I Called Him Morgan

I recently started listening to Lee Morgan's wonderful music but didn't know anything about him. This documentary is a great look into his career, his storied relationship with his wife, and the events surrounding his death. Unfortunately, the documentary doesn't have an abundance of photos or clips to work with. They do a pretty good job working with what they have, but it does make me wonder if the length should have been cut given the gap of artifacts to use. I also wonder why they didn't dive more into Morgan's childhood.

Surprising, I didn't know the musicians, nor their stories, sad, an action on impulse and destruction for a lifetime, I felt very sorry for Helen, children who are already born condemned to a suffering future, and when could they have risen again, an act thoughtless, interrupts a future that could have been happy... Love sometimes salvation, sometimes perdition... Beautiful and sad documentary...

If you love and understand real jazz--and especially if you love the long-ago New York City that gave birth to bebop and hard bop--there is nothing out there like this film. It is also fitting that a non-American made it, given that the United States has so turned its back on its greatest artistic creation and the musicians who created it. (Just compare this film with the shameful recent American documentary about Trane--with its pandering casting of Denzel Washington as narrator and utterly stupid and irrelevant choices of people to interview (Bill Clinton? Carlos Santana? Common? Cornell West? John Densmore?). From the late-night Larry Thomas jazz radio program and New York City snowfall and that opens I Called Him Morgan(and hey, whatever happened to that snow? It seems to have disappeared along with the jazz scene),the interviews with jazz musicians of Lee Morgan's time (one of whom who objects to the term "jazz," aptly preferring "black classical music"), and with it's beautifully paced rendering of acompelling American story of love and pain...for someone like me, who lived through all of that, it just could not have been better.

Having never heard of Lee Morgan this was an interesting story, but the construction was very by- the-numbers. A standard talking head movie that relied on a tape made in the 90's that sadly didn't illuminate enough to really get a sense of the complete tale. Had this been made when more people involved were alive, it might have been stronger, but they made do with what they had and I can't fault them for that. An interesting TV documentary show episode and about at that level technically. Jazz fans check it out.

The focus of this documentary is renowned American jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan (1938 - 1972) as well as his common-law wife Helen More who restored and saved Lee's life during a time of serious drug addiction only to end it later on.

The movie's directing style, by Kasper Collin, reflects the beauty and mood of the jazz music it portrays. A very clever bonus is the use of coloured footage of people walking about the streets of New York in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. This helps greatly in recalling moods and styles of eras that are long gone.

The main narration of this film is an audio recording of More in 1996. While it is mostly insightful, it is occasionally difficult to understand as More had an unusual accent that is not always easy to comprehend. Collin ought to have used subtitles during these segments.

With many magnificent still photos, TV footage, and interviews with Morgan's past bend members, it was unfortunate that only a brief audio recording of Morgan could be found as evidence of the man himself offstage. But the music - highlighted by Morgan's brilliant artistry as a trumpet player - more than makes up for this gap.