Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

MORGAN, Lee

(b 10 July 1938, Philadelphia PA; d 19 February 1972, NYC) Trumpet, composer, leader. A post-bop modernist influenced by Clifford Brown, he began as a supremely talented teenager recording as a leader in 1956, the album A-1 on Savoy co-led with Hank Mobley. He also played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band '56-8 (solo on 'Night In Tunisia' on Verve), with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers '58-61 and '64-5 (LPs on Blue Note, others), and recorded as sideman with John Coltrane (Blue Train on Blue Note), others. He had a commercial hit with a Blue Note title track The Sidewinder '63, a milestone of early funk which Morgan himself had regarded as an afterthought; it was used in a TV advert '70s, reissued as promotional 12" single by EMI-UK '85, often included in Blue Note anthologies.

There were albums as a leader on Vee-Jay/Trip '60, Prestige '62 (Take Twelve), six on Blue Note '56-7 with fine support from Horace Silver, Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, George Coleman, others: these classic Blue Note sessions were compiled on Mosaic's limited edition four-CD The Complete Blue Note Lee Morgan Fifties Sessions in 1995. About 20 more on Blue Note '63-71 variously included Clifford Jordan, Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, Mobley, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Billy Higgins, Cedar Walton, most of the best from the Blue Note stable. The Sidewinder was a no. 25 pop LP '64; Search For The New Land '66 and Caramba! '69 made the top 200. Live At The Lighthouse '70 (later complete in Blue Note three-CD set) was recorded at that Hermosa Beach club with Benny Maupin, Harold Mabern, Jymie Merrit and Mickey Roker, more than a superb souvenir of Morgan's work, but evidence of further growth.

One of the most highly regarded musicians of his era, Morgan was shot to death by a woman in a New York City club. One version of the story is that the shooting was an accident, caused by a concatenation of drugs, a firearm and a love triangle, and that Morgan should not have been fatally injured, but bled to death waiting for an ambulance. The incontrovertible fact, as with all gun deaths, is that if the gun hadn't been there, he would not have been killed.