Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
Released - July 1964
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 21, 1963
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.
tk.4 Totem Pole
tk.11 Boy, What A Night
tk.19 Hocus-Pocus
tk.25 The Sidewinder
tk.27 Gary's Notebook
Session Photos
Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| The Sidewinder | Lee Morgan | 21 November 1963 |
| Totem Pole | Lee Morgan | 21 November 1963 |
| Side Two | ||
| Gary's Notebook | Lee Morgan | 21 November 1963 |
| Boy, What A Night | Lee Morgan | 21 November 1963 |
| Hocus-Pocus | Lee Morgan | 21 November 1963 |
Liner Notes
It seems hard to realize that almost eight years have passed since a precociously gifted eighteen-year-old trumpeter named Lee Morgan made his first startling impact on the jazz scene by joining the brass section of Dizzy Gillespie’s big band.
In retrospect, it seems fortunate that Morgan was able to gain this experience before the big band situation deteriorated to the point where Gillespie decided to resume a small combo format. By the time that happened, Lee had well over a year of section work to his credit, not to mention the solo exposure often accorded him by his proud and unselfish boss.
Since the dissolution of the orchestra in January of 1958, Lee’s remarkable maturity as a solo voice has been reflected In his work with Art Blakey for a couple of years, and more recently in a group with Jimmy Heath at Birdland as well as a variety of other small-group settings.
Part of his time has been spent back home in Philadelphia, but since the summer of 1963 he has been more active again on the New York scene. The present sides mark his return to the studios for Blue Note in a session with a specially assembled and impressively strong personnel.
Of Joe Henderson, Lee observes: ”This was the first time I had ever recorded with Joe. I had never even played with him; but I heard the first record date he had done for Blue Note, and when Alfred Lion asked me who I wanted on this date, of course I thought immediately of Joe. I remembered that sound - and he has a kind of different approach. I can hear a lot of influences in him, of course - I can hear Sonny, and Trane; and some Bird, too. But the important thing is, I think he’s finding his own identity now.”
Of Barry Harris, Lee says: “Barry has been one of my favorite pianists for a long time. I heard him when I went to Detroit with Dizzy's band one time for a concert; that was when I met Barry and Yusef and Curtis Fuller, some of the great Detroit men. Later on, every once in a while when I got a few gigs I’d try to use Barry; so he's familiar with my music to a great extent too.”
He is similarly enthusiastic about Bob Cranshaw: "Bob’s one of the best all-around bass players on the scene today. He’s got a great big sound, and no matter what kind of music you bring in, he can see what’s happening and read it. And he can walk, and he can solo. It’s much the same way with Billy Higgins. I used to hear a lot about Billy, but I didn’t know who he was; maybe that was when he was located out in Los Angeles. I remember hearing about him when he was with Ornette Coleman’s group. Then, through Al Lion, I got on a date with him, and I’ve come to admire him - he’s got a lot of maturity for a young drummer. He never overplays to the point of drowning the horns out, yet you always know he’s there.”
Of the compositions brought in for this occasion - all originals by the leader - it is interesting to note that all five are based on changes that are simple enough to offer a good blowing base, yet sufficiently varied and personal to avoid triteness or monotony.
The title number might best be described as a long-meter blues (24 measures to the chorus). "The tune kind of put me in mind of the sidewinder - you know, the 'bad guy' on television," says Lee. "There's a snake called the sidewinder, but I was thinking of the bad guy." If the character and mood seems a little different from that of the average blues, you can attribute it to the unexpected change at bars 17-18 of each chorus, when a minor chord is introduced. The fascinating rhythm section figure established during the opening ensembles is sustained throughout the solos, giving the performance a deep blue tinge as well as a Latin touch. Lee's solo, fluent and sensitively constructed, never becomes grandstandy and relies at times on essentially simple devices, such as the repeated B Flat in the last of his three choruses. Henderson's solo is rich in melodic variety (note the contrast between the busy opening and simple continuation in his second chorus). Harris' piano picks up in intensity as it goes along, aided on his third chorus by the horns' backing. Cranshaw bears out Lee's complimentary observations in a fine solo that owes part of its success to the continued pulsing of Billy Higgins' percussion figures.
Totem Pole, named for the effect of Lee's alternation with Joe, is a group of six notes they play going into and coming out of the release. The E Flat Minor theme is strengthened by the effective contrast of Latin rhythm on the main passage and a straight 4/4 in the release.
As Lee himself agrees, this track contains some of the best individual blowing in the album. Lee's own personal phrasing and occasional use of half-valve effects are in evidence; as for Joe, he always puts down his instrumental foot where the beat is, never letting you lose track of the rhythmic or harmonic structure. Harris' solo, partly in octaves and later in single-note lines in the Bud Powell tradition, sustains the interest until Lee returns to solo against some intense and exciting rhythmic section work. "I got the idea for the number," says Lee, "after listening to Dizzy down at Birdland. He played the early Duke Ellington tune, The Mooche, a wonderful old piece, and I decided I'd like to do something in that same general form." Of Gary's Notebook, Lee says: "Gary's a friend of mine, and he's real serious - quite an intellectual guy. No matter what he's doing, whether he's riding the subway or just sitting around the house, he's always doodling, or figuring something out - he's a musician too and he's working with the Schillinger system. The tune is a blues, which is a simple form, but there's a lot to play. The line is not too simple, and that's the way Gary is - a basic guy, but kind of deep."
To these comments should be added the observation that this is considerably more than just another blues. It's played as a fast waltz, in the minor mode, with a 16-bar intro leading to 24-bar choruses, and with a series of tricky two-against-three effects by bass drum and bass to launch the solos.
Boy, What A Night is also a blues waltz, but this time with more of a funky feeling and a 12/8 meter, with a very basic character to both melody and changes. "Remember the old Avery Parrish blues After Hours?" says Lee. "You'll notice that during the main figure, the bass and the piano are playing the rhythm out of that. We tried this a lot of different ways - first as a straight blues, then double-up time, then with the three four feeling - until it finally came out the way it is here." On his solo here, it seems to me Lee reflects some of the Gillespie influence in his phrasing and in the ability to string ideas together at considerable length. Note Harris' sly fills in the closing reprise of the theme, and the old-timey blues ending.
Hocus-Pocus is, as Lee comments, "Just a simple tune, a nice easy blowing thing with the standard chorus length. I wanted to get away from straight blues. After I'd written it Barry Harris pointed out that the changes are the same as Mean To Me, except for a slight difference in the channel."
Joe Henderson and Lee are both displayed to advantage in the straight-ahead swinging groove of this performance. Barry, in his choruses, shows not only a wealth of ideas but a sturdy technique, often kept latent but occasionally made more openly evident in a flurry of sixteenth notes. The theme is repeated twice at the end, once to feature Billy Higgins and then with regular ensemble.
Lee is justifiably proud of the way this session turned out. The rhythm section was as stimulating as he expected, but the special pleasure of the occasion was the opportunity to share the front line with Joe Henderson. "Now that I've worked with Joe, I'm eager to get together with him again; he's very efficient in every way. And maybe next time I can get him to do some of the writing too."
That will be something to look forward to; but in the meantime these five buoyant interpretations of Lee Morgan themes offer rewarding evidence of Lee's own development as composer and soloist, and of Joe Henderson's value as a thoroughly able aide.
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
A NEW LOOK AT THE SIDEWINDER
The gloss that Leonard Feather's liner notes provide for Lee Morgan's career in the period immediately preceding The Sidewinder disguises what was the most dispiriting stretch of the trumpeter's life. In the throes of a drug habit and, after the Spring of 1961, no longer a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Morgan spent two years in a kind of career limbo. What little recorded evidence exists, such as his January 1962 Take Twelve album for Jazzland, indicates that Morgan's trumpet playing remained impressive; but his dependency kept him from regular work, and a number of other young trumpet players including Don Cherry, Don Ellis, Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little stepped into the breach and attracted the public's attention.
Morgan's plunge into obscurity was so emphatic that, while back at home in Philadelphia, he reportedly heard a jazz radio program offer a Lee Morgan memorial tribute!
Fortunately for Lee Morgan and for jazz, he rallied; and Alfred Lion was there to document Morgan's new, rededicated self. The trumpeter had not been a Blue Note contract artist since 1958, having signed a deal with the Chicago Vee Jay label before his lone effort on Jazzland; yet he maintained a Blue Note presence from '58-'61 through his work with Blakey and on his own 1960 album Lee-Way (made with Vee Jay's permission). Proof that Morgan was ready to move forward again was first heard on two Blue Note sessions from 1963 where he appeared as a sideman, Hank Mobley's No Room For Squares and Grachan Moncur Ill's Evolution. A month to the day after the Moncur album was taped, Morgan returned to Rudy Van Gelder's studios to record his own The Sidewinder.
What resulted was a surprise commercial hit. The title track took off, cracking the Billboard charts and ultimately serving as the soundtrack for an automobile advertising campaign. Morgan's attractive blues line, with the punching sustained vamp that Barry Harris contributed to the arrangement and the clever harmonic wrinkle described in the original liner notes, transported the trumpeter from his recent nadir to the Hot 100. While it obviously had a significant impact on Morgan's career, "The Sidewinder" also encouraged Alfred Lion to attempt to duplicate this success with other artists in the Blue Note family. Rhythmically assertive, often over-extended opening blues tracks on subsequent Blue Note albums became the norm, though they rarely rose to Morgan's level of either inspiration or sales.
This fallout combined with sheer familiarity has left many listeners with negative feelings about "The Sidewinder" in particular and The Sidewinder in general. For them, a fresh listen should clear away the stale air of countless imitations, because the title track is filled with glorious playing. These musicians understood how to create a blues groove with feeling and intelligence, and the choices they make (Henderson's repeated figure in his second chorus and Harris's use of octaves when the piano solo begins, to cite two examples) provide lessons in how to effectively structure an improvisation that communicates. The rapport displayed throughout the album is a sign that professional connections had been made, connections that in the case of Morgan and Higgins played themselves out over many subsequent Blue Note albums. Henderson's ability to galvanize other musicians' dates was announced in no uncertain terms — his solo on "The Sidewinder" presages the similarly monumental tenor choruses he would lay down on Horace Silver's "Song For My Father" 10 months later — and the Harris/Cranshaw/Higgins rhythm section was reunited on Dexter Gordon's memorable 1965 album Gettin' Around.
Morgan's articulate descriptions of the music and the players plus Feather's astute analysis of the individual performances require only two additional comments. One concerns the alternate take of "Totem Pole," which might have sounded perfectly acceptable for release if we did not have the superior master take. Hearing both in sequence illustrates how the slightest adjustments can lift a performance from the very good to the exceptional.
The second point concerns Lee Morgan the composer. When Morgan first recorded for the label as a leader between 1956-8, he left the writing to others. After joining the Jazz Messengers, where he shared the front line with prolific composers Benny Golson, Hank Mobley and Wayne Shorter, and where Art Blakey always encouraged his sidemen to create original material, Morgan compositions began appearing with greater frequency, yet he still looked to others for the bulk of material on his own albums. Morgan's Jazzland LP was the first on which he wrote a majority of the tunes, and The Sidewinder found him responsibile for all of the music for the first time.
So this album also announced that the new Lee Morgan was also a talented writer, a quality that would stand him in good stead on his subsequent Blue Note recordings.
— Bob Blumenthal, 1999
Blue Note Spotlight - December 2020
http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/lee-morgan-the-sidewinder/
From dwelling in the depths of despairing obscurity to being the celebrated champion of a new style of jazz, trumpeter Lee Morgan paved the way for the popularity of the 60s soul-jazz phenomenon with his catchy 10-minute gem, “The Sidewinder.” While all sorts of innovations in jazz being distilled at the time—from Miles Davis’s new-styled quintet to John Coltrane’s classic quartet—the brewing of boogaloo came of age through the trumpeter’s distinctive voice and upbeat, funky original compositions.
The Sidewinder—recorded in 1963 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio and released in 1964—was both a comeback and a coronation. The lead-off title track became a crossover hit that in edited form became a high-charting single and even got scooped up by the automaker Chrysler for a TV commercial (used without permission or compensation, the ad was soon yanked). The tune, with a simple—and listener accessible—24-bar blues theme, was omnipresent on the airwaves and in jukeboxes. The first album pressing of 4,000 copies sold out within days.
A significant back story: Morgan had recorded as a hard-bop leader with Blue Note in his first round of association with the label from the mid-50s to early 60s. The rising trumpeter star, who came up under the wings of Dizzy Gillespie in his short-lived big band, broke onto the recording scene with his 1956 debut Lee Morgan Indeed! at the age of 18 and concluded in 1960 with Lee-Way. Meanwhile, Morgan solidified his Blue Note standing as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where he was encouraged by the drummer to contribute compositions to the band. However, Morgan came crashing down and was forced into exile—from his New York base to his Philadelphia hometown—because of his addiction to heroin.
When Morgan returned to New York, in 1963 he rejoined the Blue Note ranks, first as sideman for albums recorded by Hank Mobley and Grachan Moncur III, and then once again as a full-fledged leader. His rebound recording was The Sidewinder—with a young and future-star support team, comprising tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Barry Harris, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Billy Higgins—that turned out to be his most commercial success. Rumor has it, via his friend drummer Billy Hart, that the title track was “filler.” Filler indeed. The near-perfect dance-friendly tune and the rest of the album tracks taken as a whole are seminal, ushering in what turned out to wave after wave of oftentimes futile attempts to emulate—and even replicate.
The Sidewinder features a revitalized and energized Morgan, who penned all five of the pieces—none of them in the ballad zone. The leadoff, of course, is the skip-and-bounce hit with Cranshaw’s bass riff opening the show. Morgan slurs and plays clarion on the trumpet and also takes a fast bluesy run to lead the charge followed by the passing of the solo baton, first with Henderson’s tenor gusto, then Harris’s grooving break and Cranshaw’s dark-toned pulsings. The rhythm section is key as are the indelible melodic line shared by Morgan and Henderson.
The boogaloo bash continues with the swinging “Totem Pole,” teeming with rousing improvisation; the upbeat blues-steeped “Gary’s Notebook,” with Morgan and Henderson playfully swirling around each other in the head; the ¾ time caper “Boy, What a Night” with spirited band member chatter in the background; and the straight-ahead flow of “Hocus-Pocus,” where Higgins gets to tumble while the horns play out the melody.
In subsequent years, many tried to capture Morgan’s special soul-jazz essence, which Blue Note encouraged, but The Sidewinder made its mark as a milestone album that stands the test of time. It resurrected Morgan’s career, re-established him as one of jazz’s top trumpeters and inspired him to continue his prolific career, which in 1972 at the age of 33 was tragically cut short. But “The Sidewinder”—ironically named not for the snake, but a TV villain—dances on, full of funk and soul and the playful spirit that Morgan brought to his second coming-out party with Blue Note. It came out of the blue, totally unexpected, but listening now, it’s as if the tune and the album were ordained to light a spark for the decade—and beyond.
75th Anniversary CD Reissue Notes
Lee Morgan had Not recorded for Blue Note for almost four years when he returned for some sideman work in late 1963 for Hank Mobley's "No Room For Squares" and Grachan Moncur's "Evolution". Then on December 21 of that year he returned to the label as a recording artist. The album he made that day would change the course of his career and Blue Note Records, although neither he nor producer Alfred Lion knew it yet!
The ten minute 24 bar blues with an infectious Billy Higgins funk rhythm became an instant hit. Within the first week of release, Blue Note ran out of stock and rushed to get thousands more albums pressed. "The Sidewinder" was everywhere on radio, on television commercials and in jukeboxes.
Its popularity made Lee Morgan, who at the time of the album's release had rejoined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, a real band leader for the first time outside a recording studio. It also changed the level of Blue Note's business. Alfred Lion said that the pressure to come up with another hit like that was enormous. Thereafter, practically every Blue Note album featured a lead-off funky track.
The fame and influence of the title track has completely overshadowed this wonderful and varied album which was the first Lee Morgan album to contain exclusively his originals. They are all excellent, particularly "Gary's Notebook" and "Totem Pole", which is heard in two takes.
- MICHAEL CUSCUNA
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