Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land and The Best of Lee Morgan

This post is dedicated to the late great Lee Morgan, one of my favorite trumpet players. I have about 10 albums of his and they all have great performances. Search for the New Land is the selection here comprising the entire album. Recorded in 1964 and released in 1966 this collection of songs still sounds fresh and modern. The line up is Wayne Shorter – tenor sax, Herbie Hancock – piano, Grant Green – guitar, Reggie Workman – bass, and Billy Higgins – drums. The first track, Search for the New Land, takes about 15 minutes and essentially resets after each soloist. The next album here is a greatest hits collection that also has a number of standards after the first 10 Morgan compositions of which The Sidewinder is perhaps the most well known. The jazz standards are All of Me, Satin Doll, Fly Me to the Moon, Autumn Leaves, My Romance, Take Five, How High the Moon, The More I See You, Some Day My Prince Will Come, It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing). The personnel vary throughout but you can find them on the web. I have the Lee Morgan Best of the Blue Note years but can't find it on Youtube so I am going with this collection to showcase Lee's immense talent. Unfortunately he was shot to death in February 1972 at 33 years of age by his common law wife after a gig at Slug's Saloon in New York City. Fortunately he recorded many albums so it is not hard to find a lot of his great recordings. He is also a sideman on many recordings by great jazz artistssuch as Art Blakey's The Witch Doctor He never disappoints and his compositions (like Speedball) are always clever and catchy without pretention.