Lee Morgan

Edward Lee Morgan (July 10, 1938 – February 19, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. One of the key hard bop musicians of the 1960s and a cornerstone of the Blue Note label,

Biography Edward Lee Morgan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, on July 10, 1938, the youngest of Otto Ricardo and Nettie Beatrice Morgan's four children.

Originally interested in the vibraphone, he soon showed a growing enthusiasm for the trumpet. On his thirteenth birthday, his sister Ernestine gave him his first trumpet. His primary stylistic influence was Clifford Brown, with whom he took a few lessons as a teenager.

Morgan recorded prolifically from 1956 until a day before his death in February 1972. He joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band at 18 and remained as a member for a year and a half until economic circumstances forced Gillespie to disband the unit in 1958. Morgan began recording for Blue Note in 1956, eventually recording 25 albums as a leader for the label. He also recorded on the Vee-Jay label and one album for Riverside Records on its short-lived Jazzland subsidiary. He was a featured sideman on several early Hank Mobley records, and intermittently thereafter. On John Coltrane's Blue Train (1958), Morgan played a trumpet with an angled bell given to him by Gillespie.

Joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1958, Morgan further developed his talent as a soloist and composer. and served as the background theme for Chrysler television commercials during the World Series. The tune was used without Morgan's consent; after he threatened to sue, Chrysler agreed not to show the advertisement again and settled the case. Following an altercation between sets, Morgan's live-in girlfriend, Helen Moore, shot him. The injuries were not immediately fatal, but the ambulance was slow in arriving on the scene as the city had experienced heavy snowfall that resulted in extremely difficult driving conditions. They took so long to get there that Morgan bled to death. He was 33 years old. After her release, she returned to her native North Carolina and died there from a heart condition in March 1996.

Morgan and Moore are the subjects of a 2016 documentary I Called Him Morgan by Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin. The film premiered on September 1, 2016, at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and was theatrically released in the U.S. on March 24, 2017. In his New York Times review, A. O. Scott called the film "a delicate human drama about love, ambition and the glories of music".

Discography

Album Recording year Label Lee Morgan Indeed! 1956 Blue Note Introducing Lee Morgan 1956 Savoy Lee Morgan Sextet 1956 Blue Note Dizzy Atmosphere 1957 Specialty Lee Morgan Vol. 3 1957 Blue Note City Lights 1957 Blue Note The Cooker 1957 (Released 1958) Blue Note Candy 1958 Blue Note Peckin' Time 1958 Blue Note Here's Lee Morgan 1960 Vee-Jay The Young Lions 1960 Vee-Jay Lee-Way 1960 Blue Note Expoobident 1960 Vee-Jay Take Twelve 1962 Jazzland The Sidewinder 1963 Blue Note Search for the New Land 1964 (Released 1966) Blue Note Tom Cat 1964 (Released 1980) Blue Note The Rumproller 1965 Blue Note The Gigolo 1965 (Released 1968) Blue Note Cornbread 1965 (Released 1967) Blue Note Infinity 1965 (Released 1981) Blue Note Delightfulee 1966 Blue Note Charisma 1966 (Released 1969) Blue Note The Rajah 1966 (Released 1985) Blue Note Standards 1967 (Released 1998) Blue Note Sonic Boom 1967 (Released 1979) Blue Note The Procrastinator 1967/1969 (Released 1978) Blue Note The Sixth Sense 1967 (Released 1970) Blue Note Taru 1968 (Released 1980) Blue Note Caramba! 1968 Blue Note Live at the Lighthouse 1970 Blue Note The Last Session 1971 Blue Note