There are just four songs on Grant Green’s Street of Dreams (Blue Note), recorded in November 1964. All were standards brightly covered by a spectacular quartet: Grant Green (g), Bobby Hutcherson (vib), Larry Young (org) and Elvin Jones (d). On average, each song runs 8 1/2 minutes.
The album has now been re-issued by Blue Note on its Audiophile Vinyl Reissue series, remastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram LP.
I Wish You Love has a light Latin rhythm; Lazy Afternoon is taken in 5/4 time (think Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet); Street of Dreams has a walking pace; and Somewhere in the Night is a straight-ahead swinger.
This is one of those rare albums where all four musicians play as one, yet each does so with a distinct personality. Green’s guitar picking has a trumpet-like attack—notes played sharply without bending to bridge gaps; Hutcherson has a cool sound on the vibes, like ice cubes in a crystal glass; Young’s organ has a rich groove as his fingers run around on the two keyboards like a saxophone player, building to chords; and Jones is a textured drummer who never overwhelms or eclipses the other players.
This one was released in August 1967, three years after it was recorded. The delay was likely due to the large number of Blue Note albums Green had appeared on. The gap prevented one album from cannibalizing the other.
To buy Grant Green: Street of Dreams, go here.
Here’s Somewhere in the Night…
Bonus: Somewhere in the Night was composed by Billy May and Milton Raskin and arranged by May for the 1960-1962 seasons of the TV crime series Naked City…
The best-known recording of the song is an instrumental arranged by Nelson Riddle…
Also popular was Sam “the Man” Taylor’s recording of the song…
In 1962, Riddle, who scored the series’ incidental music, was asked to write a fresh theme for the show’s final season. In my opinion, it’s on par with Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme...
Here’s Terri Thornton’s hit vocal in 1963…
Wish you could hear both of Nelson Riddle’s themes, one after the other? You can…