Aidan Sleigh
Mr. Kovalsky
English II H
December 2014
Lee Morgan
Edward Lee Morgan, the trumpet player, composer, and bandleader who was considered to be a quintessential hard-bopper, was one of the most important jazzmen of his time. In his fast paced life, he played with Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, released twenty-five albums of his own on the Blue Note label, and was a leader of the Jazz and People’s Movement. Few people accomplish half as much in their lives as Lee Morgan managed to fit into his thirty-three year life. He is undoubtedly worth studying for his life, music, compositions, and his efforts to change the public’s perception of jazz.
Lee Morgan was born on July 10, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Due to an unfortunate heroin addiction, Morgan was forced to leave the group in 1961 because he had become unreliable and his playing began to suffer. After this brief low point in his life and career, Morgan bounced back with ‘The Sidewinder.’ The title track of this 1963 album became his largest commercial success, reaching the top twenty-five on R&B billboards. The album itself is of great importance to Lee Morgan’s career and to the development of jazz. Before ‘The Sidewinder,’ almost none of the songs used on Lee Morgan’s albums were his original compositions. However, from this recording on his own compositions were generally featured, which explored the fusion of jazz with soul, in a hard-bop setting. This change in direction shines a light on Morgan’s perseverance, and desire to keep his music interesting.
Although Lee Morgan continued to preserve the hard-bop tradition throughout his career, his music got progressively more experimental as he grew older. The biggest changes were in the instrumentations he was writing for. He started using electric guitar, bass guitar, piano, and organ to achieve different effects. Some of his compositions leaned towards a more modern sound, but he was never able to fully abandon his authentic blues-focused hard bop