Jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1964 album on the Blue Note has remained one of the foundation LP’s in the classic Jazz labels catalogue. Even at the time, the title track achieved some unexpected crossover success in the pop and R&B charts thanks to the relentless hard shuffle of the rhythm and the hook heavy lead trumpet lines. This was heading in the direction of funk for sure, so much so that a few years later the James Brown band would often lift directly from the main riff that remains the backbone of the tune. Of course Blue Note during this golden period had many examples of groove based pieces ensuring these records were a fertile hunting ground when, decades later, the Acid Jazz scene were crate digging for samples. Lee Morgan himself would make several other albums in the sixties as a bandleader, top of the pile for me being ‘Search For The New Land’ as well as contributing often the most tasty parts on records as part of John Coltrane’s or Wayne Shorter’s bands and not forgetting his pivotal parts in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Lee’s untimely death in 1972, shot in a club he was performing at by his live-in girlfriend, robbed the Jazz scene of a talent whose work has not aged one bit; anyone taking a dive into the Blue Note label or hard jazz and bebop in general can do a lot worse than start with the work of Lee Morgan. A lovely 2020 Audiophile Blue Note pressing of The Sidewinder album is currently available in our shop https://www.discogs.com/seller/Fruit_Tree_Records/profile

The two clips I have are firstly audio of The Sidewinder track itself and secondly, some quality film footage of Morgan in action in the mid sixties as part of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers…