The enigmatic multi-tasker Grassella Oliphant made an absolute corker in 1965 with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. 

Quite the adventurer, this Grassella Oliphant, for many jazz fans either an unknown or enigma. The story goes that young Grassella, born in 1929 in Aliquippa near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a kid who’d won dance amateur shows with his brother and crouched behind drum kits in clubs as a boy, had enlisted in the Army at the (under-)age of 15. One of those know-nothing adolescents and romantics looking for excitement that you read about in Im Westen Nichts Neues. He ended up playing in the Army jazz combo. His mother wrote a letter to President Roosevelt. Before the teenager was sent overseas, the truth came out and he was sent back to his hometown.

Oliphant worked in a steel mill and attended business school. He played in Pittsburgh with Ahmad Jamal, guitarist Ray Crawford and Tommy Turrentine before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1949. Then, and this is not a novelist’s tale, this is the plain truth, he became an IBM computer programmer and worked for almost two years in Okinawa, Japan. Back in Pittsburgh, he joined the Ahmad Jamal trio featuring Ray Crawford and bassist Eddie Calhoun and accompanied Sarah Vaughan. Consequently, in D.C. again, he managed the Abart’s International jazz club and led the house band, appearing with visiting luminaries such as Art Farmer, Charlie Rouse, Gene Ammons, Lucky Thompson, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Burrell and Oscar Pettiford.

This tells you he’d gained plenty experience before entering the studios to add his drummer’s touch to records of organist Shirley Scott (The Soul Is Willing, Soul Shoutin’) and pianist Herman Foster (The Explosive Piano Of Herman Foster). Among few others. Oliphant is an under-recorded drummer.

Oliphant made two records under his own name, The Grass Roots and The Grass Is Greener, puns intended. Two winners. The latter featuring Grant Green and Big John Patton was reviewed in Flophouse Magazine years ago. See here: http://flophousemagazine.com/2014/03/17/grassella-oliphant-the-grass-is-greener-atlantic-1967/ A good’n. But not nearly as good as The Grass Roots, a first-class sleeper.

In 1965, the strongest asset of Oliphant’s label, Atlantic, which had made jazz history with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, was Eddie Harris. They would strike gold with Charles Lloyd, who appealed to the burgeoning hippie crowd, a year later. Oliphant fell through the cracks, but he made his mark with a record of blues, ballads, Basie, Ellington and modal-tinged tunes.

He got Bobby Hutcherson aboard, a progressive cat who was making fresh avant-leaning records for Blue Note Records. The combination of Oliphant, writer and saxophonist Harold Ousley and Hutcherson pays off, not least because, as the liner notes make clear, this was a working band for some time. They’re sharp as knives, Oliphant is perceptive and precise and The Grass Roots is a powerful Atlantic record with the sound resonant and upfront, kicking your ass through the stable.

Ousley’s The Descendant and Uptown Hours wouldn’t have been out of place on, say, one of Jackie McLeans’s mid-60s Blue Note albums, finding Hutcherson in fine form. Ousley’s solo in Joe Henderson’s slow blues Step Lightly reminds of Stanley Turrentine, soul feeling and all, high praise.

I can’t say enough of Grandfather’s Waltz. To start with: ‘it’s the melody, stupid!‘ It’s one of the most beautiful melodies that I’ve ever heard. Sometimes all you need is a beautiful melody, sometimes (as much as possible I would say), all you need is musicians thriving on the melody.

The way this band performs critic Gene Lees’s beauty is par excellence. It’s a real tearjerker, at least it always keeps hitting me in the gut and bringing bittersweet memories and making me feel the pain and the joy of love.

Oliphant dropped out of the scene in the 1970’s. He – no, this is not made up – was manager of a golf course. Letting all those wankers work on their swing. He did came back though to jazz up the New Jersey area in the 00’s for a while. Oliphant passed away in 2017 at the ripe old age of 88.

Here’s The Descendant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEX6ZwlSL3U&list=RDgEX6ZwlSL3U&start_radio=1

Here’s the stunningly beautiful Grandfather’s Waltz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAE5WFZ8Jw&list=RDHqAE5WFZ8Jw&start_radio=1