Benny Remembers Clifford and Lee

There was a lovely piece on NPR about Benny Golson yesterday. You can hear the article again, and more audio clips that were not aired, by going to the website here.

I’m a big fan of Golson, not just because of his remarkable range of performing and especially compositional work (even if you don’t listen to jazz, you’ll know a lot of his work on lots of television shows such as MASH, Mission Impossible, etc.), but also because without him, the pyrotechnic young trumpeter Lee Morgan might never have teamed up with Art Blakey in the Jazz Messengers (Golson suggested him to Blakey, so the story goes).

People often don’t seem to know much about Jazz trumpeters beyond Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie, so I’m going to digress at this point. There is a line of trumpeters which you should know about, as it forms a huge part of the foundation of pure modern Jazz trumpet playing. Miles and Dizzy, important and influential as they were, form only a medium-sized part of that foundation.

If you have not heard of Lee Morgan, please stop what you are doing right now and go out to the store and buy some of his work. This is an emergency! If you want to be totally blown away by the most audacious, powerful and raw trumpet playing you’ll probably ever hear, get (for example) John Coltrane’s 1957 album Blue Trane. Don’t focus on Coltrane for a change (who is of course transcendent)… Listen to Morgan, and remind yourself as you encounter the intense heat and urgency of his trumpet playing on one of the greatest jazz trumpet solos ever recorded (the title track) that this is a 19 year old you’re listening to, who’d only been playing the trumpet for five years, and that he was already rapidly getting well established as a player.

Morgan’s trumpet playing started to rise to great and visible heights just as one of my other great trumpet heroes’ playing was prematurely stopped: Clifford Brown died (along with Ritchie Powell, (Bud’s brother), and Ritchie’s wife, Nancy) at the height of his powers at age 25 in a car accident in 1956, and Lee Morgan sort of carried on what he started, albeit with a harder edge than I think Clifford would have ever emphasized. Clifford’s playing was sweeter in tone, but no less brilliant, and if you have not ever heard or heard of Clifford Brown please don’t tell me as (at least in the blissfully reflective mood I’m in now) I’d be likely to burst into tears at the thought of what you’ve missed. So just go out and get some. The two “Study in Brown” albums are wonderful. If you’re not a fan of the hard stuff (but do please listen to “Joyspring”), you can also hear Clifford Brown playing wonderful solos on songs sung by the wonderful Sarah Vaughn. They complemented each other fantastically. Get the wonderful “Sarah Vaughn with Clifford Brown” album from 1954. Francis Wolfe image of Brownie at the top; Wonderful Herman Leonard image of Sarah Vaughn, Jimmy Jones and Clifford Brown below.

Lee Morgan died early too. He was shot in a bar by his common law wife, Helen More at age 33. In this line of great trumpeters, Morgan followed Brown, who in turn followed Fats Navarro, another trumpet legend. (There are some excellent collections of his that you can easily find. You’ll hear his influence clearly in Brown and Morgan’s playing.) Fats also died early, at 26, of tuberculosis. There’s a distressing pattern there, which has been commented on many times before. Another great Herman Leonard image, this time of Fats Navarro, above.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Golson. Please go and listen to the interview, which is rather nice. He speaks a lot of those wonderful old days, talks about Art Blakey, Clifford Brown (Golson write the standard “I Remember Clifford”), and Lee Morgan, among others. He also talks about the more recent times, such as his appearance in Spielberg’s “The Terminal”.

-cvj