BLP 1557

Lee Morgan - Volume 3

Released - July 1957

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 24, 1957
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Gigi Gryce, alto sax, flute; Benny Golson, tenor sax; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Charlie Persip, drums.

tk.3 Hasaan's Dream
tk.5 I Remember Clifford
tk.7 Mesabi Chant
tk.11 Tip-Toeing
tk.13 Domingo

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Hasaan's Dream	Benny Golson	24/03/1957
Domingo	Benny Golson	24/03/1957
Side Two
I Remember Clifford	Benny Golson	24/03/1957
Mesabi Chant	Benny Golson	24/03/1957
Tip-Toeing	Benny Golson	24/03/1957

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	HAROLD FEINSTEIN
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	NAT HENTOFF

Liner Notes

WHEN the prominent, contentious French critic, André Hadeir, made his first American visit in the spring of 1957, he was struck by an obvious fact that most American jazz listeners and writers have token quite for granted. “You are living,” he said, “in almost another classical period of jazz, like twenty years ago when Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman reflected the primary influences that were then active. Now, all the young musicians I heard have grown up naturally in another language. Whether I heard them at John Mehegan’s improvisation class at Juilliard or at a jam session uptown, it was immediately evident that the young modern jazzman knows thee Miles-Bird repertoire and idiom with the unquestioning familiarity that an earlier generation experienced in growing up with Hawkins and Armstrong.”

Hadeir goes on to partially deplore this period of consolidation during which brilliant youngsters like Lee Morgan are making the now familiar modern jazz language into a constantly more pliable, more self-challenging medium for expression. Hadeir, a denotative radical, is restless and wants increasing experimentation, a breaking away from the comparative assurance — for audience and musician — of this new quasi-classical period.

Hadeir, I feel, is partly wrong in his impatience with so large o section of the present scene. It is entirely possible — and desirable — to have both experimentation and consolidation occurring simultaneously. A Lee Morgan, for example, is a direct, intense example to contemporary experimenters of where the mainstream is; of where the nucleus of spontaneous fire that animates all essential jazz can be experienced; of where the earthiness that also must be integrated into successfully communicative jazz however cerebral, can be found. It is, in short, vital to have jazzmen who wholly feel and understand the basic modern jazz language; for it is they who can temper and balance and set in perspective those avant-guardísts whose roots in the jazz tradition may be tenuous or dormant.

Lee’s biographical framework has been outlined as part of Blue Note’s two previous LPs with Lee as leader (BLP 1538 and BLP1541). To recapitulate very briefly, he was born in Philadelphia July 10, 1938; started to play weekends with his own unit at 15; gained valuable sitting-in apprenticeship at Music City jazz workshop sessions with men like Miles Davis and Clifford Brown; and worked two weeks with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the summer of 1956. Soon after his 18th birthday, Lee joined the Dizzy Gillespie big band, and has been an impressive part of that wailboat ever since.

Being a second trumpet soloist in a band headed by Dizzy is obviously an unusually demanding testing ground for any hornman, especially so young a voice. Lee has been swiftly equal to the challenge, gaining the respect of Dizzy and his colleagues and the excited admiration of an increasing number of listeners.

Lee has named Dizzy. Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown as his primary influences, and also speaks appreciatively of Kenny Dorham, Thad Jones and Art Farmer. He has absorbed these and other influences into a way of blowing that is more and more his own. As he grows older and assimilates more life experiences, his style inevitably will be honed into more and more personal an expression. But Lee already is a horn who rewards repeated listening. His vitality, strength of conception and execution and emotional directness is partly due to his youth; but also come from his conviction in the rightness of the career he has begun and from his growing knowledge that he has the head, the chops, and the heart to tell a story that can reach and move those who are able to hear.

Benny Golson. who is also a member of the Dizzy Gillespie band, is another, even more diversified representative of the consolidating younger generation. Benny, who wrote four of the tracks on Lee Morgan’s Blue Note 1541, is that comparative rarity, a writer of jazz originals who can construct fresh, meaningful and often memorable melodic lines. There is especially an affecting strain of lyricism in his writing.

Gigi Gryce who is the altoist on this date, is also one of the more consistent and sensitive contemporary jazz writers. His appraisal, therefore, of Golson’s compositions is particularly interesting. Says Gigi; “Benny, first of all, is one of the greatest young musicians to have arrived in a long time. As a composer, he writes very strong melodically. His lines are even melodies within themselves. Each moving part, I means in a Golson work is apt to have o melody of its own — all within the same harmonic texture. He's also not content to stay rhythmically within the usual framework. He varies the length of his units, and doesn’t always work with just the 32-bar structure. Benny is really trying to do something for the advancement of form in jazz, I would describe the quality of his writing as subtle, and exciting in its subtlety.”

Gigi went on to talk of Benny as a tenor, and of his diffidence as a person. “He never steps forward. He always stands back, and he didn’t even want to ploy on this date. We had to convince him. He’s been very much overlooked. His playing is rather subtle too. People who expect to hear familiar approaches like Sonny Stitt or Stan Getz may at first tend to let Benny’s tenor slip by, because he's really something else. There’s a tremendous amount of thought behind his work; and if you listen, his playing is so exciting because it's so musical and so well put together.

“He’s always admired Don Byas and Lucky Thompson; and when he was younger, he played for a time like Dexter Gordon. He has his own voice now, and it’s an important one. He and Clifford Brown were very good friends and used to play a lot together. I thought of both of them as young old timers, because both had deep roots in the jazz scene. That’s why both had so much to say. When I speak of Benny’s future, I can’t find the words to express my conviction in what he will do. Let me also say he is the mast perfect person I have ever met.”

The biography of the 28-year-old Golson, who is from Philadelphia like Morgan, has been sketched on Blue Note 1541. The backgrounds of the virile individuals who make up so cohesively strong a collective rhythm section — Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Dizzy’s drummer, Charle Persip — have been detailed in Blue Note and other annals before, as has the career of Gigi Gryce.

At the request of Alfred Lion, Benny Golson wrote brief guides to each of his five compositions in this set:

“Hasaan’s Dream is about an imaginary Arabian boy who, after seeing the many wonderful things in a sultan’s palace, goes back to his dwelling and that night dreams of these things. In the introduction, I tried to get on Arabian effect by using no piano with a tambourine in its place. There is also no piano on the theme. The tag gradually modulates to end in another key.

“Domingo: After I got this melody together, the first few chord progressions reminded me of something religious which led me to think about Sunday. I decided I would call it Domingo (Sunday in Spanish) in tribute to the many friends I made during my recent trip to South America with Dizzy Gillespie.

“I Remember Clifford: This is in tribute to the late and very great Clifford Brown. He was one of my dearest friends and fellow musicians. I worked with this melody for three weeks, trying to get a melody that would be reminiscent of him and the way he played. To get a melody to characterize someone like Clifford is just about impossible; I don’t know if I even came close, but I tried very hard. I was very moody while composing this song because with each note I wrote I realized that was to someone who had gone — my friend forever.

“Mesabi Chant: I wrote this tune in Minnesota (Minneapolis), the state where the Mesabi Flats are located. They’re barren waste lands. The construction of the tune is very unusual in that there are 13 bars before and after the eight bar bridge — all in all, a 34 bar chorus.

“Tip-Toeing: Charlie Persip inspired this one in that he sometimes uses a straight one, two, three, four beat very softly. It reminded me of someone tip-toeing very softly. I thought it would be nice if I could get a similar type melody to go with this effect. I let Charlie set up this effect with a two-bar introduction. Off and on, he uses it throughout the arrangement.

This is an important LP because it combines the proudly deep-rooted instrumental strength of six young jazzmen who are adding to the roots of the future; and they're heard in compositions that are both penetratingly personal expressions of Benny Golson’s emotions but also provide breathing space for each instrumentalist to tell his story too,

—Nat Hentoff, co-editor Hear Mr Talkin' To Ya.
Jazz Makers (Rinehart)

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by HAROLD FEINSTEIN
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT VOLUME 3

In the nearly four months that elapsed between Lee Morgan's second Blue Note album and the present disc, the Dizzy Gillespie big band of which Morgan was a part continued to tour. In February, while the band was in Los Angeles, Morgan was able to display his skills on a couple of albums that also featured his bandmates. The Liberty disc Double or Nothing, listed under the joint leadership of Howard Rumsey and Charlie (now Charli) Persip, paired a small group from the Gillespie band with Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars in an example of East Coast-West Coast compatibility, while Dizzy Atmosphere, a rare jazz date on Specialty, presented a septet of Gillespie sidemen. Both discs featured the writing (and in the former case, the playing) of Benny Golson, and are of a piece with the music heard in this collection.

Of the five albums that Morgan made while under Gillespie's employ, this one has the strongest ties to his nightly working environment. Golson, Kelly, and Persip were all fellow sidemen, while alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce did some writing for a Gillespie album later in the year, as well as for Golson's own debut as a leader. Despite these Gillespie connections, Lee Morgan, Vol. 3 is the only album of the five Blue Notes cut at the time with a photograph of Morgan playing a conventional trumpet, rather than the up-tilted variety that Gillespie had made famous and that every member of the Gillespie trumpet section then employed.

Since Golson's comments do not deal with the specific performances of the five compositions, some additional particulars are in order. The unaccredited flute that opens and closes "Hasaan's Dream" is played by Gryce and supported by some of Golson's prettiest background figures. Morgan's solo is at least twice as long as any of the others, and its sustained bittersweet mood underscores the 18-year-old's surprising maturity. Gryce's alto begins well, but then suffers a setback with a reed squeak at the end of the first chorus, while Golson's venerable sound conveys a feeling of great wisdom. As usual, Kelly swings like no one else, and Chambers gets a solo before a typically striking Golson out chorus.

Despite its title, there are no Latin traces in "Domingo." The bridge is shorter than the main phrase, a technique that Golson often employs in his compositions. Everyone except Chambers solos, with each horn player making different use of the rhythm section. Golson rides on its groove, Morgan counterpunches against the flow, and Gryce imposes a more hard-driving momentum.

As deeply felt and tightly crafted as any ballad of the past half-century, "I Remember Clifford" is a seamless work in which introduction, main melody, and bridge are each distinctive yet inextricably connected. This proved to be an excellent feature for Gillespie with the big band, and Art Farmer played what this writer considers the definitive version on the 1960 recording debut of the Farmer-Golson Jazztet. While Morgan does not perform on the level of either of these trumpet giants here, his playing is filled with both hurt and determination, and remains astonishing for a teenager. Chambers's double-stops in support reinforce the somber mood, while Kelly lightens the atmosphere with another kind of grace. Golson tucks some beautiful details into the arrangement, as he does throughout his contributions to this album.

The unusual structure of "Mesabi Chant" recalls Golson's first popular composition, "Stablemates," where the main phrase was 14, rather than 13, bars in length. Everyone seems to be having a relatively easy time with what may have been the session's knottiest number. Morgan finds ideas that one would only expect after extended familiarity with the provocative chord changes, Gryce is nimble and sweet-toned, and Golson more rhapsodic and consistently inventive. The rest of the group also solos, including Chambers with the bow.

The straightforward blues "Tip-Toeing" is heard in two takes, the second of which was originally chosen for release. The alternate, which first appeared in the original compact disc reissue, features supremely fluent Chambers, robust Golson, Gryce's notable entrance and tartly blue sound, a muted Morgan, soulful Kelly, and a bit of marching (while on tip-toe?) from Persip. Despite a dropout during the start of Chambers's second chorus and a bass solo with distinctly less vitality, the master take includes solos by the others at least as strong as on the alternate. Among the key differences are Gryce's cleaner opening, Morgan on open horn entering from another angle, and Persip using his ride cymbal to create a different mood in the drum chorus.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2006