Sweet Sucker – Johnny Griffin

Our audio except starts with the melody. The complete recording has an eight-measure introduction starting with a bass solo over stop-time piano and drums for four measures, followed by arranged horns with the rhythm section. Johnny's arrangement is for two horns and rhythm section, and the full arrangement is indicated in the C treble clef lead sheet. In addition to melody lead sheets, we're making second parts available.

Don Sickler: "It works great for rhythm section and a single horn, too. Several years ago, I gave it to the tenor saxophonist Houston Person (I knew he really loved Johnny Griffin), and he recorded an exceptionally soulful version. Johnny's version isn't available online, but Person's track can be purchased on a CD or at Amazon or iTunes.

Sweet Sucker also sounds great as an organ feature. Take a listen to organist Rhoda Scott.

By 1961, the time of the Sweet Sucker date, 32-year old Johnny Griffin was already a very seasoned professional. He actually recorded his first record date with the Lionel Hampton band when he was just 17. His first recording as a leader was a 45 rpm for the Okeh label that we've seen listed as being recorded in 1953 or 1954. He did LPs as a leader for both Blue Note and Argo in 1956. In 1957 he was recording as a member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and he started a long relationship with pianist Thelonious Monk. He also did albums as a leader in 1959 and 1960 that we'll be exploring on jazzleadsheets.com.

Johnny started 1961 (on January 6) with a "live" session at Minton's Playhouse where several sets of music were recorded with the new two-tenor sax quintet he and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis had started in 1960. On February 7, this group was back in the studio recording another session. Johnny also started a new two-basses project that he finished later in the month, "Change Of Pace." The next session Johnny did was the one featured here, for Bennie Green.