Are there any Lee Morgan interviews in existance?

[Dmitry]

Except for the blurbs in the liner notes?

What about Blindfold Tests, has he ever taken one?

[Rooster_Ties]

The site doesn't appear to be the same as when Google cached it, but there are bits of an interview with Lee Morgan in here...

Lee Morgan

Born: 07/10/1938 Philadelphia, PA | Died: 02/19/1972 New York, NY 

Lee Morgan was one of the most soulful trumpet players to ever pick up the instrument. His playing is full of excitement and energy, and has not been duplicated today. He was fortunate to have been tutored by Clifford Brown when he was young, and that is not hard to tell by Lee's playing. A professional musician at 15, a star with Dizzy Gillespie’s State Department Band at 17, and signed by Alfred Lion at the age of 18 in 1956, Lee Morgan’s playing showed power, soul and excitement.

Like Clifford, Lee led a short life, only having lived to the age of 33. An enraged girlfriend fatally shot him while he was taking a break between sets. Although his life was brief, he was very active on the jazz scene. He had played in Dizzy Gillespie's big band when he was only 18, and came out with his first album that same year! He also was a part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with (at various times) Benny Golson, Hank Mobley and Wayne Shorter, and has played or recorded with Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane and many other great musicians.

His music was extremely popular in 1965, and was being used in commercials, as well as being played regularly on the radio. Today, he is remembered for his compositions as well as his playing. From the earthy, soul of "Cornbread" and "The Sidewinder" to beautiful ballads like "Ceora", Lee proved that he could also be very expressive with his writing.

It is very hard to put him in a category. "I don't like labels," He said in an interview. "If you can play, you can play with everybody. Look at Coleman Hawkins, Joe Henderson. Whatever you prefer, you'll find sufficient quantities of talented musicians who prefer the same. But you should never limit your mind. With the new thing coming in, I'm one of those who prefer to swing a lot. But I've experimented with free forms, like on Grachan Moncur's "Evolution" and Andrew Hill's "Grass Roots" -- playing without the rhythm, against the rhythm, disregarding it -- the whole freedom thing. The avant-garde organist who plays with Tony Williams -- Larry Young. I made an album with him, and the next week one with Lonnie Smith, a whole different thing. Then Reuben Williams had me and George Coleman, and we did some pretty show tunes, things by Burt Bacharach."

Lee was inspired and taught early on by both Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie. With Gillespie, Morgan’s playing was high-spirited and intense. His clean technique and round sound were inspired by Clifford Brown. But even at an early age he was developing his own voice on the instrument. He squeezed the horn for every ounce of its expressive power.

Lee's music bears a very urban sound, which he combined with the cleanliness of Clifford to produce something unique. Lee has talked about merging different styles of music. "Music is coming so close together," he said. "Everybody's using a little bit of everybody else. A tremendous amount of beautiful material is coming from rock musicians, from Burt Bacharach, from Broadway musicals and motion pictures.

"Now you hear rock tunes with beautiful changes. You'll see now that, as soon as a tune comes out -- especially if it's a nice one -- just about every form will adopt it. You might hear strings, or somebody singing it, or a guitar, or a jazz group will put an arrangement on it. That means everybody experiences more."

When Morgan was coming up, he recalled, he played bar mitzvahs and Polish weddings. At Mastbaum High School for the Arts in Philadelphia, he majored in music and half his day was spent in some form of music -- composition, harmony, solfeggio. There was a concert orchestra, a concert band, a dance band, a marching band.

"I've been through all that, besides the jazz -- and rock 'n' roll," he observed. "All that is beautiful experience. It's all our music. Jazz, rhythm-and-blues, spirituals. Look at Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke. They came out of churches."

By the way, the link for this article was (at one time anyway): http://www.trumpetjazz.com/artists.cgi?nam...ame=Lee+Morgan.

[Christiern]

Lee did a show for me at WBAI back around '64. It was a two-hour show with him as host--he could do anything he wanted with that time, and--if memory serves me right--he did a dj thing with records. I also seem to recall that he brought in a guest, but I'm not sure. All these shows were done live, with airchecks. I don't know if I have the Morgan show in my tape closet--if so, it's buried pretty deep. However, I sent copies of the shows to our West Coast stations (KPFA and KPFK), which means that some of them may have landed in the Pacifica archives.

[Alexander]

Have you ever released any of those shows you have in your closet, Chris? If not, have you ever considered doing so? That Lee Morgan show sounds most interesting!

[pryan]

Do you recall any of the tunes/albums/musicians that Lee featured on his show? That sure would be interesting to hear the broadcast if it could be found somehow.

[Christiern]

Have you ever released any of those shows you have in your closet, Chris? If not, have you ever considered doing so? That Lee Morgan show sounds most interesting!

No, Alexander, I haven' even thought of releasing those tapes, although there are some interesting ones among them, including one hosted by Coltrane. Some hosts brought guests: Condon brought George Wettling, and Jimmy Rushing brought Buddy Tate, as I recall. Some also performed.

As for the records Lee played, I really don't remember (that was 40 years ago, I couldn't even tell you what I played back then!).

I guess I should go through my stacks of tape to see what's there. Some are in Copenhagen, well preserved at Storyville Records.

There is also a two hour rant by Bill Dixon, who was mad at me for not having invited enough avant gardists to host the show. I gave him one of the afternoons, and he spent the entire 2 hours bitching. When I asked him why he hadn't played some of the music he thought I was neglecting, I thought I saw steam coming out of his beard.

[JSngry]

There was a Down Beat interview made shortly before his death and published shortly after it.

[Dmitry]

Would you know which issue it would be in?

If I'd gotten a hold of it, I'd scan and paste it up on the net.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

I have it here - April 27, 1972. If Dmitry will email me, I'll scan him a copy. It's only one page, done by Michael Bourne.

Mike

P.S. - the facing page features this mention:

The Jazz Set, a weekly half-hour TV program co-produced by director Peter Anderson and Chris Albertson, the well-known writer and record producer, has hitherto been broadcast only on its station of origin., WNJT (Channel 52), a UHV outlet in Trenton, NJ. Starting in July, selected programs from the series will be seen nationwide over PBS stations on 13 consecutive Thursday nights. Shows taped so far include a wide variety of music by, among others, Roy Haynes' Hip Ensemble, Jimmy Heath's All Stars, the Jazz Contemporaries, Houston Person, Clifford Jordan with singers DeeDee Bridgewater and Sheila Jordan, Rashied Ali, Sam Wooding, Joe Lee Wilson, Bobby Brown, Barry Miles, Randy Weston, Kenny Davern, Joe McPhee and Lonnie Smith. On a few of the shows, Dan Morgenstern subbed for Albertson as host and co-producer.

CA - too bad you couldn't get some names for the show! Are these skeletons in your closet as well?

Edited May 4, 2003 by Michael Fitzgerald

[pryan]

Here's an article from Downbeat's Lee Morgan page:

Lee Morgan: Jazz Can Be Sold

"The first rock 'n' roll group I was in -- me and Archie Shepp, and Reggie Workman for a while, too -- was Carl Holmes and the Jolly Rompers." Thirty-one-year-old trumpeter Lee Morgan -- at 18 a member of Dizzy Gillespie's State Department band, long-associated with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, writer of "The Sidewinder" and leader of his own quintet -- was illustrating a point.

"Music is coming so close together," he said. "Everybody's using a little bit of everybody else. A tremendous amount of beautiful material is coming from rock musicians, from Burt Bacharach, from Broadway musicals and motion pictures.

"Now you hear rock tunes with beautiful changes. You'll see now that, as soon as a tune comes out -- especially if it's a nice one -- just about every form will adopt it. You might hear strings, or somebody singing it, or a guitar, or a jazz group will put an arrangement on it. That means everybody experiences more."

When Morgan was coming up, he recalled, he played bar mitzvahs and Polish weddings. At Mastbaum High School for the Arts in Philadelphia, he majored in music and half his day was spent in some form of music -- composition, harmony, solfeggio. There was a concert orchestra, a concert band, a dance band, a marching band.

"I've been through all that, besides the jazz -- and rock 'n' roll," he observed.

One could almost feel the backbeat as Morgan reminisced by singing a bit of the Jolly Rompers' version of "Things Ain't What They Used to Be."

"All that is beautiful experience," he said. "It's all our music. Jazz, rhythm-and-blues, spirituals. Look at Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke. They came out of churches.

"I don't like labels. If you can play, you can play with everybody. Look at Coleman Hawkins, Joe Henderson. Whatever you prefer, you'll find sufficient quantities of talented musicians who prefer the same. But you should never limit your mind. With the new thing coming in, I'm one of those who prefer to swing a lot. But I've experimented with free forms, like on Grachan Moncur's "Evolution" and Andrew Hill's "Grass Roots" -- playing without the rhythm, against the rhythm, disregarding it -- the whole freedom thing. The avant-garde organist who plays with Tony Williams -- Larry Young. I made an album with him, and the next week one with Lonnie Smith, a whole different thing. Then Reuben Williams had me and George Coleman, and we did some pretty show tunes, things by Burt Bacharach."

But with regard strictly to jazz, Morgan expressed a view nurtured in anger over its treatment.

"For one thing, if they gave our music a chance on television and AM radio," he said, "you'd be surprised how many people would be listening to it.

"The people who control the media work on a low level. 'East Side/West Side' showed things, like interracial marriage, drug addiction, things that mean something to people. It was halfway good, so they took it off. 'Green Acres' and 'The Beverly Hillbillies' stay on. They insult us. They try to make you feel that your whole life is going to be straight if you use this deodorant. The guy's marriage is falling apart, and all this is because he ain't tried Listerine."I'm sure that if they exposed jazz and all the other arts, the people would go for it. But they don't want to because once people start thinking, they'll do more and more of it. Jazz is a true thing, and it's got to be surrounded by truth. And they don't want to get into truth -- not when they can do something else and make just as much money.

"I really can't understand why they don't get behind it. They could make their money from it. You know, if they can get on television and sell Playtex girdles and tell you about midriff bulge and all that, they damn sure can sell some music if they want to. They say, 'Jazz is too hard to sell.' They've sold the Maharishi Yoga and Ravi Shankar playing sitars and everything. They can sell anything and make it packageable, make it commercial."

Jazzmen wouldn't have to be on the air all the time, in Morgan's view, but perhaps it would be nice to turn on the TV set once or twice every few months and see "maybe a concert by Duke Ellington's band or even an hour in color featuring the Miles Davis Quintet.

"They do show you a few concerts by the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein explaining to the kids," Morgan noted, "but this (jazz) is the only thing America has that's really ours. Television makes you think jazz is Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass or Louis Armstrong singing "Hello, Dolly." Louis Armstrong is a true jazz musician, but television won't show you. When I was with the Messengers, the Japanese and the English did television features on us. Everybody but our own people. The only exception was Steve Allen, but Steve's a musician himself.

"If a guy comes into a record company and says, 'Look, give me $1,000 for publicity for the Fifth Dimension' -- it could be any of those rock groups -- solid. You come in and ask for $200 to pay for two 30-second spots to advertise a jazz record, and they look at you like you're crazy. They just don't want to spend any money.

"It's almost like a conspiracy. It would help them to advertise. Everybody could make money from the music, but everybody is happy to keep the level of AM daytime listening in a trash bag."

The U.S. Information Agency makes propaganda specials, Morgan said, pointing out that last spring there was one featuring Nipsey Russell, with Billy Eckstine, Joe Carroll, Etta Jones, "and a guy from the Metropolitan Opera." Morgan was on it, too, with a big band. "It'll be shown all over the world to foster good relations with our government," he said, but added, ruefully, "probably nobody here will ever see it."

"Even superstars like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington don't get the exposure of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic," he said. "Maybe this music of ours isn't meant for the masses. But he's held as a great conductor, and he lives in a penthouse, and he's rich, and he conducts the New York Philharmonic in Lincoln Center. And Coltrane had to be playing in Slugs'. That's the difference.

"See, Leonard Bernstein plays to a minority audience, too, because everybody can't like symphony orchestras. But symphony orchestras are subsidized. And jazz should be subsidized. This is the only thing from America. The United States ain't got nothing else but what we gave it, man. And that seems to be the reason it gets the short end of the stick of everything."

Though angry about the mass media, Morgan is happy about the young people of today.

"Thanks to them," he said, "music has gotten much better. And when I was a kid, white people had one way of dancing and we had another. Now everybody dances the same. Rock and jazz -- it's all good music. Now, you go over to Europe, and you might be on a concert or a TV show opposite The Doors, and it would be very successful. The ones in charge in the United States don't want to do this. Like I said before, jazz is still a thing that's dominated by blacks. At first there was blues and rhythm-and-blues, and then the white man got a hold of it, and it was rock. Rock didn't start in Liverpool with the Beatles. All that long hair and stuff came later. But most of the whites got the most money from it."

Noting that the work of some successful rock groups has an intricacy comparable to jazz, Morgan observed that even with its new hipness, rock "is selling millions. So I don't want to hear that stuff about they can't sell jazz, because the music's gotten so now that rock guys are playing sitars and using hip forms, and Miles is using electric pianos. Music's gotten close. There are no natural barriers. It's all music. It's either hip or it ain't."

Michael, is this the article that you're talking about?

edit: I guess the first part of the article is similar in content to what Rooster posted, but it contains quite a bit more dialogue from Morgan thereafter.

Edited May 4, 2003 by pryan

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Nope - that's from February 19, 1970. There is some overlap in topics - "Lee Morgan: The Last Interview" focuses on "the dilemma of jazz in America" - recognition, TV, the Jazz & People's Movement, etc.

Mike

[Christiern]

CA - too bad you couldn't get some names for the show! Are these skeletons in your closet as well?

I tried to get the big ones, I really did, but Sol Yaged turned me down. Mingus and Bill Evans made up for that, however.

Karl Knudsen (Storyville Records) has whatever master dubs we have been able to salvage--I have a few U-matic cassettes.

[Roundsound]

I recall that Lee Morgan & maybe Bobby Timmons were involved in an organization to promote jazz in the late 60s. The article certainly in that theme.

[Dmitry]

The April 27, 1972 Lee Morgan downbeat interview is available here -

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1yhsy/sitebui...-lee-morgan.jpg

courtesy of Mike Fitzgerald and web-hosting by yours truly.

[pryan]

Thanks for posting that, Dmitry. Interesting that Lee and Rashaan went in and "took over" that talk show. I wonder if that was a big thing back then, or if similar protests occurred on a regular basis. It would be helpful to find out if their protest garnered any significant media attention, or if they were just dismissed as acting inapropriately. I guess if the show was broadcast live then more people would have known about it. However, if it was taped, then editing could essentially quash whatever kind of impact the protest intended. Funny how the executives or host agreed, almost instantly after the incident occurred, to invite Morgan's and Kirk's groups to play the show.

[Bright Moments]

The April 27, 1972 Lee Morgan downbeat interview is available here -

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1yhsy/sitebui...-lee-morgan.jpg

courtesy of Mike Fitzgerald and web-hosting by yours truly.

any way to open this up for us johnny come latelys?

[Shrdlu]

Right, it's locked.

[Daniel A]

And Dmitry's gone too.

[Bright Moments]