Lee Morgan's Volume III is a fantastic record pure and simple, one of my personal favorites.
Unfortunately it's one of the few I've never owned on vinyl in any form.
You can get some fine recent reissues, but the original vinyl in top condition can bring in $3000 plus for its seller. Just a little out of my price range, ouch!
Benny Golson, who also was by in large responsible for Blue Note 4003, delivers another hard bop masterpiece here .
Golson composed every single tune on the album, and yes, they are all worth repeated listens. Recorded on March 24th 1957, the record also is astounding for another reason: Lee Morgan's lyrical and powerful trumpet playing. Morgan, out of the Clifford Brown vein... plays an assured well rounded style, and Morgan did this at the young age of 18 years old!
A sextet album recorded in 1964 but released 2 years later, and yes it does sport a stone classic jazz line up:
Lee Morgan on trumpet, Herbie Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, the underrated Reggie Workman on bass, the superb Billy Higgins on drums, and for my money, the best jazz guitarist of them all Grant Green.
I love the solo Grant takes on the title track, the track is well worth the 15 minutes. Green's solo happens at the 9:15 mark if you listen to the video below.
Hearing the solo in context with the other great solos from Morgan, Shorter, and Hancock is what drives the point home, wow the clean no-B.S. sound is what sets green apart in my opinion.
When I see a Blue Note with Grant Green as a side man, I know it will be a good session. I know Green will contribute something worthwhile for my ears.
The centerpiece of the album is of course the title track, but believe me there are plenty of reasons to like the album. "Mr. Kenyatta" is nice tune, darned if Green doesn't kick butt again. I love the urgency of the track.
Lee delivers one of my favorite fiery solos on the track "see below", he really digs in on the track stretching the boundaries, the theme on "Mr Kenyatta" is really inventive hard-bop. This album in my opinion is the pinnacle of where hard-bop could go before going out side to the avant-garde.
The Ballad "Melancholee" seems like a Wayne Shorter vehicle, or least that Wayne was in Lee Morgan's mind when it was written. Wayne's playing and the composition has this enigmatic quality to it. I wonder if that would be the same if Joe Henderson was in the tenor spot?
"Morgan the Pirate" is another great advanced hard-bop tune, Shorter and Green do their thing again. These guys were so in the zone in 1964, they were all fresh and creative, pushing themselves beyond where anyone could have conceived the music from a contemporary perspective. I can certainly see why Shorter and Hancock went the fusion route later on by the end of the decade.
Listen to this record, or any of Herbie, Wayne, or Lee's other records of the 63-67 period, what else can you do inside the bop/hard-bop tradition?
The logical place would be to go to other styles like world music and popular music for inspiration...and ultimately the use of electronic instruments is what they did.
Search For the New Land is certainly one of the best hard-bop records I have ever heard, and fits nicely inside the post bop sub-genre, though the music never becomes too high-brow for the less than well healed jazz aficionado.
One of the greatest things about being a vinyl crate digger is finding hidden gems in the particular genre you have a passion for.
This pair of hidden 1960's gems from Stanley Turrentine are hard to complain about: Mr Natural from 1964, but not released until 198o with those shoddy pseudo-hipster album covers; that paid no mind to the proud Blue Note/Reid Miles designs of the 50's and 60's.
In fact, those covers I always thought were an embarrassment. The pictured Mr. Natural cover was the Japanese reissue on CD, which does a better job at living up to the Blue Note legacy in my opinion.
Accompanying Stanley on the album are Lee Morgan on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, with Elvin Jones in the drum chair.
Another Story was released in 1969, and features Thad Jones on flugelhorn, Cedar Walton on Piano, Mickey Roker on drums, and Buster Williams on bass.
Herb Alpert's Music Should Be in Every Collection
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Alpert has crammed 2 lifetimes into one with his accomplishments
When you think of the greatest selling acts of the 1960's, artists like The
Beatles, El...
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