Lee Morgan - Search for The New Land

Renowned in jazz ever since he emerged in the Dizzy Gillespie big band of 1956, and crowned early on as the late Clifford Brown's successor among promising young trumpeters, Lee Morgan packed a lot of living into the next 16 years. A member of arguably the finest versions of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (playing alongside Benny Golson or Wayne Shorter), Morgan recorded regularly for Blue Note as both a leader and a sideman for virtually his entire career. He had a major hit recording with "The Sidewinder" in 1963 and was on a countless number of significant Blue Note recordings, stretching his hard bop style while being open to the influences of the avant-garde, post bop and late 1960s r&b. Only his untimely death in 1972 kept him from challenging Freddie Hubbard as the top jazz trumpeter of the 1970s. While Morgan's boogaloo recordings were very popular, Search For The New Land has one of his finest hours. Recorded right after The Sidewinder, Search For The New Land introduces five of Morgan's most challenging compositions, has him leading an all-star sextet (with Shorter, Grant Green and Herbie Hancock) and features him playing stirring and intense solos that rank not only with his greatest work but the most creative trumpet solos of the mid-1960s.