Artist: Lee Morgan
Album: The Gigolo
Reviewer: Chad Dryden
I’ve been on a Lee Morgan kick for the past few years, during which time he has rapidly moved up my list of jazz favorites, now second only to Miles because, well, Miles is Miles.
But Morgan was no slouch on the trumpet either. Schooled by Clifford Brown and absorbing much of Brown’s aesthetic (not to mention some of Miles’), Morgan released several solid albums as a bandleader in the late-’50s and early-’60s while also playing with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers before retreating from the group in 1961 with a nasty heroin habit. After getting clean, he reemerged in a big way with his most well-known (and best) album The Sidewinder (1964), whose title track with a huge hit by jazz standards (No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100) after it was released as a single. Maybe it was the catharsis of playing again after beating his drug problem or the subsequent return to the New York City jazz scene, but the unrelenting Sidewinder is a blazing, pedal-down exercise in hard bop with nary a ballad among its five original compositions. And speaking from experience, it’s sonic rocket fuel for a late-night highway drive.
Ditto The Gigolo, one of four(!) full-length corkers Morgan released in 1965 and which Blue Note finally reissued on vinyl in 2024 – mercifully so, because cherry copies of the original pressing trade in the triple digits. And while the album closes with the romantic, understated ballad “You Go to My Head,” the four preceding cuts rival The Sidewinder’s two-lane-blacktop momentum, grooving, bopping and building to the 11-minute title track and its scorching solos by Morgan and tenor saxophone godhead Wayne Shorter. A thrilling ride throughout, and worthy of inclusion in your jazz collection if The Sidewinder leaves you breathless and you’re not quite ready to stand still again.