BLP 4243

Lee Morgan - Delightfulee

Released - November 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 8, 1966
Lee Morgan, Ernie Royal, trumpet; Tom McIntosh, trombone; Jim Buffington, French horn; Don Butterfield, tuba; Phil Woods, alto sax, flute; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Danny Bank, baritone sax, bass clarinet, flute; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums; Oliver Nelson, arranger.

1719 tk.3 Sunrise, Sunset
1722 tk.35 Yesterday

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 27, 1966 Lee Morgan, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

1739 tk.4 Nite-Flite
1740 tk.5 Zambia
1741 tk.20 The Delightful Deggie
1742 tk.21 Ca-Lee-So

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Ca-Lee-So	Lee Morgan	May 27 1966
Zambia	Lee Morgan	May 27 1966
Yesterday	John Lennon, Paul McCartney	April 8 1966
Side Two
Sunrise, Sunset	Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick	April 8 1966
Nite Flite	Lee Morgan	May 27 1966
The Delightful Deggie	Lee Morgan	May 27 1966

Liner Notes

We are living in an era of artistic prosperity, a period in our cultural development that is rich in new developments and young talent. The ebullient Lee Morgan has offered eloquent testimony, ever since his big-time debut as a teen-aged sideman in the Dizzy Gillespie big band, that youth must have its say. Today he is still a young man, not yet out of his twenties, and still imbued with the freshness of conception that was evident from the start, along with a maturity that is the fruit of his decade in the big time.

The more I listen to Lee as the years and the albums go by, the more I am impressed not only by the emotional impact of his every solo, but by his excellence as a brass player. He belongs to an exclusive club of major contributors, among whom I would number Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, and Clifford Brown, who bring to its fullest extent the beauty of the trumpet as an instrumental medium. Perhaps for this reason, his is predominantly an open-horn style; one does not associate him with mutes, plungers or tonal distortions, but rather with the basic sound for which the horn was designed.

Listening to a lesser trumpeter recently in a group of which Lee was once a member, I was reminded of this, for the solos I heard were unexceptionable in terms of the notes played, yet there was something missing. Later I played a few tracks of Search for the New Land, one of my favorite Morgan LPs, and realized where the difference lay. By the same token, you can listen to Lee's solos in this new album and try to imagine how the identical series of notes would sound without the singular technical mastery and tonal purity of which his capable.

The personnel surrounding Lee on these four quintet and two orchestral tracks includes a number of familiar faces along with several not previously associated with Lee.

Joe Henderson, the eloquent 30-year-old tenor man from Lima, Ohio, is an alumnus of the Horace Silver Quintet (1964-6) and stylistically a product of every influence from Parker and Stitt to Rollins, Trane and Ornette. "Joe is a wonderfully adaptable musician," says Lee. "He's been working with Miles recently, along with Wayne Shorter. I'm always very relaxed around Joe. Having him and Wayne both on this album is a special kick, because they happen to be my two favorite young saxophonists."

The appearance of McCoy Tyner in a Morgan rhythm section (his previous pianists have included Ray Bryant, Ronald Mathews, Barry Harris, Horace Silver and Herbie Hancock) is also an important event. "McCoy and I grew up together; we've known each other ever since high school days; he's just a few months younger than I am. He learned a lot on the ground floor of the new movement when he and Trane were experimenting. McCoy is very serious about his music, very devout in his religion and very attached to his family. He'll never say anything bad about anybody. I think his personality is reflected in his playing."

Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins are, of course, familiar as members of the quintet that enabled Lee to break through to the best-seller lists via The Sidewinder. Of Cranshaw, Lee recalls: "I met him around 1960 or so when he was with the MJT + 3. He's developed into one of the most reliable of bassists and, along with Richard Davis, one of the workingest men in town. It can be a TV background, a film track, backing for singer, or a combo date like this - he'll be just right for everything that's assigned to him.

Cranshaw and Higgins, Lee points out, work particularly well together. Billy is a Morgan regular, having been heard on most albums Lee has made in the past couple of years. "He's one of these guys that can play any tune with any kind of group.," says Lee. "I've been listening to him ever since he was with Ornette Coleman, and he's never sounded out of place with any combo I ever heard him in."

The quintet launches the first side with Co-Lee-So, which as its title indicates is a composition with a West Indian calypso flavor. According to Lee, "I'd been listening to the various Latin rhythms and noticing how popular bossa nova had become, so I thought I'd try something along these lines. It opens up a sort of new idiom for me; use pretty lines instead of just running notes," Lee and Billy Higgins both play superbly on this track, and Joe Henderson adapts himself admirably to the happy groove. As for McCoy Tyner, aside from his light, insouciant introduction, he has a solo that starts out with a charming simplicity reminiscent of John Lewis. Then he moves into a more typical and persuasive Tyner bag with left hand punctuations.

Ca-Lee-So and the next title, Zambia, are both Morgan originals. Of the latter, Lee says: "I wanted to name a tune after one of the newly independent African states. During my last tour I met several students from Zambia and became friendly with them, so this is dedicated to their country."

Though the rhythm section contributes a Latin feel while the theme is played, as soon as the blowing starts it's a hard-driving straight four, with Joe's surging phrases a highlight and Lee soaring all over the horn, displaying unremitting variety in the character and length of his phrases. McCoy's solo shows a keen sense of continuity as well as an implacable beat. A later highlight is the series of eight-bar ex-changes between Morgan and Higgins.

The next two tracks, Yesterday on the first side and Sunrise Sunset on Side 2 are, as the personnel listing above indicates, something special. They are products of a date for which Alfred Lion assigned Oliver Nelson to assemble a larger orchestra and write special arrangements as a new setting for Lee.

Nelson has been an admirer of Lee's since the Gillespie days. "I heard him playing with Dizzy at Birdland," he remembers. "That was before I even moved to New York; I was just on a visit, and I was surprised and impressed by the wild, promising work of this youngster.

The admiration is, of course, mutual. "Oliver is out of sight!" declares Lee. "As for the tunes, I think Lennon and McCartney have written a lot of nice things, and I was very happy to do Yesterday."

Nelson uses the band discreetly, making effective use of Jim Buffington's French horn in the ensemble and leaving plenty of space for Lee, McCoy and Wayne Shorter to express themselves. "Wayne is a tremendous musician," he added. "His solo is really a high point of this number."

Lee's sound, and his fairly strict adherence to the melody, are noteworthy features, particularly in the dramatically effective last chorus. Notice, too, the invaluable presence of Philly Joe Jones, an influence no less potent in a larger ensemble than in his more familiar combo contexts.

Sunrise Sunset is, of course, a melody from the score of the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof. Lee recalls hearing Zero Mostel do it on television and determining there and then to record it himself. "It's sort of a Jewish lullabye," he says. The wistful minor theme provides a well-tailored medium for Lee, and again Wayne Shorter'e highly personal sound and aggressive style deliver an urgent, throbbing message. After McCoy's solo, Lee takes over the melody again with a discreet setting furnished by Nelson, and ends in an unexpected swoop down to the regions below middle C.

Nite Flite brings us back to the quintet. A minor-mode, 32-bar theme, it is presented in unison by Lee and Joe. Points to watch for are the extraordinary cymbal work of Billy Higgins and the unpredictable quality of Joe's work as he stalks, swings, snarls, soars and then squawks his way through a truly exceptional solo. McCoy's solo, even at this bright tempo, has a pensively lyrical quality.

The Delightful Deggie was named, Lee tells me, for "a girl I know in Montreal, the sister of a pianist. She's an interesting, quiet girl, a typical French Canadian, and her name is very French, so I just nicknamed her Deggie for short. I enjoyed doing this one particularly because McCoy is a great waltz man."

Lee himself, on one of his most persuasive solos, gets into a sightly Milesish groove in his choice of notes and phrases; but there is never any mistaking that it's Lee Morgan. Nor do Higgins or Crenshaw ever let you forget that one can swing powerfully in three.

Perhaps because of the interesting change of setting on the orchestral sides, this strikes me as probably the best all-around Lee Morgan album since the memorable Sidewinder. But whether backed by a quintet or ten pieces, playing an original or a pop song, Lee Morgan today is one of the established figures of contemporary jazz, one who can be counted on to offer a compelling performance — and who, happy thought, can also be counted on to sell in quantities commensurate with his talent. This pre-assurance of success marks a noteworthy turning point in the career of an artist who has surely earned his present status of security.

- LEONARD FEATHER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DELIGHTFULEE

The program on the original 1966 Delightfulee LP was one of the oddest looking in the Blue Note catalog. Alongside four Lee Morgan originals by a talented quintet were covers of a Broadway show tune and a rock hit, arranged for an eleven-piece ensemble by Oliver Nelson. This conjunction was definitely atypical of Alfred Lion's usual production strategy.

When Delightfulee resurfaced on compact disc two decades later, it had been supplemented by four additional titles from the Nelson session, two of which had been included in quintet interpretations on the original album. Clearly, as the newly unearthed titles indicated, enough music had been produced at the large-group session to fill a standard vinyl album, yet Lion had chosen to leave the majority of this session in the vaults.

Aural evidence suggests that Lion was bothered by an overall heaviness in the orchestral tracks, which can be traced less to the added complement of horns than to Philly Joe Jones. In his work here, which turned out to be his last for Blue Note, Jones does not do anything overtly wrong, but neither does he settle into a groove with his partners in the rhythm section. His attempts to pile on the polyrhythms in the newer manner of Elvin Jones sound episodic and forced on "Sunrise, " and his shuffle beat on "Filet of Soul" is also uninspired. Jones does not sabotage the improvisations of Morgan, Shorter, and Tyner, but the swing that Lion was always after is decidedly lacking.

Hearing Billy Higgins on the quintet tracks only underlines the distinction. His playing conveys all of the complex buoyancy that Jones's work with the larger band lacks. A comparison of how both drummers approach the 3/4 time signature of "Deggie" makes the point clearly enough, as does the patented Higgins groove on "Nite Flite," a track that carries an orchestrated section of its own in the riffs behind Tyner's second of three choruses. The pianist is a welcome presence on both sessions. He had left John Coltrane's quartet only a few months earlier after a five-year tenure, and was displaying his ability to excel in more mainstream settings, including the medium-tempoed soul blues of "Filet" and the islands groove of "Ca-Lee-So," which is Caribbean in the manner of Blue Mitchell's "Fungii Mama" as opposed to along the bossa nova lines that Morgan references in the original liner notes.

Notwithstanding Lion's reservations, it is good to have the entire April 8 session, especially as it contains additional examples of Morgan and Shorter together, two additional Morgan originals, and some fine orchestrations. Oliver Nelson had been tapped a year earlier for Blue Note's first attempt to showcase a star soloist with a larger group, Stanley Turrentine's Joyride, and Morgan was a logical candidate to receive similar treatment. The pairing works particularly well on "Sunrise," with the minor mode leading the soloists to some of their most emotive playing, and Nelson also impresses on a couple of introductions, including a "Filet" setup that briefly alludes to his own popular "Stolen Moments." There is also a good coda from both the band and the leader on the hard-swinging "Need I?" (based on the chords of "Deed I Do"), but the exchanges between Morgan and Jones reveal disorganization.

Not much need be added to Leonard Feather's original commentary on the quintet date, which features four-fifths of the band responsible for Morgan's hit "The Sidewinder" (Tyner is in place of Barry Harris). If the melody of "Zambia" sounds familiar, it's because the tune is a 4/4 take on "Kozo's Waltz," which Morgan recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1960 on the Blue Note disc A Night in Tunisia.

The presence of this album in an RVG edition reminds us that a different label might have yielded different results. Only a few years later, Rudy Van Gelder was part of another successful long-term relationship with CTI Records, where it was producer Creed Taylor's preference to overdub orchestral parts after the featured soloist(s) and rhythm section were done in the studio. Had Alfred Lion subscribed to this practice, there might have been few, if any, bonus tracks from this project. Instead, we get a cornucopia of Lee Morgan's music, great tenor work from two legendary saxophonists, and a lesson in what made Lion such a brilliant producer.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2007