Lee Morgan Film

[Brad]

I saw this tonight.  Incredibly well done but ultimately tragic in that you know what awaits at the end of the tunnel.  In the end what you are left with is the music.  After the death of an artist, no matter how that person passes, you are left with their art. It also reminds you of the folly of guns. Just too many damn guns in this country  

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

I dunno how interested I am in experiencing time travel, the way they've been doing it, when you step into the electric field of radient light. sometimes it is possible, you can like freaking loose a hand or foot or something by accident

[Lazaro Vega]

Thought the New Yorker review was fair, and who knew that 1968 meeting between Lee and Clifford Jordan playing "Straight, No Chaser"? Does anyone remember Billy Hart recounting Lee's last night on earth? Found in MP3 form if you scroll down the page. https://ethaniverson.com/interviews/interview-with-billy-hart/

[Larry Kart]

On 7/29/2017 at 10:29 AM, JSngry said:

To be honest, I didn't find it depressing...it was just, uh, "human". It was also, if not exactly "uplifting"...it was resolutional in that Helen accepted the weight of what she did, and seems to have spent the rest of her life trying to atone for it. Seems like she was all about keeping it real all through her life, before and after those few seconds in Slug's.

Seems like one of those "bound to happen" tragedies. like, a "classical" tragedy of life, a kid loses balance, gets picked up and put back on track by a strong woman, a combination wife and mother (and I still don't know about was Lee's childhood, what kind of a mother did he have or not have that he ended up falling in love with an older woman and then letting her handle all his business and things) then the kid grows up and eventually starts feeling frisky, looks at women his own age and gets pretty disrespectful about his existing relationship to his older partner, and she, having always been on the salty side, has a moment where everything combines in that certain way at that certain moment where everything snaps (and I believe we all have the potential of that moment inside us), just for THAT long, not more than a second or two, but that's all it takes, right?

Larry Ridley's recounting of re-meeting Helen Morgan years later almost brought tears to my eyes, because make no mistake, murdering anybody is a profoundly weighty act every way imaginable, but when the two principles are people you've known closely over a lifetime...the higher possibilities of humanity, things like forgiveness of others, repenting and atoning of one's worse misdeeds (as we say today, "owning it") and then just moving on/up, never denying the past but always looking toward tomorrow resolved to be better than that, those are things that might be missing to a less that healthy extent today. In that sense, "I Called Him Morgan" is a "jazz movie" in the sense that "8 Men Out" is a "baseball movie".

Interestingly enough, in the closing "Thanks To" credits, a pretty long list of names included both David Weiss and Jonas Kullhammar!

And finally, I would loved to have eaten Helen Morgan's cooking, I can tell that.

Finally saw it, and I agree with Jim's take above. One question -- the woman, I think her name is Judith Johnson, who was Lee's friend (or "friend," though she certainly seems like a real friend) and  who drove him to Slugs's that night, was she the "other woman" that Lee was seeing? If so, that doesn't fit my sense of what was going on, which was that Lee had been getting tired of the  fact that Helen was 14 years older, that her relationship to him was (or in large part had become) protective and maternal, and that he had found some younger woman. But Johnson seemed like a middle-class version of Helen, more or less another protective mother figure and, unless I'm confused, of about Helen's age. Also, FWIW Johnson says that thanks to drug use, etc., Lee's sexuality was pretty much non-existent in his later years. If Johnson, not some anti-Helen type, was indeed the other woman in the triangle, somehow that makes things even more tragic.

[AllenLowe]

well, Larry, one thing I would say is that the maternal, "I'll-take-care-of-things-you-just-play-music" female spouse is rampant in jazz players of that generation, so I am not sure that that is really a factor either way. It's just the way it generally was. (In other words, she could have been an "anti-Helen" and yet still a maternal figure). 

Edited August 9, 2018 by AllenLowe

[Dan Gould]

Did we ever discuss "The Lady Who Shot Lee Morgan"?

Stumbled across this, by the author

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/55701567/pure-jazz-magazine-vol-7-issue-1-horace-silver-pjm-2016

(you have to "flip" the pages to find the article) -  and I don't recall seeing this article posted:

https://narratively.com/death-of-a-sidewinder/

 

[Larry Kart]

See 

 

[Dan Gould]

49 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

See 

 

You referred us to the same thread we're in?

[JSngry]

 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

You referred us to the same thread we're in?

See 

Sorry -- To me your question suggested that you were unaware of this thread, where the film was extensively discussed. Now I see you were referring not to the film but to a magazine article.

[Dan Gould]

11 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

See 

Sorry -- To me your question suggested that you were unaware of this thread, where the film was extensively discussed. Now I see you were referring not to the film but to a magazine article.

No I was adding other sources of information about Helen Morgan ... and placed that info in the thread that discussed the movie.

Which you then helpfully referenced.   "...go 'round in circles" indeed.

[JSngry]

I, too, am a soldier in the war on poverty.

[Gheorghe]

Biily Preston ? I only knew about I think a trumpet player "Eddie Preston" who maybe was a little bit influenced by hard bop´s Lee Morgan. But wait a minute, wasn´t there a Miles Davis composition titled "Billy Preston" on "Get Up with it" or something from around 1972 ??? 

[bertrand]

Billy Preston was the 5th Beatle. Or 6th, if you also count George Martin. And of course, there was Stu Sutcliffe.

[Gheorghe]

@bertrand : Thanks, I really didn´t know this as a 100% jazz fan, too little info about other kinds of music you know…., so the in General not so well known "Eddie Preston" did say more to me because he played trumpet with Mingus in 1970 and thats´something I know of course. Same with "Billy Preston" as the title of one track on Miles´ electric period. 

But I couldnt check out what your Billy Preston has to do with Lee Morgan ? 

[Dan Gould]

19 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

@bertrand : Thanks, I really didn´t know this as a 100% jazz fan, too little info about other kinds of music you know…., so the in General not so well known "Eddie Preston" did say more to me because he played trumpet with Mingus in 1970 and thats´something I know of course. Same with "Billy Preston" as the title of one track on Miles´ electric period. 

But I couldnt check out what your Billy Preston has to do with Lee Morgan ? 

Gheorghe, jsngrey introduced Billy Preston into the thread because his song "Will it Go 'round in Circles" captured the fact that I posted two articles about Helen Morgan, who shot Lee, in this thread about the movie about Helen Morgan, and Larry Kart posted a link to the same thread that we were already in. We were going around in circles which is why Jim posted the Billy Preston.

[Gheorghe]

@Dan Gould: thanks for the background info. Now I understand it better, but it´s hard to follow and without your help I wouldn´t have understanded it at all. From Lee Morgan (best known to me, I have almost all his albums) to an to me completely  unknown 5th or 6th Beatle is hard stuff for me, harder than to figure out what really radical free jazz artists are doing (and I mastered it, since I don´t listen only to straight ahead, but to Avantgarde also). But this "bridge" from Morgan to one Billy Preston is really hard to cross…….

[medjuck]

To confuse the issue even more: whenever I noticed references to Helen Morgan I thought of the torch singer from the '30s. 

[GA Russell]

I Called Him Morgan is currently at its best price, $11.49 prime.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07616S9Q7