‘Matador’: Grant Green’s Top-Shelf Modal Jazz LP

One of the jazz guitarist’s best records was recorded in 1965 with two Coltrane sidemen.Grant Green was discovered playing in a bar in his hometown, St. Louis, by alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who hired the young guitarist and put him on the radar of Blue Note producer Alfred Lion. A self-taught musician steeped in the blues, Green, who idolized bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker, approached the guitar like a horn player – he rarely played chords, instead producing long streams of single-note melodic lines. Green moved to New York in 1959 and began recording for Blue Note the following year. Although...