Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan (Jazz Perspectives)

"McMillan's enthusiasm for his subject is obvious; fans of Lee Morgan should welcome this book."
---Tom Owens, author of Bebop: The Music and Its Players



Lee Morgan began his professional career in Philadelphia at age fifteen. At eighteen, after a short stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Morgan went to New York to join Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra, where he stayed until 1958, when the group disbanded. A return to Blakey brought Morgan new opportunities, including his first attempts at composition. But however much his time with Blakey helped to advance his playing and writing, his boss and his bandmates' destructive drug habits exerted just as strong an influence. Within two years, Morgan would be back home in Philadelphia, strung out on heroin and penniless.



Morgan's return to music in the early to mid sixties witnessed a tremendous evolution in his playing. Formerly a virtuoso in the model of his idol, Clifford Brown, Morgan brought to his critically acclaimed Blue Note records of the era an emotionally charged, muscular tone, full of poise and control. But it was with the record Sidewinder, recorded in 1963, that Morgan found his greatest fame and commercial success, due to the infectious groove of the title tune. By the time of his death, at 33---murdered by a female companion---Morgan had begun a new phase of his career, experimenting with more modal and free-form jazz.



Jeff McMillan's Delightfulee is a biography of this important modern jazz figure. Although not the first book on Morgan, McMillan's is the first to include serious analysis of Morgan's music, both as a performer and a composer. McMillan also had exclusive access to Lee Morgan's now-deceased brother, who was able to provide unparalleled insight into Morgan's personal and family life.



Jeff McMillan received his MA from the Jazz History and Research program at Rutgers-Newark in 2000 and currently works as an archivist for the Metropolitan Opera.