Edward Lee Morgan (July 10, 1938 – February 19, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He was one of the most important musicians in the hard bop style during the 1960s and played a major role for the Blue Note record label. Morgan became well-known in his late teens, performing with famous bandleaders such as John Coltrane, Curtis Fuller, Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Mobley, and Wayne Shorter. He also played in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
Morgan remained with Blakey until 1961 and began recording music as a leader in the late 1950s. His solo recordings included both traditional hard bop performances and more unusual experiments in post-bop and avant-garde styles. Many of these recordings were not released during his lifetime. His composition "The Sidewinder," from the album of the same name, became an unexpected hit on pop and R&B music charts in 1964. After returning to Blakey’s band for a second time, Morgan continued to perform and record music frequently as both a leader and a supporting musician until his death in 1972.
Biography
Edward Lee Morgan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, on July 10, 1938. He was the youngest of four children born to Otto Ricardo and Nettie Beatrice Morgan.
Initially interested in playing the vibraphone, Morgan later became more interested in the trumpet. He could also play the alto saxophone. On his 13th birthday, his sister, Ernestine, gave him his first trumpet. His main musical influence was Clifford Brown, and he took a few lessons from Brown when he was a teenager.
Morgan recorded music from 1956 until the day before his death in February 1972. At age 18, he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and stayed for 1.5 years until economic issues forced Gillespie to end the group in 1958. Morgan began recording for Blue Note Records in 1956 and eventually released 25 albums as a leader for the label. He also recorded for Vee-Jay and one album for Riverside Records on its Jazzland subsidiary. He played on several early recordings by Hank Mobley and intermittently after that. On John Coltrane’s Blue Train (1958), Morgan used a trumpet with an angled bell that Gillespie gave him.
In 1958, Morgan joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where he improved his skills as a soloist and composer. He toured with Blakey for several years and appeared on many Jazz Messengers albums, including Moanin’, one of the group’s most famous recordings. When Benny Golson left the Jazz Messengers, Morgan convinced Blakey to hire Wayne Shorter, a young tenor saxophonist, to replace him. This version of the Jazz Messengers, which included pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt, recorded many albums between 1959 and 1961, such as Africaine, The Big Beat, A Night in Tunisia, and The Freedom Rider. During his time with the Jazz Messengers, Morgan composed several songs, including The Midget, Haina, Celine, Yama, Kozo’s Waltz, Pisces, and Blue Lace. His drug problems and those of Timmons led both to leave the band in 1961. Morgan returned to his hometown, Philadelphia. According to his biographer, Tom Perchard, Blakey introduced Morgan to heroin, which affected his career. When Morgan returned to New York in 1963, he recorded The Sidewinder. The song’s title track reached the pop charts in 1964 and was used in Chrysler television commercials during the World Series. The company used the song without Morgan’s permission, but he later threatened to sue, and Chrysler agreed to stop using the advertisement. Because of the song’s success in the pop music market, Blue Note encouraged its artists to copy its "boogaloo" beat. Morgan repeated this style in songs like Cornbread (from the album Cornbread) and Yes I Can, No You Can’t on The Gigolo. Drummer Billy Hart said Morgan recorded The Sidewinder as a filler track and was surprised when it became his biggest hit. He believed his playing was more advanced on Grachan Moncur III’s avant-garde album Evolution, recorded a month earlier on November 21, 1963.
After this success, Morgan continued to record frequently, creating works such as Search for the New Land (1964), which reached the top 20 of the R&B charts. He briefly re-joined the Jazz Messengers after Freddie Hubbard left to join another group. This lineup, which included saxophonist John Gilmore, pianist John Hicks, and bassist Victor Sproles, was filmed by the BBC for the jazz television program Jazz 625.
As the 1960s continued, Morgan recorded about 20 more albums as a leader and played on albums by other artists, including Wayne Shorter’s Night Dreamer; Stanley Turrentine’s Mr. Natural; Freddie Hubbard’s The Night of the Cookers; Hank Mobley’s Dippin’, A Caddy for Daddy, A Slice of the Top, and Straight No Filter; Jackie McLean’s Jacknife and Consequence; Joe Henderson’s Mode for Joe; McCoy Tyner’s Tender Moments; Lonnie Smith’s Think and Turning Point; Elvin Jones’s The Prime Element; Jack Wilson’s Easterly Winds; Reuben Wilson’s Love Bug; Larry Young’s Mother Ship; Lee Morgan and Clifford Jordan Live in Baltimore 1968; Andrew Hill’s Grass Roots; and several albums with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
In the last two years of his life, Morgan became more politically active, leading the Jazz and People’s Movement. This group protested during the taping of talk and variety shows in 1970–71 to demand more jazz artists as guest performers and band members. His final working band included saxophonists Billy Harper or Bennie Maupin, pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jymie Merritt, and drummers Mickey Roker or Freddie Waits. Maupin, Mabern, Merritt, and Roker are featured on the highly regarded three-disc album Live at the Lighthouse, recorded during a two-week performance at the Hermosa Beach club in California in July 1970.
Death and legacy
Morgan was killed early on February 19, 1972, at Slugs' Saloon, a jazz club in New York City's East Village where his band was playing. After a fight between performances, Morgan's girlfriend, Helen Moore, who lived with him, shot him. His injuries were not immediately life-threatening, but an ambulance took a long time to arrive because heavy snowfall made driving conditions very dangerous. The delay caused Morgan to die from blood loss. He was 33 years old. Moore was arrested and spent some time in prison before being released on parole. After her release, she moved back to her home state of North Carolina and died there from a heart condition in March 1996.
Morgan and Moore are the focus of a 2016 documentary titled I Called Him Morgan, directed by Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin. The film was first shown on September 1, 2016, at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and was released in U.S. movie theaters on March 24, 2017. In a review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott described the film as "a delicate human drama about love, ambition, and the glories of music."