Pianist and composer Andrew Hill had already built a formidable and beguiling body of work on Blue Note by the time he recorded Grass Roots in 1968, an album that stands as one of the most immediately accessible in his prolific output for the label which spans 1963-2006. Hill’s heady brilliance was indisputably established with fiercely creative albums such as Black Fire, Point of Departure, and Judgment!, but on Grass Roots he had another idea in mind. “I’m not proving myself here,” Hill explained in the original liner notes. “I want to give something. I want to reach out from myself to make people happy who listen to this. That’s what grass roots are in music. Getting down to the basics, getting down as deep as you can into feeling.” With a quintet eminently suitable for that task—Lee Morgan on trumpet, Booker Ervin on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bass, and Freddie Waits on drums—Hill presented a set of five original compositions imbued with a deep sense of feeling, groove, and lyricism including the feel-good title track, the festive “Mira,” and the propulsive “Soul Special.”
