Lee Morgan

He was eighteen. That is the number that keeps coming back when you listen to this record: eighteen years old, playing alongside Clarence Sharpe and Horace Silver and Philly Joe Jones, and not merely holding his own but pulling the date forward. The tone alone is remarkable for a player of any age: warm and full in the middle register, bright on top without hardening, the vibrato controlled and placed rather than automatic. Most trumpet players work for years to find a sound like this.

Horace Silver's piano is exactly right for Morgan at this stage, providing a harmonically rich foundation that Morgan can state, extend, or depart from. Sharpe's alto is bright and inventive beside the younger player, a model of how to share a front line without competing. Philly Joe Jones drives everything with the authority that made him one of the most sought-after drummers of the era: precise, swinging, and always listening.

There are moments on this record where Morgan plays something that no eighteen-year-old should be able to play: a phrase that resolves in an unexpected direction, a note held longer than expected and then released perfectly, a blues inflection placed with the assurance of a man twice his age. The title "Indeed!" is not ironic. It is a statement of fact.

Released on Savoy with Hank Mobley's quintet, and already the framing is interesting: the album is called "Introducing," which implies that the audience does not yet know this player and needs to be formally presented. By the time the record came out the introduction was almost redundant, because musicians in New York had been talking about Morgan for months. But the title fits the music, which has the quality of a revelation being offered carefully.

Hank Mobley's tenor is a different kind of front-line partner than Clarence Sharpe's alto on the first record: warmer, more patient, given to longer phrases that unfold with an easy swing. The combination gives Morgan a more relaxed harmonic environment to work in, and he navigates it without apparent effort. Hank Jones at the piano provides the bebop vocabulary that the session asks for, precise and clean.

Doug Watkins provides a solid, grounded bass that anchors the rhythm section without calling attention to itself. Art Taylor keeps steady time without interrupting the soloists. The rhythm section exists to support, and it does: this Savoy session alongside his Blue Note debut in the same year as a teenager, both excellent, both showing a distinct voice already fully his own.

The expanded format gives this session a different energy than the tight quintet dates that preceded it. Kenny Rodgers on alto alongside Hank Mobley's tenor creates a front line that is dense with possibilities, and the writing for the ensemble is more ambitious than anything Morgan had led before. Horace Silver's piano brings a gospel-rooted earthiness to the proceedings, an anchoring quality that keeps the more elaborate arrangements from floating away from the blues.

The problem with the sextet format, from Morgan's perspective as a soloist, is that the ensemble passages eat up solo time and the arrangements can sometimes feel more interesting on paper than in execution. Paul Chambers' bass is rock-solid, providing the kind of steady, walking authority that made him the first-call bassist of the era. Charlie Persip drives everything with a crisp, swinging precision that keeps the larger ensemble tight.

It is the weakest of Morgan's early Blue Note records on balance, but weak by the standard he was already setting. The three-star rating is relative to what surrounds it in the discography, not to the broader field. There are fine performances here, and the session shows a young leader willing to take compositional risks even when they don't all pay off.

The sextet format with two saxophones gives this session a different character than the quintet dates that preceded it. Gigi Gryce's alto and flute alongside Benny Golson's tenor creates a front line rich with harmonic possibility, and the writing reflects it: all the compositions and arrangements are by Golson, giving the date a compositional unity that the earlier records did not attempt. Wynton Kelly's piano is lighter and more buoyant than Horace Silver's approach on the previous Sextet record, and the effect opens the music up.

Golson's arrangements are the real story here. He was already one of the finest arrangers in hard bop, and writing for Morgan's trumpet against his own tenor and Gryce's alto, he finds ensemble textures that sound larger than a sextet. Paul Chambers walks with the steady authority that made him the first choice of virtually every important New York leader between 1955 and 1965. Charlie Persip drives the band with a crisp swing that keeps the more elaborate ensemble passages tight.

The compositions show a young leader willing to hand the pen to a collaborator and trust the results. Morgan was nineteen, Golson twenty-eight, and the generational difference shows in the sophistication of the writing. The best moments come when Morgan's youthful fire meets Golson's mature structures and both are elevated by the encounter.

A new front line, and one that changes the character of the music significantly. Curtis Fuller's trombone gives the ensemble a weight and warmth that the saxophone-only front lines of the previous records did not have, and George Coleman's doubling on alto and tenor gives the arrangements a timbral flexibility that Morgan uses well. The writing takes advantage of the trombone's lower register, creating three-part harmonies that sound richer than anything on the earlier dates.

Ray Bryant's piano is different from both Horace Silver's earthiness and Wynton Kelly's bounce: Bryant plays with a spare, rhythmic directness that keeps the harmony clean while the three horns fill the space above. Paul Chambers walks with his usual authority, and Art Taylor is clean and swinging without calling attention to himself. The rhythm section gives the horns a stable platform and stays out of the way.

The album is less raw than the earlier quintet dates and more polished without being slick. The arrangements show ambition, and the solos deliver. By the end of 1957 Morgan had made five Blue Note records as a leader while also appearing on records by Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, and others. He was nineteen years old for most of it.

The best front-to-back record Morgan had made so far. The quintet format with Pepper Adams gives him exactly the configuration he plays best in, and Philly Joe Jones behind the kit changes the atmosphere significantly from Art Taylor: where Taylor was steady and clean, Jones is mercurial and demanding, pushing the soloists with accents and fills that cannot be ignored. Morgan responds by playing harder and more urgently than on any previous record.

The repertoire mixes Morgan originals with jazz standards, and both receive treatment that sounds inevitable rather than chosen. "The Cooker" itself is a hard bop original with the driving, insistent quality that gives the album its character: Morgan and Adams state the theme with authority and then let the rhythm section carry the energy forward. Bobby Timmons had by this point developed a piano style that was simply one of the best sounds in hard bop, and he is at his best here.

By the end of 1958 Morgan was twenty years old and had made six records as a leader, all of them worth owning. The Cooker is the best of the first six, the most fully realized front to back, the one where everything the rhythm section, the front line, the compositions, and Morgan's trumpet all arrive at the same high level simultaneously.

The stripped-down quartet format opens up the solo space and changes the character of the record entirely. No second horn, no front-line partner: just Morgan and a rhythm section, which means more room for the trumpet and more pressure to fill it. Morgan does not waste a moment. The title track "Candy" is built around a pop melody that he transforms into something undeniably his own, the sweetness in the tune given an edge that makes it stick in a way the original never did.

Sonny Clark is the ideal accompanist for this kind of record: a pianist who played with blues feeling and harmonic sophistication simultaneously, who comped with the right density and the right touch, who knew when to be present and when to stay out of the way. The Clark-Watkins-Taylor rhythm section is one of the most reliable in the Blue Note catalog, and their ease in this session lets Morgan play with the kind of relaxed focus that produces his best work.

The session was recorded two months after The Cooker, and the difference in atmosphere is instructive: The Cooker burns, Candy glows. Both temperatures suit Morgan. What they share is the sense of a musician completely in command of what he is doing, playing with the ease that only comes from having spent years getting ready.

The gap between the Blue Note records and the first Vee-Jay date reflects the difficult period Morgan was going through in the late 1950s. His playing on this session is still excellent, and Clifford Jordan's tenor saxophone makes for a warmer, more mainstream front-line pairing than the Pepper Adams combination that had defined the earlier work. Wynton Kelly's piano is buoyant and swinging, his chord voicings opening up the harmony in a way that gives both horns room to stretch.

The rhythm section is first-rate: Paul Chambers on bass and Art Blakey on drums are musicians who made everything they played on better by their presence. But what the record does not have is the sense of concentrated purpose that the Blue Note dates carried. The studio feels less urgent, the choices slightly less exact. Morgan is playing well by any normal standard: his tone is intact, his ideas are still coming with the same fluency, and the best moments of the date stand alongside anything in the Blue Note catalog.

The three-star rating is honest rather than dismissive. Compared to the average jazz record of 1960, this is fine work. Compared to Candy and The Cooker, it is a step sideways. Both things can be true, and both are.

Back to Blue Note and back to his best. The return to Alfred Lion's supervision and the reunion with Bobby Timmons and Paul Chambers restores the sense of focus that the Vee-Jay recordings lacked, and the addition of Jackie McLean on alto saxophone gives the front line an edge it had not had since the Gigi Gryce dates in 1956. McLean played with a slightly sharp, biting tone that came from his particular attack on the alto, and beside Morgan's warmer, rounder trumpet sound the contrast is galvanizing.

"Midtown Blues" opens the record and announces immediately that this is a different Morgan session than the Vee-Jay date: the head is played with authority, the tempo is demanding, and McLean and Morgan find each other instantly in the ensemble passages. The blues feeling runs through everything, not as a style choice but as the natural language of musicians who came up playing in that tradition.

Bobby Timmons plays here with the same fire he brought to The Cooker. Paul Chambers and Art Blakey provide the foundation that makes everything else possible. Lee-Way is the record that shows Morgan at twenty-two having survived his difficult period and returned to the Blue Note environment with everything intact. The pun in the title is intentional and accurate.

The second Vee-Jay record is better than the first, and part of the reason is the front-line partnership. Clifford Jordan's tenor has a warm, full-bodied quality that sits well against Morgan's trumpet, and the two of them generate a harder swing than the first Vee-Jay date managed. Recorded in Chicago with local pianist Eddie Higgins, the session has a slightly different feel from the New York Blue Note dates: looser, less produced, but with a rhythmic directness that suits the material.

Art Blakey's presence on drums is the key ingredient. His hard bop drive was not something that disappeared just because the label changed, and with Art Davis holding down the bass, the rhythm section pushes Morgan and Jordan into some of their most energized playing on the record. The combination of Blakey's power and Higgins's lighter comping creates an interesting rhythmic tension that keeps the music unpredictable.

The disc stands as a fine record and a fitting close to the first chapter of Morgan's discography: a young trumpeter who made ten records before his twenty-second birthday, at least four of them essential and none of them embarrassing. The Sidewinder and everything that came after would build on this foundation.