BLP 4034

Lee Morgan - Leeway

Released - March 1961

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 28, 1960
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.6 Nakaniti Suite
tk.13 These Are Soulful Days
tk.17 The Lion And The Wolff
tk.18 Midtown Blues

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images / 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 28, 1960
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.6 Nakaniti Suite
tk.13 These Are Soulful Days
tk.17 The Lion And The Wolff
tk.18 Midtown Blues

Liner Notes

EVERY listener to jazz has had a few experiences so startling that they ore literally unforgettable. One of mine took place during on engagement the Dizzy Gillespie big band had at Birdland in 1957. My back was to the bandstand as the band started Night in Tunisia. Suddenly, a trumpet soared out of the band into a break that was so vividly brilliant and electrifying that all conversation in the room stopped and those of us who were gesturing were frozen with hands outstretched. After the first thunderclap impact, I turned and sow that the trumpeter was the very young sideman from Philadelphia, Lee Morgan.

Since then, I’ve been listening to Lee’s steady and uniquely rapid growth. There was one evening when I went to a New York concert with Gunther Schuller, the classical composer and jazz critic who is also an expert on brass playing. Lee was playing on stage with Art Blakey’s Messengers, and Schuller was astonished at the sheer technical ease as well as the burningly personal conception with which the youngster handled his horn. “By any criteria I can think of.” said Schuller, “this is brass playing of very rare excellence.”

I’ve also been intrigued at the fact that Lee has become one of the key leaders of the younger wing of trumpet players who have refused to go in the Miles Davis-Art Farmer direction of essentially lyrical, understated, economical trumpet playing. Lee too can be lyrical, but his musical temperament is basically in the exuberant, joyous, extrovertish tradition of Dizzy Gillespie and the late Clifford Brown. When the spirit is on him, Lee can explode sprays of notes that burst in bigger and bigger circles like a summer fireworks display. Yet, the most important facet of his most recent development has involved his increased discipline. Now, Lee rarely machineguns quantities of notes for the pleasures of virtuosity alone. He has learned when to hold back, how to select, when the climax calls for hot-rodding, and when it doesn’t.

The other players on the record—all postgraduate improvisers — no longer require biographical summaries. Jackie McLean, it seems to me, has fulfilled a great deal of his early promise in the past year. His technique has become more assured; his tone ¡s fuller and warmer; and he has worked out a very definite, individual style. Bobby Timmons’ message has reached a wide audience in recent months, both through his playing with Art Blakey (and with Cannonball Adderley for a time) and also by means of his neo-gospel compositions. Paul Chambers, long the anchor of the Miles Davis band, has become a major influence among young bassists throughout the world. The unquenchable Art Blakey has once again in his Jazz Messengers one of the most bristlingly stimulating small units in jazz and his own drumming seems to increase in provocative ferocity each year.

A relatively new figure involved in this album is Calvin Massey, a writer of considerable ability and beguiling imagination, Massey has not only paid dues for many years, but has known more actual hardship than o dozen other average jazzmen combined. Born in Philadelphia in 1928, he grew up in a fatherless home and was moved as an infant to Pittsburgh. Massey was dancing for money by the time he was four, and started to sing at eight. He picked up an interest in trumpet at an early age, but was limited to blowing a neighbor’s mouthpiece in the front steps because his family couldn’t afford to buy him a horn. When he joined the school band at fourteen, he finally did have an instrument. In the school orchestra — which also included Ray Brown and Tommy Turrentine — Calvin also learned French horn. He began gigging around Philadelphia when he was 15, worked around the middle west a couple of years later, put in some time with Jay McShann and then with Buster Smith in Texas, returned to Pittsburgh, and spent a year in New York during which he didn’t play but hung out with a number of the major modern jazzmen. It was at this time that he met the late Freddie Webster who came to be one of his idols.

In Philadelphia, Massey come to know and work with John Coltrane and later the Heath brothers — Percy, Jimmy and Al. He went on the road with a band n 1947, was part of Billie Holiday’s short-lived large unit a few years later, and more or less settled in New York in 1958 after having a band in Philadelphia. In recent years, Calvin hos written for Coltrane, Max Roach, Chico Hamilton, Johnny Richards, the Zoot Sims-Al Cohn unit, Herbie Mann, Charlie Parker, and others. He’s worked with George Shearing and has headed his own band in Brooklyn. Now Massey is trying to assemble a band again and meanwhile, is continuing his highly personal writing.

These Are Soulful Days is by Massey. The title is meant to connote hard times, the crushing worries of an existence when money is scarce. It’s a minor tune, structured in a 24-bar pattern, and based in B flat minor. Its introduction ¡s arresting and rhythmically trickier than it may sound at first. Paul’s solo is thoughtful and emotionally evocative. Timmons enters with a striking definiteness of attack and his customary “soulful” content. Timmons is particularly skillful at placing accents for maximum rhythmic and emotional effectiveness. Jackie cuts in with slashing force. Few other contemporary altoists can play with as much unremitting intensity as McLean and with as unerring a beat. Note how, as usual, Blakey will propel o soloist with a wide variety of accents and percussive timbres. Art is so much more than a time-keeper; he becomes an integral, personal part of everything going on during any band performance for which he ploys. Lee enters with authority and proceeds to build a crackling, superbly controlled, complex solo that moves indomitably through a series of half-climaxes and that in retrospect is an impressive illustration of organic wholeness. The final ensemble hos a few linear surprises and also indicates Massey’s concern with dynamics as Blakey controls the emotional as well as the volume intensity.

Lee Morgan’s tribute to The Lion and the Wolff (Alfred and Frank, the unusually consistent directors of Blue Note) is a rollicking blues. Mclean, like Morgan, plays with that instantly communicable confidence that comes from the knowledge that the instrument has become a complete extension of your ideas and feelings, that there are no longer apt to be short circuits between ideas and execution. Lee starts softly (with Blakey providing a wave-like groundswell) and digs more and more deeply into the tune, cutting out a solo that swings with sharp accuracy and rising ardor. Here, Lee’s climaxes are more direct and outspoken than in These Are Soulful Days and the solo is no less carefully and logically wrought. Timmons brings down the level of tension in intelligent contrast and then gives an infectious example of thoroughly relaxed, light-hearted swinging with a softer touch than in the first track. Paul’s contribution is substantial in tone and ideas and Art Blakey follows with a sketch of how a brush fire starts — a brilliant, exhilarating solo in which the play of timbres is as absorbing as the play of counter-rhythms. Bobby Timmons reintroduces the thematic gambols of The Lion and the Wolff and the horns conclude the celebratory invocation.

Jackie Mclean’s Midtown Blues has on intriguingly patterned, question-and-answer melodic line. Leaping out of the ensemble into a shouting solo is Lee Morgan. Lee also includes additional examples of his rather sardonic wit which often alternates with spontaneous playfulness. A further part of Lee’s quality as a trumpeter, incidentally, is the thoroughly, ringingly brass tone he gets out of his instrument. He doesn’t squeeze his tone but lets the sound spring out cleanly and plangently. McLean is decisive and driving, outlining his ideas in bold, clear lines. It’s also worth paying attention to the solidity and consistency of Paul Chambers’ bass line under Jackie’s impassioned improvising. Timmons, to use a frayed metaphor, sparkles in his solo. Bobby has the capacity to dig in deeply without sounding like a bulldozer. He can convey strong emotion and still float buoyantly. Paul Chambers, whose tone has been getting fuller as his years increase, takes another horn-like, inventive solo with punctuation provided by the idiomatic grammarian, Art Blakey.

Calvin Massey’s Nakatini Suite was written in 1948, and certainly hasn’t dated. Nokotani at the time was writing on entertoinment column for The Pittsburgh Courier. She had written encouragingly about Massey. “I couldn’t give her anything by way of appreciation, so I named the song after her.” Not technically a suite, the piece—with its expansive main melodic line—

is a 64-bar structure with an 18-bar channel. Although literally in the key of C, it’s actually in that key’s relative minor,

A minor. The progressions are somewhat unusual in the way they resolve, and it’s a challenging number a play. The participants here, however, appear to have no trouble and the performance is invigoratingly uncompromising. Each soloist has token the work on its own terms and has constructed individual commentaries.

Calvin Massey recalls first hearing Lee Morgan when Lee was about 15. A Philadelphia disc jockey, Tommy Roberts, had a Friday afternoon show on which local talent played and were followed by visiting jazzmen in town at the Blue Note. “Lee sounded amazing for a fifteen-year-old,” Massey remembers. “Naturally, 1 kept up with him through the years, and I’m not surprised at how extraordinary a player he’s become. In addition to his talent, he’s also willing to listen. He hasn’t become insulated by his early success. And also, he has fire and ideas. Most important ¡s the fact that he loves his instrument and he loves to play. And that’s why his playing is so alive, so spontaneous — and so constantly searching.”

— NAT HENTOFF

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

Lee Morgan and Paul Chambers play by courtesy of Vee-Jay Records, Bobby Timmons plays by courtesy of Riverside Records

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT LEEWAY

Lee Morgan is remembered as one of Blue Note's signature artists, yet the original issue of Leeway included a notice that both he and bassist Paul Chambers (another former Blue Note leader), appeared through the courtesy of Vee Jay Records. Morgan and Chambers, together with Wynton Kelly and Wayne Shorter, formed a core group of East Coast musicians who signed on with Vee Jay in 1959, when the black-owned, Chicago-based label added jazz to its pop and gospel efforts. Morgan still appeared on Blue Note as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers through 1961, when he left Blakey and returned to his native Philadelphia; but this album marked his only venture as a leader under the supervision of Alfred Lion in the span of roughly six years that separate Candy and The Sidewinder.

If Morgan had a contract elsewhere, why did he cut this session for Lion at Van Gelder Studios? There may have been reciprocity involved, as Blakey had already popped up on a few Vee Jay sessions, but a sadder yet equally likely explanation may be reflected in the title of the opening track. The drug problems that plagued Morgan and the other musicians on the date at various points in their careers made for many "soulful days" when even those who managed to hold down steady jobs often found themselves scuffling for extra money. Record sessions were one way to supplement income, and some companies took advantage of the situation by nonchalantly running players through the studios, often only to stockpile the results for future release. Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff took greater care in the production of their dates, which is why so many musicians paid them tribute in song titles as Morgan does here. Still, Lion and Wolff were responsive to the circumstances surrounding their favorite players, and scheduled unplanned studio time when an extra payday was required on more than one occasion. Morgan may have been in such a situation at the time of Leeway, and Vee Jay (with its far more modest release schedule) may have been happy to let Blue Note step in.

Whatever the reason, this is a great blowing session, with inspired work by all parties. The band is an interesting mix of three current Messengers (Bobby Timmons having recently returned to Blakey after a brief hiatus when he helped launch the new Cannonball Adderley Quintet), former Messenger Jackie McLean (then playing and acting in The Living Theater production of Jack Gelber's The Connection) and Miles Davis stalwart Paul Chambers. As always, Blakey establishes a rhythmic aura that lifts the other great players to even greater heights. The drum solos also demonstrate how Blakey employed his instrument for dramatic purposes, with technique always in the service of emotion. Morgan and McLean respond with some of their most incendiary work of the period. Rough edges occasionally surface, but even these moments serve expressive ends, and the extended blowing space yields positive results. McLean's solo on "Midtown Blues" is perhaps the best but far from the only example of how the raw mood of this session locked the musicians into some brutally honest playing.

The material strikes an effective balance between the fresh and the overly familiar. The Morgan and McLean originals are nothing special as far as blues compositions go, and are distinguished primarily by the slightly exotic cast of "The Lion and the Wolff" in contrast to the no-nonsense bluntness of "Midtown Blues." Someone had the foresight to fill out the program by engaging composer Cal Massey (1928-1972), who contributed two pieces with more structural substance. One of them, "These Are Soulful Days," is a perfectly titled, highly evocative line that is hard to get out of your head after Morgan and McLean state it with such empathy in the opening chorus. The solos that follow expand upon the hard-times mood, and it was a highly effective stroke to give Chambers the first blowing chorus. "Nakatini Suite," another true "original" with a memorable chorus structure and melodic character, presents a more triumphant vision. Chambers had recorded the latter piece as "Nakatini Serenade" under John Coltrane's leadership two years earlier, although Morgan's version was the first to be released.

So Leeway should properly be considered a triumph for six important musicians. It marked the first of many occasions on which Massey's writing appeared on Blue Note sessions by Morgan, McLean, Freddie Hubbard, and McCoy Tyner. Massey's songs were also recorded by Charlie Parker, Philly Joe Jones, Archie Shepp, and Cedar Walton, among others. Unfortunately, the support of fellow musicians did not break the run of bad luck that continued to burden Massey throughout his final years. His estimable body of music remains scattered over several memorable albums, waiting to be discovered by a wider audience.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2002