Customer Reviews

Candy

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"Candy" is the last of Lee Morgan's six 1950s sessions for Blue Note. With the sweet lineup of Sonny Clark on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Art Taylor on drums, this is Lee's only quartet recording as a leader. "Candy" is a classic swinging, hard bop affair recorded on November 18, 1957. It features an all-standard repertoire, with the exception of Jimmy Heath's "C.T.A," which come to think of it, is probably a standard too nowadays. Morgan didn't record again as a leader until the 1960 album Leeway but in 1958 he did appear on classics like Jimmy Smith's The Sermon! and Hank Mobley's Peckin' Time among others before joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in October of that year. (If you're interested I have reviewed all three of the CDs I just mentioned.) In all, "Candy" is a delicious look at a young trumpeter who would become one of the defining voices of 60s jazz.

I agree with Michael Richman that this is an outstanding session from Morgan and friends. Morgan's solos are fresh and inventive. One advantage of the quartet format is that the rhythm section gets more focus than they would in a quintet or sextet with extra horns. So, this album is a refreshing change from the other (equally outstanding) Morgan albums of the 50s and 60s which always featured a tenor sax, but sometimes added an alto sax, trombone, or guitar.

Lee shows himself to be quite versatile. On "Candy" and "C.T.A", he swings with rhythmic vitality. On the ballads, he plays with genuine feeling and a delicate touch. Doug Watkins, Art Taylor, and especially Sonny Clark all provide strong support to this outstanding and apparently underappreciated album.

I'm not sure whether the sense of humor is Benny Golson's (the album's producer) or the brilliant heir to Dizzy and Clifford, Lee Morgan's. But two of the tracks are Johnny Mercer novelty tunes that Henry Busse wouldn't have be caught dead doing let alone Lee Morgan with an ultra-hip rhythm section on the cultish jazz label for true believers, Blue Note. But give Lee credit for making them work--both "Candy" and (I'm still shaking my head in disbelief) a throwaway piece of '50s ephemera called "Personality." My only regret is that Lee didn't go for the hat trick--"Sugar Blues"--one of the corniest of all swing era hits but with lyrics, once again, by Mercer and a hit recording for a limited trumpet player whose specialty was mutes--no, it wasn't a mute master like Rex Stewart or Cootie Williams. Clyde McCoy was his name.

My guess is that Dizzy had it up his sleeve to spring the tune on Norman Granz at Verve and warned his young protege to lay off it lest he spoil the surprise. The otherwise untouchable trumpet genius Mr. Gillespie would record far worse in the '60s and '70s, a period during which many musicians who were not members of an electric/fusion "group" had to go to ridiculous extremes in order to be recorded.

Give Wynton credit for bringing some sanity, sense, and, yes, even music back to the music in the early '80s. But give even more credit to the likes of Stitt, Dexter, Bill Evans, Art Blakey (who could find someone to record him only in Europe), and of course the handful of remaining big bands for their courageous, gallant determination to keep the flame alive during a fallow pre-Wynton period that seemed determined to electrocute and disco-fy America's indigenous musical art form out of existence. (And that was the better music of the day, compared to "pop" music, which was rock for the kids and country for the maturing public. The Great American Songbook had been consigned to oblivion. Performer-song-writers replaced composers altogether.)

Since then, jazz has had two shining moments: the 1993 recording by Shirley Horn and Johnny Mandel ("Here's to Life") and the absolutely astounding debut by Roberta Gambarini in 2006 ("Easy to Love"), which restored a belief in the music for many of us. Despite all of those discouraging attempts in jazz ed classes, an Italian visitor demonstrated beyond a doubt that it was possible to actually "hear" the music of Charlie Parker--providing one took it seriously enough to actually listen.

Morgan blows well beyond his nineteen years, offering energetic standard reworkings which nonetheless remain standard.