Jazz Series 1: Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land
Welcome to a new series where I take a jazz album and review it. Nothing fancy, only thing of note is mostly these will all be albums that are new to me, and I've already heard a fair amount of jazz, so I won't be reviewing Kind Of Blue or anything. I have a set of nine albums I want to review but I'll most likely extend it after I'm finished with those. Anyway, without further ado, let's get right into it.
Search for the New Land
First things first, this album has an all star lineup: Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Grant Green on guitar, Reggie Workman on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. If you're familiar with jazz, you know most of these names, and for good reason. With a lineup like this, it's most likely impossible to produce a bad album. Several all time greats are here, so of course all the solos are excellent, as one would expect. But it takes more than just technical proficiency to make a great album, so how are the other aspects of the album?
Well let's talk about the songwriting. All the compositions are Lee Morgan originals, who is a great songwriter for sure. But this album makes the rather dangerous move of putting its best track as the opener. The title track that opens the album is a masterpiece, full stop. At nearly 16 minutes, this song covers a lot of ground in its rather unusual structure. There's a rather meditative and pensive head that also serves to separate the more upbeat solo sections. This format works incredibly well, the chords take a bit of inspiration from modal jazz, all in all, it's a masterwork of the post-bop subgenre.
But how do the other tracks compare? Well sadly, they're all massively overshadowed by the opener. The rest of the tracks are all fairly standard hard bop, albeit executed on a very high level. All the solos are well done and interesting, but the songwriting just doesn't hold up when there's such a high bar set right from the beginning. Melancholee is probably the high point of these other tracks, it's, well, melancholic. It's a nice ballad and a good change of pace from the other more upbeat hard bop tracks. But it still just doesn't compare.
By no means is this album bad. In fact it's quite good. It's a highly enjoyable listen for sure, but I can't shake the feeling that if the other tracks were more in the vein of the title track, it would feel more inspired, unique, and just overall better. As it is, it has one of the best post-bop songs ever put to wax, with a handful of hard bop tunes that, while good, just don't hold up. Perhaps if this album were just three or four more complex post-bop tracks I'd likely consider it a masterpiece of the entire jazz genre. I'd still absolutely recommend listening to it, especially if you like hard bop, but this is definitely an unbalanced album. I'd say the title track is a must listen for any jazz fan, while the rest is only for hard bop afficianados. 7/10.