In Full Light
LEE MORGAN
The Complete Live at the Lighthouse
Blue Note
When Lee Morgan’s Live at the Lighthouse was originally released, in March 1971, it was a double-LP set with four sidelong selections. When it was reissued in 1996, it was expanded to a three-CD set, offering one version of each of the 13 tunes Morgan and company played that July 1970 weekend in Hermosa Beach, California.
But now, with The Complete Live at the Lighthouse, we get the whole kit and caboodle, just about every note that the quintet recorded during their three-night, 12-set stand. With more than seven-and-a-half hours of sound stretched across eight CDs or 12 LPs, it’s a gargantuan release, easily on the scale of Miles Davis’ The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965. Except where that set gave a glimpse into the onstage chemistry of one of Davis’ best-documented bands, Morgan’s Lighthouse recordings are the only ones he made with what might have been his greatest band.
Start with Bennie Maupin. Although the multi-reedist had recorded with Morgan before, on Taru and Caramba! (both from 1968), he wasn’t the presence there that he is here. Morgan gives Maupin the first solo in every number, an opening salvo he uses to set the bar for the rest of the band. When playing up-tempo, Maupin tends toward furious runs that strain at the edges of the chords, occasionally breaking the flow with honking asides or wailing interjections. In mid-tempo, he’s more lyrical, making deft use of sustained tones to add emotional impact to his harmonic ideas. Morgan, following, is invariably on his toes, using all his technique and rhythmic acuity to match, or very occasionally one-up, his reeds man.
But it’s the rhythm section—pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jymie Merritt, and drummer Mickey Roker—that really takes this to another level. Each was a strong player in his own right, but together they were a juggernaut, driving the music with invention and unflagging energy. Mabern’s huge hands offer a cushion of chords through punchy, densely voiced comping, and his solos often reach McCoy Tyner-worthy peaks of intensity.
Still, it’s Merritt who dominates. In part, that’s because his Ampeg Baby Bass has a big, woofy tone that, on the bandstand, must have felt like an upright on steroids. But it’s also because, rather than laying down a straight quarter-note pulse, his lines are busy and melodic, dropping accents that mesh perfectly with Roker’s polyrhythmic patterns. And when Jack DeJohnette sits in for “Speedball,” there are moments when that familiar boogaloo groove seems about to explode, so frenzied is the interaction between bass and drums.
—J.D. CONSIDINE
SOUND PRINTS
Other Worlds
Greenleaf
Sound Prints is tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas, along with pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Joey Baron. This recording was made a few days after a weeklong run at the Village Vanguard in January of 2020, not long before the pandemic shut everything down, and not long before the tensions and contradictions that have rent American society virtually from the beginning once again tautened and became explosive enough to demand a reckoning. It’s especially appropriate, then, that the overarching theme of this set is seeking out alternate worlds where truth, beauty, and hope might still somehow reign supreme.
Most of what’s here was recorded in one take. According to Lovano, that’s standard procedure for Sound Prints, even on the bandstand; he and Douglas will imagine a thematic context, often improvised on the spot, and the others will fall in immediately, creating music that both reflects and spurs further “dialogue and interaction.” The “space” being explored here is, as much as anything, the silence between notes and between rhythmic pulses, as well as the realms of imagination the musicians navigate to discover new beauty within the
