breaks up and everybody goes in a different direction. It's got the hard bop blues at its root. This recording is brief, as it originally came out on a 10" LP, but is nonetheless a necessary addition to any shelf that pays Johnny Griffin homage. *Thom Jurek*

Excellent early work by Johnny Griffin — a set that's a bit more obscure than some of his Blue Note classics to come, and which was recorded on the Chicago hometown scene from which he first sprang! The group here is a quartet — with Junior Mance on piano and Wilbur Ware on bass — the same lineup that graced the legendary Chicago Sound album under Ware's own name, which was issued on Riverside — a record that shares a lot with this one in its mix of soul and modernism, new ideas just brimming over from all of the young players involved. The album's overflowing with great tenor work from Griffin — angular, imaginative, and really breaking out of tenor modes of the early 50s. Original titles include "Lollypop", "Satin Wrap", "Riff Raff", and "Bee-Ees" — and the group does some nice work on a few mellower ballads as well!  *Dusty Groove, Inc.*

1 - I Cried For You

(Gus Arnheim, Arthur Freed, Abe Lyman)

2 - Satin Wrap

(Johnny Griffin)

3 - Yesterdays

(Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach)

4 - Riff-Raff

(Wilbur Ware)

5 - Bee-Ees

(Johnny Griffin)

6 - The Boy Next Door

(Vincent Youmans, S. Green, O. Harbach)

7 - These Foolish Things

(Harry Link, Eric Maschwitz, Jack Strachey)

8 - Lollypop

(Johnny Griffin)

Johnny Griffin (tenor sax), Junior Mance (piano),

Wilbur Ware (bass), Buddy Smith (drums).

Recorded in Chicago, Illinois, 1956.