1965 · Album
His Majesty King Funk
Recorded 1965 · Verve Records · Produced by Creed Taylor
Soul-Jazz Groove at Its Earthiest
Green's earthiness and deep groove made him the darling of acid-jazz listeners decades later.
By 1965, Grant Green had already established himself as a guitarist with real feel for soul-jazz, but His Majesty King Funk stands as something special — his only album for Verve Records and, as it turned out, close to his last straightforward jazz statement before he stepped back from recording for several years. When he returned, his approach had shifted toward something more commercial. So this record marks a kind of threshold, the end of a chapter.
The album pairs Green with Larry Young on organ, Harold Vick on tenor saxophone, Ben Dixon on drums, and Candido on percussion. Young had worked with Green before — this was their last collaboration across five albums together — and the two of them create the kind of locked-in conversation that makes soul-jazz swing. The grooves here run deep and unhurried. There's nothing flashy about it. AllMusic reviewer Michael Erlewine described it as soul-jazz with a deep groove and called it Green's last real jazz album, which tells you something about what was coming next. The guitar work has an earthiness that John Heidt noted at Vintage Guitar — a quality you don't hear in lots of other jazz guitarists. Green wasn't interested in virtuosity for its own sake. He was interested in making you feel it.
This isn't the album to start with if you want to understand Green's full range. But if you already know his work and want to hear him at a moment when soul-jazz was hitting its stride, when he had complete command of his sound and the material, His Majesty King Funk delivers exactly what its title promises. It's the sound of a guitarist who knew exactly what he wanted to play and how to play it.
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