LT-1031

Lee Morgan - Taru

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1968
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Bennie Maupin, tenor sax; John Hicks, piano; George Benson, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

2043 tk.6 Haeschen
2044 tk.11 Avotcja One
2045 tk.22 Durem
2046 tk.24 Dee Lawd
2047 tk.28 Taru, What's Wrong With You (aka What's Wrong)
2048 tk.29 Get Yourself Together

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Avotcja One	John Hicks	February 15 1968
Haeschen	Lee Morgan	February 15 1968
Dee Lawd	Lee Morgan	February 15 1968
Side Two
Get Yourself Together	Lee Morgan	February 15 1968
Taru, What's Wrong With You?	Calvin Massey	February 15 1968
Durem	Lee Morgan	February 15 1968

Liner Notes

LEE MORGAN

Today, when jazz writers tell us about Lee Morgan, they stress how misperceived critically he was during his lifetime. And, the musical evidence of every new Morgan package supports their revisionism completely. TARU, six previously unreleased tunes recorded in 1968, is no exception. On its two beautiful ballads, two modal swingers, and two "son-of-Sidewinder" funk tunes, Lee Morgan is no mere belter, but everything a trumpeter in his idiom can be: brash but sensitive, swinging and inventive, soaring while quirky, sarcastic yet reverent. And within that range of options, a man always choosing, with a perception and discipline marked in only the greatest artists.

But then, Lee Morgan was thirty years old when he recorded these sides: grown a long way from his free-wheeling early style, begun at 18 (sympathetically, Nat Hentoff once described it as "machine-gunning quantities of notes for the pleasures of virtuosity alone") and perhaps the only trumpeter on the scene to combine the fire of Clifford Brown with an undiluting personal approach. And, this maturity sounds written all over TARU. You can hear it in the choice of compositions: four ("Avotcja One," "Taru," "What's Wrong With You," "Haeschen" and "Get Yourself Together") anticipate the more complex structural and harmonic turns the trumpeter's music took in the early 70s. You can hear it in the focus on the music, not the players: time for solos here is evenly and (especially where Morgan is concerned) unostentatiously split. In fact, George Benson (who also appeared on Blue Note albums by Hank Mobley and Larry Young during this period) is almost more a comping, coloring background player—along with label regulars Workman and Higgins—than he is a soloist, save for brief "Cookbook" runs on "Dee Lawd" and "Durem."

But most of all, you can hear it in Lee Morgan's soloing. "Avotcja One," by pianist John Hicks (currently with Betty Carter, and Lee's bandmate with Art Blakey in 1964) opens with a flurry of tense, then lyrical structure, and Benson's spare, cooking solo over a somewhat modal line. Next, Morgan takes his turn, slowly and masterfully expanding a wry series of little bursts into a bed of plaints, flurries and final, all-out swing, establishing a flow for lusty work by Maupin (then Lee's regular saxophonist) and Hicks. Then, on " Haeschen," a gentle ballad, the trumpeter at least equals his gorgeous work on the classic "Ceora" (from the CORNBREAD LP) and "Flamingo" (from Jimmy Smith's THE SERMON). Charmingly, the tune's A section mirrors the two-syllable title, and Morgan's highly controlled use of space and dynamics in his brief solo perfectly reflects this kind of delicacy. More significantly, though, it's as full, venturesome, and complete a statement as a player could make in the time allotted.

On "Get Yourself Together" (a complex melody oddly echoing "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise"), Maupin takes the fiery opening ride. His style is classic late 60s Blue Note tenor (e.g., Joe Henderson, Junior Cook), full of driving, hard-blowing soul, but here and there you can hear the near-droning peaks of intensity he would later trademark in work with Herbie Hancock. But, in contrast, Morgan's following solo goes a step further; robust and idea-ridden, it stretches the changes every which way but loose, and stands as a good example of what Lee's mind could do in the most conventional blowing situation.

"Taru, What's Wrong With You" is by the late and extraordinary composer Cal Massey, especially noted for his work for three other Philadelphians; John Coltrane (in the Fifties and Sixties), Morgan (in the Sixties) and Archie Shepp (in the Sixties and Seventies). Its unusual structure — typical for Massey — almost seems to tell a story in the way of a show score (especially considering the inquisitive title); the bluk of the head has a reverent, "I Remember Clifford" feeling, but is broken midway by a playful, vaguely Latin section. In his solo, Morgan seizes the main, lyrical line and matches his work on "Haeschen" in an exquisite display of phrasing, with a late-night chordal edge; he molds run after run in effortless style, never leaving a certain emotional level, and yet exhausting all its possibilities.

Rounding out TARU are "Dee Lawd" and "Durem',' a pair of boogaloos. As Michael Cuscuna explains in his notes to Morgan's recent newly released collection SONIC BOOM (LT-987): "Blue Note always liked to have that leadoff funk tune to sell the album. The extraordinary, unexpected success of Morgan's 'The Sidewinder' and Horace Silver's 'Song For My Father' put even more pressure on the company and its artists to match that success...the more closed-minded journalists never got past the heads on the title tunes, and Lee Morgan was pigeon-holed unfairly in the hackneyed funk idiom." And true enough, once you do get past the admittedly derivative heads on both tracks, Lee Morgan the player emerges once again: selecting ideas from a million options within a familiar idiom, infusing each note with his special soul and turning a conceivably ho-hum space into a special one.

The co-producer of the TARU sessions was pianist, arranger, composer and Blue Note executive Duke Pearson, a friend of Lee Morgan's since the trumpeter's teenaged debut. Six years later, it was his bittersweet task to write the notes for the LEE MORGAN MEMORIAL ALBUM (BN-LA 224-G), the label's first posthumous Morgan LP "In essence," Pearson said, "Lee Morgan was a dedicated man to his listeners. I have seen Lee record after a swimming accident when his teeth were in braces and the blood would be gushing from his mouth from playing. Why? It was his attempt to reach perfection."

On TARU, recorded four years before his death, there's a strong suggestion that Lee Morgan's playing was already very close.

—Michael Rozek