Lee Morgan

Genres:	Jazz
Descriptive "tags":	jazz • trumpet • hard bop • bebop • blue note records
Decades Active:	1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Links online:	BBC Music • Wikipedia

Biography

10 July 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 19 February 1972, New York City, New York, USA. Prodigiously talented, Morgan played trumpet professionally at the age of 15 and three years later joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. During this same period he recorded with John Coltrane, Hank Mobley and others. In 1958 the Gillespie band folded and Morgan joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers where he made a tremendous impact not only nationally but around the world, thanks to the group’s recordings. In the early 60s Morgan returned to his home town, where he played in comparative obscurity, but by 1963 he was back in New York, leading his own groups and also working for a while with Blakey in 1964. Morgan’s popularity was enhanced by the success of a recording of his own composition, the irresistibly catchy ‘The Sidewinder’ which helped to spark a jazz funk mini-boom and has remained a dance floor favourite ever since.

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