Lee Morgan – 'Search For The New Land'

During summer break from Caltech in 1966, I was back home in Brooklyn Heights.  On a hot humid August Saturday, Denise "The Grease" and I were sitting on the stoop of "The Grease Family" home.

A white Lincoln Continental 4-door convertible, with a red interior pulls up, and out gets Denise's brother, Vinny aka "Vinny The One".  Denise tells him, "We saved you a parking space, Vin!"  Vinny smiled and said, "How's my favorite girls doin'?" and kissed Denise and me twice, once on each cheek.  He then asked us, "What are you ladies, doin' today?"  Denise told him, "We're goin' over to Gennaro's for slices (of pizza)." "Nice!" said Vinny, and then, said "The slices are on me", with that Vinny reach into front right pants pocket and pulled out a "wad" of cash held together with a thick and wide purple rubber band (the kind used to hold together bunches of broccoli and asparagus in grocery stores).  He thumbed through fifties until he reached the twenties and gave us twenty dollars each.  

In 1966, the median annual income for families in the U.S. was approximately $7,400, so twenty dollars back then was what we mathematicians commonly referred to as "A chunk of change".  Vinny went in the house, and Denise said, "Let's get some slices, and go shopping!".  So we headed over to Gennaro's.

Gennaro's was a pizza parlor in downtown Brooklyn, and a short bus ride away from Brooklyn Heights.  There was no "Gennaro", it was owned by a guy with the nickname of "Joey Apizza", who was part of Denise's father's crew. (Apizza is pronounced "Ah-beetz" in the archaic Neapolitan dialect for pizza)

My father used to joke, "Gennaro's is the most successful laundromat… I mean pizzeria, in the entire universe… .at least on paper, anyway."  Be that as it may, Gennaro's, had the best pizza around, and in Brooklyn that's saying something.

At Gennaro's "Joey Apizza" greeted us, "Denise… Babs, 'hawaya'?, and told Denise, "Vinny called and said 'youse' were stoppin' by."  He then looked at me and asked, "You heard from your brother, Babs?" I told him, "We got a letter last week, he's good.", and "Joey Apizza" said "Next time you write to him, tell 'em I was asking about him, and tell him to watch his ass." (at the time, my brother was in Vietnam)

Denise ordered the slices,"Give us two slices with sausage, two with 'roni' (pepperoni) and two large cokes, please Joey".  Now here's what my father was talking about: when Joey rang up our order on his cash register, he said, "Lets see now you got two large cheese pies (pizzas), two large with roni, two large with anchovies, two large with sausage, three orders spaghetti marinara, three side orders of meatballs, four large salads, and two Caesar salads.  Will there be anything else?" Denise, who knew the deal, laughed and said "Yeah, you better give us some garlic bread, and a dozen cannoli, too Joey".   "Joey Apizza" said, "You got it, kid…OK, with New York City sales tax, that's gonna' be fifty-three dollars…outta' fifty-five, that's two dollars change.", and gave us a dollar each.  "Joey Apizza" winked, we laughed.

While we were sitting at a table eating our slices, four guys in their teens walked in.  One of them looked at Denise and made a "smooching" sound, another one looked at me, made the "thumbs up" hand gesture, and while rotating his thumb, said to me, "Hey baby, you want 'some-a-dis'?"  I told him, "Come back when you reach puberty, junior." "Yeah, when your friggin' balls drop." said Denise rolling her eyes.  Joey laughed and said to the four guys, "I guess they told you, and now I'm tellin' 'youse' guys, get the fuck outta my pizza parlor!" They left lickety-split.

Standing in front of his cash register "Joey Apizza" said to himself, "Let's see now, those four 'stunods' ordered two large cheese pies, two large with roni, two large with anchovies…" (Stunod is Italian-American slang for stupid, "numbnuts" and "idiot" etc.)

A few minutes later, Joey brought us some Tortoni (amaretto ice cream, topped with toasted coconut, and a maraschino cherry), and said, "The Tortoni is on me." and snickered as he walked away.

Across the street from Gennaro's was a drug store with a makeup counter, and next door to that, was a record store called "Sweetest Sounds".  Denise went into the drug store and came out with enough makeup for a Cecil B. DeMille epic, and I went into Sweetest Sounds, and came out with the recently released…

‘Search for the New Land,’ produced by Alfred Lion and recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, was recorded on February 15, 1964.  However, it wasn’t released until August 1966.

All the "sidemen" are legends in their own right, along with Lee Morgan's trumpet are: Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Grant Green on guitar, Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums.

The album was recorded two months after 'The Sidewinder', which was a commercial success, and Lee Morgan enjoyed a hugely popular and lucrative chart hit in the form of the soulful, boogaloo-laden title track.  'Search for the New Land' finds Lee Morgan in a more meditative and exploratory mood, reflecting the social tension and disenchantment of the Civil Rights Movement era.  

In the music business, as in life, timing is everything.  Blue Note Records owner Alfred Lion was looking for a more commercial sound not unlike 'The Sidewinder', so priorities and release dates quickly changed.  'Search For The New Land' was shelved until 1966, when Alfred thought the climate was right for its release.

Search for the New Land is widely considered jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan’s most profound and artistically ambitious Blue Note Records statement.

Today's freeload is a Japanese 2024 limited edition reissue as part of the Blue Note 85 series.  This is a UHQCD, remastered by Kevin Gray. Needless to say, the sonics are sweet.

For the freeload, tells about friends (best or otherwise) you had as a teenager.