Search for the New Land
| Search for the New Land | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Lee Morgan | ||||
|
Publication |
July 1966 |
|||
|
admission |
February 15, 1964 |
|||
| Label (s) | Blue note | |||
|
Format (s) |
LP, CD |
|||
|
Title (number) |
5 (LP) / 5 (CD) |
|||
|
running time |
42:16 |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey |
|||
|
||||
Search for the New Land is a jazz album by Lee Morgan . It was recorded on February 15, 1964 at Rudy Van Gelder in Englewood Cliffs and was released in 1966 on the Blue Note Records label .
The album
Ted Gioia writes in his History of Jazz that Morgan spent most of his career repeating The Sidewinder's formula for success, "although he was able to make artistically less jukebox- compatible statements, such as Search for the New Land " . This album, recorded just a few weeks after his hit LP The Sidewinder , initially disappeared from the archive and its release was withheld for two years because there was no funky follow-up to the surprise hit on the material. It was one of the few productions of Morgan that deviated "from the groove- stressed patterns of The Sidewinder pattern". So explored Morgan in the title track of the album with his teammates, the guitarist Grant Green , pianist Herbie Hancock , tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter , bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Billy Higgins , the modal improvisation : Matt Leskovic described in literature, the mood of the composition:
- “Like two seasoned seafarers, Morgan and Shorter ponder nostalgia for previous voyages, while their ship rolls over rising waves of trills and cymbals in the Rubato opening. Workman spotted land on the distant horizon and continues brave the course by a foreboding waltz - Groove intones. As the rhythm section picks up steam, Morgan and Shorter sing their same song with a newfound exuberance about the steady strength of their rhythm team. Shorter cautiously ventures first and finds a solid base to race through all the stops of his tenor, and Morgan follows him with thoughtful and contemplative brooding, but still stuck in the blues . Hancock's Comping is compelling; note its broken record-sounding repetitions that contrast with Morgan's retreat in this part (6: 00-6: 10) and his pulsating connection with Higgins, which gives the trumpeter the opportunity to experiment with polyrythms (6: 20-6 : 30). Green has a swinging solo before Hancock's rough block chords lead the group back to sea and on to the next ventures. "
Nat Hentoff pointed in the album's liner notes to the “pastoral sense of space and the lack of pressure” in the title track; however, is the following The Joker open-minded, even though here "there uneilige atmosphere." a Mr. Kenyatta , the Morgan the Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta dedicated, demonstrating with his staccato driving force that Morgan nothing about the "tapping stimulus" ( incisive zest lost) that his music has always made. On the other hand, melancholy with its "disarmingly simple theme " is an "evocation of misery."
Jeff McMillan sees the album title as programmatic in his Lee Morgan biography ; it was written at the height of the American civil rights movement and the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy was only three months ago:
- “Morgan's New Land was the land of equality , a land free from racial discrimination . Morgan had never before presented his art in such a socially progressive, or in this context, political framework. "
At the time of the recording of the album, Lee Morgan was again a member of Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers ( Free for All ) and did not record again until 1965 under his own name. His next studio session with Jackie McLean and McCoy Tyner in August 1964 was also withheld by Blue Note and did not appear until 1980 under the title Tom Cat .
Track list
Lee Morgan: Search for the New Land . (Blue Note BLP 4169 / BST 84169, CDP 7 84169-2)
- Search for the New Land - 3:45 pm
- The Joker - 5:04
- Mr. Kenyatta - 8:43
- Melancholy - 6:14
- Morgan the Pirate - 6:30
All compositions are by Lee Morgan.
reception
Kenny Mathieson held Search for the New Land for Morgan's best album, even if it never "totemic significance" ( totemic significance was reached) of its predecessor. The musicians here are much more experimental than usual, not only with the connections to hardbop and soul jazz in the person of Grant Green, but with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock in the modal orientations of jazz, as embodied by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, as well as with Reggie Workman and Billy Higgins in the direction of the New Thing , inspired by Coltrane and Ornette Coleman . The title track is “an exploratory journey through changing moods and alternation between dark and light, with Shorters and Morgan's contemplative walk through long solos”. Guitarist Green creates a more cheerful mood here, but Hancock brings the music back to the introspective mood before the final chorus occurs. Another outstanding title is Mr. Kenyatta ; The album is rounded off by two slightly less attention-absorbing titles, Melancholee and Morgan the Pirate . Only The Joker is the only one of Morgan's compositions on this album that is constructed in the manner of The Sidewinder .
Scott Yanow gave the album the highest rating of five stars in Allmusic and considered it one of Lee Morgan's greatest. The trumpeter's five compositions deserved to be “brought back to life”. The musicians around Lee Morgan are all in a particularly creative form and expand the boundaries of hard bop, the modern mainstream jazz of this period. The result is "a consistently stimulating set that is worth listening to repeatedly". Matt Leskovic also believes that Search for the New Land marks the peak of Morgan's career, both in terms of expanding the scope of his compositions and the depth of his improvisations .
Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded the album in The Penguin Guide to Jazz with the highest grade of four stars and called it "the exception" at the beginning. In contrast to Morgan's output after 1962, which is quite formulaic, Search was a musical as well as programmatic exploration. ”The presence of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock guarantees“ a degree of lyrical unpredictability ”that is immediately apparent in the title track. Even if The Joker initially appears like a title in the style of The Sidewinder , this is a "gloomy, playful, almost deceptive idea". The weighty Mr. Kenyatta shows one of the (at that time) conceivable developments in Morgan's music, while Melancholee and Morgan the Pirate are "more of an off-the-shelf" title. Overall, Search for the New Land is an excellent, sought-after record, and it is regrettable that - apart from The Gigolo (1965) - there is no more.
Web links
- Lee Morgan: Search for the New Land on YouTube
- Transcription of Lee Morgan's solo in The Joker (PDF; 57 kB)
- Transcription of Lee Morgan's solo in Mr. Kenyatta (PDF; 101 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ Ted Gioia: The History of Jazz , Oxford University Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-509081-0 . P. 289
- ^ A b Kenny Mathieson: Cookin: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz 1954-65 .
- ↑ Michael Cuscuna , Charlie Lourie, Oscar Schnider: The Blue Note Years - The Jazz Photography by Francis Wolff . Rizzoli International Publications, 2000, ISBN 0-7893-0493-7 , p. 99
- ^ Bill Kirchner (ed.): The Oxford Companion to Jazz , p. 388
- ^ Henry Martin, Keith Waters: Jazz: The First 100 Years , p. 317.
- ^ In the original: Morgan and Shorter reflect nostalgically on previous journeys while their vessel rolls over swelling waves of trills and cymbals in the rubato opening section. Workman spies land on the distant horizon and valiantly sets course, introducing an ominous waltz groove. As the rhythm section picks up steam, Morgan and Shorter sing their same song with newfound exuberance over the steady bounce of their rhythm mates. Shorter cautiously ventures out first, soon finding firm footing and skittering through all registers of his tenor and Morgan follows with pensive and introspective ponderings, though still deeply rooted in the blues. Hancock's comping is intriguing; note his "broken record" repetitiveness contrasting Morgan's pulling back on the time (6: 00-6: 10) and his pulsating connection with Higgins which allows the trumpeter to experiment with polyrhythms (6: 20-6: 30). Green takes a swinging solo before Hancock's dense block-chording leads the group back out to sea and on towards their next endeavor. Morgan was entering the pinnacle of his career with Search for the New Land, broadening both the scope of his compositions and the depth of his improvisations.
- ↑ a b Review of the album in jazz.com ( memento of the original from November 24th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Nat Hentoff, Liner Notes.
- ↑ Jeff McMillan Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan, pp. 124 f.
- ↑ The "Official" follow-up album to The Sidewinder was therefore The Rumproller , with Andrew Hill's composition as the title track, recorded in April 1965. Cf. Mathieson.
- ^ Review of Scott Yanow's album on Allmusic . Retrieved November 1, 2012.
- ↑ Cook / Morton, p. 1066 (6th edition, 2003).
