Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land (2024 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series Vinyl LP)

Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land | Vinyl LP - 2024 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series 180g (5831994, Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio, Optimal Media GmbH)

Lee Morgan recorded The Sidewinder in December 1963 and Search for the New Land two months later, in February 1964, before either was released. When The Sidewinder came out in July 1964 and went to No. 25 on the Billboard 200, Alfred Lion pulled the newer session from the release schedule and pushed Morgan back toward the commercial groove. Search for the New Land sat in the vault until August 1966. By then the Blue Note moment it belonged to had largely passed.

Morgan was twenty-five at the time of the session and assembled the best musicians available: Wayne Shorter on tenor, Herbie Hancock on piano, Grant Green on guitar, Reggie Workman on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. Alfred Lion produced; Rudy Van Gelder engineered. Nat Hentoff wrote the liner notes; Francis Wolff photographed the cover. All five tracks are Morgan originals, published by Nom Music Inc.

The sixteen-minute title track that opens Side A does not build toward a climax so much as unfold outward from a central modal vamp — the theme appears, recedes, and the soloists take the space between. Shorter and Hancock are in particular form. Side B compresses the range: "Mr. Kenyatta" and "Morgan the Pirate" push hard, "Melancholee" slows things to a ballad. Morgan was shot and killed at Slug's Saloon in New York on February 19, 1972. This Classic Vinyl Series edition was mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analog master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media GmbH.