Six Strings Heading Out on the Trail
Green and his band take the Western concept seriously without ever winking at the audience.
Goin' West is an odd duck in Grant Green's catalog — a loose concept album built around Western themes, recorded early in his career but left sitting in the vault until nearly a decade later. When it finally came out, Green was already well-established, so this release reads like a time capsule of who he was in the early sixties. The album works because Green doesn't overthink the premise. He doesn't drag out cheesy cowboy clichés. Instead, he and his band use the Western setting as a framework for solid, swinging jazz that happens to have a theme.
The lineup is genuinely strong: Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. Hancock was young and hungry then, already developing his harmonic sophistication but still grounded in the hard-bop language. Workman and Higgins give the band a supple, walking feel that never feels forced. Green's guitar work here is direct — he's not doing anything revolutionary, but he's listening carefully to what's happening around him and responding with clean, purposeful lines. The band sounds like they're having fun without being frivolous about it. Some tracks lean into the Western imagery more obviously than others, but even when the theme feels a bit imposed, the playing keeps you interested.
This isn't where you start with Grant Green — that would be better served by something like Idle Moments (1965), which shows more of what made him essential. Goin' West is for fans who've already gotten to know him and want to hear an interesting detour. It's not a masterpiece or a forgotten gem, but it's a solid session with good players, and there's something charming about how seriously they take a gimmick that could have fallen apart entirely.
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More by Grant Green
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The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
