Billboard : 08/26/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

Incisive performances of the strongly melodic, interesting compositions of Benny Golson make this a memorable session. Trumpeter Morgan, ever improving, shows fire and facility to cogently develop his ideas. Well coordinated rhythm, which lends rhythmic substance and necessary shading, is especially noteworthy. If shown, modern jazz clientele will pick up on this.

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Cashbox : 09/07/1957

The already accomplished 19 year old trumpeter, in front of a sextet, makes his third Blue Note starrer an eventful and provocative stint. The sessions, with the exception of one persuasive take, a beautiful tribute to the late trumpeter Clifford Brown, swing brightly to the inventive arrangements of the tenor sax man on the date, Benny Golson. Important jazz attraction.

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Down Beat : 11/14/1957
Leonard Feather : 4 stars

This is as much Benny Golson‘s album as Lee Morgan‘s, since Benny not only wrote all five originals but overcame his modesty long enough to play tenor sax on the session. He cooks throughout, occasionally (as in Domingo) achieving a warmth of sound comparable with Ben Webster’s.

As a composer Benny often seems concerned with unconventionality of construction – Mesabi Chant has 13 measures, an eight-bar bridge, and 13 more. He is also very much preoccupied with the minor mode. The first two titles, which occupy the entire A side, are both minor; so is Mesabi.

In general, both sides offer exactly what you would expect of the talent in question, and this talent is never in question. Lee wails most effectively on Tip-Toeing, a blues. Gigi Gryce, in addition to blowing alto on the date, did some flute work that is nowhere credited on the liner. The rhythm section could hardly miss: all you had to do is examine the personnel.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

When the prominent, contentious French critic, André Hodeir, made his first American visit in the spring of 1957, he was struck by an obvious fact that most American jazz listeners and writers have taken quite for granted. “You are living,” he said, “in almost another classical period of jazz, like twenty years ago when Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman reflected the primary influences that were then active. Now, all the young musicians I heard have grown up naturally in another language. Whether I heard them at John Mehegan‘s improvisation class at Julliard or at a jam session uptown, it was immediately evident that the young modern jazzman knows the Miles–Bird repertoire and idiom with the unquestioning familiarity that an earlier generation experienced in growing up with Hawkins and Armstrong.”

Hodeir goes on to partially deplore this period of consolidation during which brilliant youngsters like Lee Morgan are making the now familiar jazz language into a constantly more pliable, more self-challenging medium for expression. Hodeir, a denotative radical, is restless and wants increasing experimentation, a breaking away from the comparative assurance – for audience and musician – of this new quasi-classical period.

Hodeir, I feel, is partly wrong in his impatience with so large a section of the present scene. It is entirely possible – and desirable – to have both experimentation and consolidation occurring simultaneously. A Lee Morgan, for example, is a direct, intense sample to contemporary experimenters of where the mainstream is; of where the nucleus of spontaneous fire that animates all essential jazz can be experienced; of where the earthiness that also must be integrated into successfully communicative jazz, however cerebral, can be found.

It is, in short, vital to have jazzmen who wholly feel and understand the basic modern jazz language; for it is they who can temper and balance and set in perspective those avant-guardists whose roots in the jazz tradition may be tenuous or dormant.

Lee’s biographical framework has been outlined as part of Blue Note’s two previous LPs with Lee as leader (BLP 1538 and 1541). To recapitulate very briefly; he was born in Philadelphia, July 10, 1938; started to play weekends with his own unit at 15; gained valuable sitting-in apprenticeship at Music City jazz workshop sessions with men like Miles Davis and Clifford Brown; and worked two weeks with Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers in the summer of 1956. Soon after his 18th birthday, Lee joined the Dizzy Gillespie big band, and has been an impressive part of that wailboat ever since.

Being a second trumpet soloist in a band headed by Dizzy is obviously an unusually demanding testing ground for any hornman, especially so young a voice. Lee has been swiftly equal to the challenge, gaining the respect of Dizzy and his colleagues and the excited admiration of an increasing number of listeners.

Lee has named Dizzy, Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown as his primary influences, and also speaks appreciatively of Kenny Dorham, Thad Jones and Art Farmer. He has absorbed these and other influences into a way of blowing that is more and more his own. As he grows older and assimilates more life experiences, his style inevitably will be honed into more and more personal an expression. But Lee already is a horn who rewards repeated listening. His vitality, strength of conception and execution and emotional directness is partly due to his youth, but also come from his conviction in the rightness of the career he has begun and from his growing knowledge that he has the head, the chops, and the heart to tell a story that can reach and move those who are able to hear.

Benny Golson, who is also a member of the Dizzy Gillespie band, is another, even more diversified representative of the consolidating younger generation. Benny, who wrote four of the tracks on Lee Morgan’s Blue Note 1541, is that comparative rarity, a writer of jazz originals who can construct fresh, meaningful, and often memorable melodic lines. There is especially an affecting strain of lyricism in his writing.

Gigi Gryce, who is the altoist on this date, is also one of the more consistent and sensitive contemporary jazz writers. His appraisal, therefore, of Golson’s compositions is particularly interesting. Says Gigi: “Benny, first of all, is one of the greatest young musicians to have arrived in a long time. As a composer, he writes very strong melodically. His lines are even melodies within themselves. Each moving part, I mean, in a Golson work is apt to have a melody of its own – all within the same harmonic texture. He’s also not content to stay rhythmically within the usual framework. He varies the length of his units, and doesn’t always work with just the 32-bar structure. Benny is really trying to do something for the advancement of form in jazz. I would describe the quality of his writing as subtle, and exciting in its subtlety.”

Gigi went on to talk of Benny as a tenor, and of his diffidence as a person. “He never steps forward. He always stands back, and he didn’t even want to play on this date. We had to convince him. He’s been very much overlooked. His playing is rather subtle too. People who expect to hear familiar approaches like Sonny Stitt or Stan Getz may at first tend to let Benny’s tenor slip by, because he’s really something else. There’s a tremendous amount of thought behind his work; and if you listen, his playing is so exciting because it’s so musical and so well put together.”

“He’s always admired Don Byas and Lucky Thompson; and when he was younger, he played for a time like Dexter Gordon. He has his own voice now, and it’s an important one. He and Clifford Brown were very good friends and used to play a lot together. I thought of both of them as young old timers because both had deep roots in the jazz scene. That’s why both had so much to say. When I speak of Benny’s future, I can’t find the words to express my conviction in what he will do. Let me also say he is the most perfect person I have ever met.”

The biography of the 28-year-old Golson, who is from Philadelphia like Morgan, has been sketched on Blue Note 1541. The backgrounds of the virile individuals who make up so cohesively strong a collective rhythm section – Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Dizzy’s drummer, Charlie Persip – have been detailed in Blue Note and other annals before, as has the career of Gigi Gryce.

At the request of Alfred Lion, Benny Golson wrote brief guides to each of his five compositions in this set:

Hasaan’s Dream is about an imaginary Arabian boy who, after seeing the many wonderful things in a sultan’s palace, goes back to his dwelling and that night dreams of these things. IN the introduction, I tried to get an Arabian effect by using no piano with a tambourine in its place. There is also no piano on the theme. The tag gradually modulates to end in another key.

Domingo: After I got this melody together, the first few chord progressions reminded me of something religious which led me to think about Sunday. I decided I would call it Domingo (Sunday in Spanish) in tribute to the many friends I made during my recent trip to South America with Dizzy Gillespie.

I Remember Clifford: This is in tribute to the late and very great Clifford Brown. He was one of my dearest friends and fellow musicians. I worked with this melody for three weeks, trying to get a melody that would be reminiscent of him and the way he played. To get a melody to characterize someone like Clifford is just about impossible. I don’t know if I even come close, but I tried very hard. I was very moody while composing this song because with each note I wrote I realized that was to someone who had gone – my friend forever.

Mesabi Chant: I wrote this tune in Minnesota (Minneapolis), the state where the Mesabi Flats are located. They’re barren waste lands. The construction of the tune is very unusual in that there are 13 bars before and after the eight bar bridge – all in all, a 34 bar chorus.

Tip-Toeing: Charlie Persip inspired this one in that he sometimes uses a straight one, two, three, four beat very softly. It reminded me of someone tip-toeing very softly. I thought it would be nice if I could get a similar type melody to go with this effect. I let Charlie set up this effect with a two-bar introduction. Off and on, he uses it throughout the arrangement.”

This is an important LP because it combines the proudly deep-rooted instrumental strength of six young jazzmen who are adding to the roots of the future and they’re heard in compositions that are both penetratingly personal expressions of Benny Golson’s emotions but also provide breathing space for each instrumentalist to tell his story too.