The trumpeter Lee Morgan (1938-1972) will always be associated with his surprise pop hit "The Sidewinder". As a boy-wonder he had already made a splash in the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at the age of 18. And Blue Note label immediately signed him. Remarkably he played his first session with Hank Mobley for Savoy one day later with Rudy van Gelder. From the sometimes rather routine recording sessions with typical quintet line-up in that crucial era of hard bop, Morgan's albums stand out from the beginning, not only due to his phenomenal technique, which he always put in the service of the music, but also in the selection of his musicians and material. He later began to write his own music, but at first relied on composers like Benny Golson, who played with him for a long time with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. In the selection of his saxophonists, Morgan set similar accents as Miles Davis and it is therefore no wonder that some of them played with both trumpeters. Hank Mobley, Benny Golson, John Coltrane, who hired Morgan as a sideman on his celebrated "Blue Train" session, and George Coleman and Wayne Shorter, who were to join Miles' bands later on. A very special like-minded player was Clifford Jordan, a tenor-player who has always been underestimated, with whom Morgan recorded three great albums for Vee Jay and Riverside, and who deserves special attention here. Since Morgan did not have a band of his own until his hit, he was one of the Jazz Messengers and played a most important "steadying" part in the band, anchoring regardless of characters as di erent as Benny Golson or Wayne saxophone part, impressively documented by "Moanin" and "Night in Tunisia". In his analysis of Morgan's trumpet style of the 1960s, the American author David H. Rosenthal makes an illuminating parallel by interpreting his style as an instrumental equivalent to the singing of the contemporary soul-greats, especially James Brown: he had honed his time and timbre to razor sharpness. In photographs, one can still clearly see Morgan's self-production, which indeed calls to mind an expression by James Brown: Mr. Super Bad. This was accompanied by an interest and active participation of Morgan in the Civil Rights Movement. Unfortunately, Morgan's life and career were flanked by drug problems, which often forced him to leave the stage and recuperate for longer times. In 1972, his wife shot Morgan during a performance break at the New York Jazzclub Slug's Saloon. He bled to death because the ambulance did not make it in time due to severe weather - now the subject of the documentary "I Called Him Morgan" (2017). Feat. John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Smith, Bobby Timmons, Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Henny Mobley, Benny Golson, George Coleman, Wayne Shorter and Cliford Jordan.
