Blues For Harvey – Johnny Griffin

A clever, creative variation on the blues. Blues For Harvey has an 18-measure form—a blues chorus with every phrase stretched from two measures to three. It's a riff head, with a single neat little phrase repeated through the entire form: an unaccompanied melody pickup, three hits with the rhythm section, and a drum fill going into a break for the next pickup. The changes are also quite clever. Each series of three chord hits goes up in half steps. These land on the IV and V chords in their expected places, but never go to the tonic—there is no I chord anywhere in the head. B♭7 is substituted with chromatic approaches to A♭7 (the ♭VII) at the beginning and end, a tritone sub E7 before the IV, and G7 (the VI) before the V. Only in the solos, which are on standard 12-measure blues changes, does B♭7 finally appear.

Our lead sheet also includes the dynamics from this recording. Johnny Griffin makes the song even more exciting by alternating the dynamic of each melody phrase, especially on the in head. Drummer Ed Thigpen is right with him, playing soft fills around soft melody phrases and bringing things back up for the louder ones. Check out how Ed plays every fill into the downbeat of the "break" measures. Johnny and Ed trade on the form: four measures of tenor alternated with eight measures of drums.

Other recordings of this song don't have the dynamic contrasts, but we feel it is important to show them as this is the best-known recording—and it's one of the most exciting.

This album was Johnny Griffin's only recording as a leader with Ed Thigpen on drums. Ed had settled in Copenhagen in 1972. Another recording they both played on is "Dream Session '97: Old Montmartre," featuring an all-star sextet with fellow expats Art Farmer, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, and pianist Horace Parlan, with Mads Vinding again on bass.

A video from 1970 featuring master drummer Kenny Clarke. Recorded after the first Copenhagen live recording but before the second, this version shows that the arrangement as shown on our lead sheet had certainly been established by then. However, there are no major dynamic contrasts in the head. Like Ed Thigpen on the 1973 recording, Kenny Clarke fills into the downbeat of each "break" measure. He uses a similar rhythm on many of his fills, highlighting his characteristic crisp snare sound. The trading has the same structure as the 1973 version: four measures of tenor with eight measures of drums.

This video comes from an Italian TV broadcast. For more recordings of Johnny Griffin with Kenny Clarke check out The JAMFs Are Coming and When We Were One. The latter comes from "Tough Tenors Again 'N' Again" co-led by Griffin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Griffin's only studio recording in 1970.

A particularly exciting video of a duo performance with drummer Art Taylor. The tempo is even faster than most other versions, but Griffin and Taylor are really locked in. Griffin phrases the melody a bit differently: the three "hits" are played long in other recordings, but here he plays the second one short and adds a "fall-off" on the last note. Taylor plays time through the head, with no breaks; his fills usually go up to the downbeat of the "break" measures, but sometimes they anticipate the downbeat on the "and" of 4. Like Kenny Clarke, he has a specific rhythm pattern he uses on many of the fills. Again there are choruses of trading, with the same pattern: four measures of tenor, eight measures of drums.

Taken from a French TV broadcast, this version is the closer of a set that otherwise features a quartet, with Rene Urtreger on piano and Alby Cullaz on bass. Art Taylor and Johnny Griffin both arrived in France in 1963. Art played on Johnny's first live recording from Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Like the duo version with Art Taylor, this live version is taken at a burning fast tempo. Griffin's melody phrasing is again slightly different: each phrase anticipates the third hit (B♭) with an eighth-note A, and (like the one with Art Taylor) there is a fall-off on this last note. There is a little dynamic contrast between the melody phrases, especially on the repeat of the in head, but the pattern is different from the "Blues For Harvey" recording.

Unlike Art Taylor and Kenny Clarke, drummer Kenny Washington largely makes every fill different. All of his fills, however, go to the downbeat of the "break" measure. The trading is again four measures of tenor with eight measures of drums; Johnny starts with yet another rhythmic riff figure repeated in the first two choruses.

This one is another French video, this time from the jazz festival in Antibes, France. This lineup of Johnny Griffin's quartet recorded a live album for Verve in 1980 and 1981. Earlier in 1980, the trio of Ronnie Mathews, Ray Drummond and Kenny Washington recorded Mathews' album "Song For Leslie." Washington played with Griffin through the early '80s, including on the last Griffin-Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis album, "Tough Tenors Back Again" in 1984.