Grant Green

Visions is the 1971 studio album on which Grant Green turned his guitar to the pop and soul hits of the day. It was recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs on 21 May 1971. The album belongs to his second Blue Note period, when jazz-funk and R&B grooves had replaced the hard bop and soul jazz of his early sixties sessions.

Between 1961 and 1965 Green had led more than twenty sessions for the label. When he came back in 1969 his style had changed, as Carryin' On and Green Is Beautiful made clear. Two live recording dates, Alive! and Live at Club Mozambique, came before this return to the studio. The band is built for groove: Billy Wooten on vibes, Emmanuel Riggins on electric piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass and Idris Muhammad on drums. Two percussionists, Ray Armando on congas among them, thicken the groove. Rudy Van Gelder engineered.

The programme reads like a radio dial of the time. There is Chicago's Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?, The Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun and the Jackson 5's Never Can Say Goodbye. Next to them sits an arrangement of the first movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor. Green plays the melodies almost straight, with the clean, horn-like single notes that were always his signature, and lets the rhythm section do the work. Cantaloupe Woman is the funkiest workout of the set. Quincy Jones's Maybe Tomorrow, taken slow and tender, was sampled by Kendrick Lamar in 2012 on Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst, from good kid, m.A.A.d city.

Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine found the electric piano arrangements somewhat dated, yet judged that Green never made a commercial pop-jazz album as appealing.

This Blue Note Classic Vinyl edition is stereo and all analogue, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.