Totem Pole

Joe Henderson (tenor sax), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Barry Harris (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). From the album The Sidewinder (1964).

Lee Morgan was one of the most important American jazz trumpeters of the hard bop style. His main influences were Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. He had a virtuoso technique with a full, flexible and robust tone that was just as powerful in the high register. His interpretations were always emotionally charged regardless of the specific mood. Early in his career, Morgan was a soloist who liked long and elegant melodic lines, and perfected his personal style while at Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

As his compositions began to include elements of blues and rhythm and blues, he used more space and developed a funky sense of rhythm. In 1956 he joined Dizzzy Gillespie’s big band, who gave him numerous opportunities to make solos, until he had to dissolve it in 1958. In 1956 Morgan also started working for Blue Note Records, recording 25 albums as a leader, and played with Hank Mobley and Benny Golson. In 1957 he participated in John Coltrane’s album Blue Train and played with Jimmy Smith.

Harris makes a long introduction and then Henderson and Morgan join in to expose a theme that has a Latin rhythm in the main melody, but a 4/4 meter on the bridge in AABA structure. The first one to make his solo is Morgan with carefully chosen phrases and a lot of swing in the part of the bridge. Henderson follows him with a more impetuous speech, suggestive and well calculated. Then comes Harris playing without hurry and with a nice and attractive melodic line, although there are times when he accelerates his sentences. After that, Morgan, who seems to have been infected by Henderson’s impetus, comes back to perform a second solo playing with steadiness and vitality. You can tell that he feels at ease, as he continues to carry out his discourse extensively. At last, the group re-exposes the theme fading out.