“Into the Night” with the Jazz Guitar of Grant Green with Organ!

This morning when I opened MOG the first album that caught my eye was a Grant Green album entitled Organ Trio & Quartet. Now I have occasionally listen to the fine guitar of Grant Green, but I don’t ever remember him being associated with an organ trio. So with visions of Jimmy Smith and wes Montgomery dancing in my head I put it on and I was impressed the group was tight and the organ was really smoking. It seemed that through the early tracks of the album the organ was either equal to or more prominent than the guitar of Green. At lunchtime I looked up information about the album and found that it was actually a combination of two albums. The first half of the album was actually the début album of organist Sam Lazar, Space Flight released in 1960. Grant Green was a sideman on that album. It was Green’s second recording.  The second half of the album came from a Grant Green album, Iron City, recorded in 1967 and released in 1972. The organ player on this album is listed as “Big John” Patton. When I found the video that will close this post, I read some of the comments,. Included in the comments was a discussion as to whether the organist was actually Big John or someone else possibly Larry Johnson. Since I could not tell you the difference I will bow to their experience and say the player may not be “Big John” Patton! So here’s the track, it’s actually the title track “Iron City”. What do you think?? John Patton or Larry Johnson either way Grant Green is still terrific!