Music Monday: Lee Morgan

July 10th is Lee Morgan’s birthday. He would have been 84 today had be not been killed at age 33 at Slug’s Saloon in New York.

Lee Morgan is a complicated figure. He had drug problems, had a complicated and violent relationship with his partner Hellen Moore, and recorded constantly over his 15 year career.

Over the weekend, I listened to The Sidewinder (1963), which was Morgan’s most popular album by far. It’s a solid hard bop date that is as good as any hard bop date from the late-1950s and early-1960s. It’s a pleasant listen and great for a Sunday evening in the summertime. Joe Henderson’s saxophone is great across the entire album.

I was more captivated by Morgan’s 1964 date: Search for New Land. It features a sextet that includes Grant Green’s unmistakable guitar.  

This morning, I’m listening to Infinity, which was recorded in 1965 and features Jackie McLean on saxophone along side the same sidemen who played on Search for the New Land. If Search and The Sidewinder represent kind of high water marks for hard bop, Infinity seemed to stretch the style into something a bit different and seems to anticipate jazz sounds that are more challenging to the listener and are less explicitly oriented toward a popular audience.  

Readers of this blog know that I have a soft spot for Morgan’s final recordings: Live at the Lighthouse which I blogged about on Thanksgiving last year. You can read about that here.