Green Plays the Beatles Straight
Grant Green took pop standards and made them sound like they belonged in a jazz club all along.
Grant Green's I Want to Hold Your Hand is a straightforward idea executed well: take songs from the pop charts, mostly Beatles tunes, and run them through a small-group jazz filter. Green doesn't reinvent anything here. He plays his guitar cleanly and directly over Larry Young's organ, Elvin Jones' drums, and Hank Mobley's tenor sax. The arrangements are jazz-smart without being showy. Young and Green trade lines, Jones keeps things swinging but not fussy, and Mobley adds color without stepping on anybody's toes. The whole thing feels like a working band, not a concept album.
This sits in the middle of Green's catalog — solid Blue Note work from 1965, when he was turning out consistent sessions. It's not his most essential album, and it's not his most experimental. The idea of doing pop covers as jazz pieces was becoming fairly common by mid-decade, so Green wasn't breaking new ground. What he does do is make these songs listenable in a new context. The Beatles material works better here than you'd expect because Green's approach strips away the production and leaves room for the horns to breathe. It's the kind of album that works fine on its own terms but doesn't linger with you the way his blues-heavy records do.
If you know Green's grittier work and want to hear what he could do with lighter material, this is worth hearing. It's not the place to start if you're new to him — go for something with more personality and edge. But for fans already hip to Green, it's a solid session that shows his range. Not every album needs to be a masterpiece; some are just good musicians making decent music, and that's exactly what this is.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Grant Green
All 38 albums →
The musicians on this record
No Room for Squares 1963
Hank Mobley
plays tenor saxophone here
plays tenor saxophone here
Unity 1965
Larry Young
plays organ here
plays organ here
Dear John C. 1965
Elvin Jones
plays drums (drum set) here
plays drums (drum set) here
