It's only me, trying to fly

Thursday music corner: In 1968 American jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery released Down Here on the Ground as the title instrumental track of a jazz-chart-topping US album. The track, New Zealand-born Canadian singer Gale Garnett's interpretation of Lalo Schifrin’s theme from the Paul Newman-starring 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke, was soon covered by fellow jazz guitarist Grant Green on his 1970 live album for the Blue Note label entitled, appropriately enough, Alive!, recorded at the Cliché Lounge in Newark, New Jersey. Growing in momentum as a modern jazz standard, it also appeared with lyrics on George Benson’s hugely popular, platinum-selling 1978 live album, Weekend in L.A., the year before Green’s death at the age of 43. 

Distinguished Detroit-born, Denver-raised jazz singer Dianne Reeves interpreted the track with great verve in 1996 as part of a Blue Note recording artist remix programme that led to the album The New Groove: The Blue Note Remix Project Volume 1. This version used Green’s impeccable guitar work as remixed by hip-hop music collective The Ummah, which included members of A Tribe Called Quest. 

Some of Reeves’ career highlights include performing at the closing ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and winning her fourth Grammy award for her jazz soundtrack to George Clooney’s 2005 Edward R Murrow biopic, Good Night, and Good Luck.

‘So if you hear a sound from way down here on the ground
Don’t you know it’s only me, trying to fly’

Grant Green – Down Here On The Ground (feat. Dianne Reeves) (1996)