 |
| Lee on Hermosa Beach, which is my all-time favorite beach |
'Live At The Lighthouse' has long been considered one of the best live albums in Blue Note Record's impressive catalog, and the only live recording from iconic trumpeter Lee Morgan as a leader.
The album was recorded at The Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, CA from July 10-12, 1970, was first released by the label as a 2-LP set with just four tracks, one track per side. Today's freeload is a 3CD set, released in 1996 set that expands the number of tracks, from four to twelve.
was trumpeter Lee Morgan's next-to-last recording. At the time, [who wasn't? - Ed.]had gotten tired of playing the same hard bop-styled music that he had excelled at during the past decade. Lee was searching for newer sounds, and ready to very modal-oriented, and John Coltrane's influence is also apparent, but Lee's signature sound is still very much intact, and he takes some fiery solos that still sound lively decades later.
Along with Lee Morgan's trumpet, are:
Bennie Maupin on flute and tenor saxophone
Harold Mabern on piano
Jymie Merritt on bass
Mickey Roker on drums
Jack DeJohnette on drums
For the freeload, what's your favorite beach?
Pass-A-Grille beach, FL. The southernmost beach on St. Pete Beach, Florida. The northern point when entering Tampa Bay. We lived on St. Pete Beach for a couple of years, our youngest was born at Bayfront in St. Petersburg. Thanks Babs.
ReplyDeleteI love the beach at Magen's Bay in St. Virgin Islands.
ReplyDeletecorrection....
DeleteSt. John, Virgin Islands.
St. Thomas? I've enjoyed several trips to both and they are fantastic beaches. St John is 2/3 national park so you can enjoy the absence of civilization. We hiked to Reef Bay and encounted wild pigs, donkeys and deer along the way as we passed abandoned sugar mills and plantation villas being overtaken by the jungle. I shed my clothes, sharpened a stick and made the hermit crabs submit to my rule.
DeleteHere in the Southland, the closest beach was Santa Monica, or Seal Beach. We would sometimes journey up to Zuma. There were plenty of "private beaches" along the way. You would get directions from locals as to where to turn down a driveway to get to a beach.
ReplyDeleteMy friends older brother was a Surfer. (1963?) Then he went to San Francisco and brought back posters, (Big Brother, Country Joe & Fish, Quicksilver) Next thing you know he was putting up posters of David Bowie (pre Hunky Dory)
DeleteLiving in Sydney we're kind of spoilt for choice but I have a lot of childhood memories of Shelly beach in Cronulla.
ReplyDeleteValdevaqueros, a small beach town located outside of Cadiz, Spain. Beautiful gorge area and the views are spectacular.
ReplyDeleteThis can only be "Holnis", Baltic Sea, near Glücksburg and Flensburg, in the north of Germany. Kindly regards, Mike
ReplyDeleteLink
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/hVMHk8KCLpx
Jalama Beach, haven't been for a few years, planning on next March!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite beach is likely very changed from when I first visited it in 1969. Yelapa was a tiny Indian village on Mexico's west coast accessible only by boat from Puerto Vallarta. The beach was a lovely white crescent cove with travel-poster water and lush jungle as the backdrop to the scattering of grass huts. Locals sold freshly speared and grilled fish and rum cocos—coconuts drained of their water and filled with Ronrico—all for a few pesos. Shacks likewise could be rented for chump change and we spent a couple of weeks there before continuing our road trip to Panama. I just checked and was gratified to see that although Yelapa has been developed somewhat, it's nothing akin to the sort of high rise horror shows that have sprung up on the gulf coast in places like Cancun.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Lee Morgan; I saw him a good deal around that time both at the Lighthouse as well as (I think) Howard Rumsey's Concerts By the Sea in Hermosa Beach. Though, as you say he was plumbing Trane's modal approaches by that era, he also exuded a certain soulfulness that set him apart from some of his more cerebral contemporaries.
Waimea Bay, Oahu
ReplyDeleteOne more thing on Lee Morgan. For fans, there's a brilliant doc about him titled "I Called Him Morgan" that's well worth seeking out. Here's my review originally posted on Netflix:
ReplyDeleteWhen Helen Morgan met jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan he had hit bottom, a heroin habit having undermined his promising career. Thanks to her stabilizing influence, Morgan was able to clean up and resume performing and recording with Helen acting as his de facto manager. Helen was 14 years Lee's senior and perhaps their relationship in some ways made up for the two children she had borne as a child herself, these kids then raised by her grandparents in the south. The tragic death of Lee Morgan at 33, shot dead by Helen in a
New York jazz club seems all the more ironic for the role she played as his savior earlier on. Because there is precious little filmed footage of Morgan, the documentary weaves together taped interviews given by both Lee and Helen before their deaths, respectively in the 1970s and 1990s. These audio records are fleshed out with the filmed memories of musicians who worked with Lee, many of them
highly perceptive and articulate. The film artfully uses stock footage from the era to help give this documentary a visual design befitting the jazz artist it celebrates while also memorializing Helen who shared equally in the tragedy. A must for jazz fans, if the film has a weakness, it's a certain cloudiness that time imposes on exactly what led up to that night in Slugs Saloon when Helen shot Lee. Though the doc reveals the outlines of a "Franky and Johnny" story with Lee's infidelity at its center, just what drove Helen Morgan to shoot her husband dead moments before he was to take the bandstand is never clarified. She herself says it was a moment of irrationality, one she forever regretted. And that's easy to believe.
I grew up going to Rat Beach in the South Bay (just south of Torrance Beach) but I think I prefer the Florida beaches better these days (less cold for one thing). Playalinda on the Canaveral National Seashore is a nice unspoiled spot on an otherwise over-developed coastline.
ReplyDeleteIt's not plush or resort-filled, it's not tropical or with swaying palms, but i love it. Ocracoke Island in NC's Outer Banks, the beach across from the wild horse paddock (it's unnamed otherwise). --Muzak McM.
ReplyDeleteSunova
ReplyDelete