The Lady Who Shot Lee Morgan

Softcover
110 pages
Ubus Communications Systems, Publ.
Illustrated

The jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan (1938-72) was a prodigy recruited to Dizzy Gillespie's big band while still a teenager, joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers not much after, and, by his early 20s had played on four continents and dozens of albums. Morgan would go on to cultivate a personal and highly influential style, and to make records - most notably "The Sidewinder" - which would sell amounts almost unheard of in jazz. But Morgan's personal life remained troubled, and during a fight with his girlfriend at a New York club, he was shot and killed at age 33. Although Lee Morgan lived and died in sensational style, the story told in this book presents the musician and his contemporaries in changing aesthetic, social and economic contexts. The work draws on many original interviews with Morgan's colleagues and friends, as well as extensive archival research and critical engagement with the music itself.