Lee Morgan: His Life, Music and Culture (Popular Music History)

This is the first biography of the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan (1938-72).He was a prodigy: recruited to Dizzy Gillespie's big band while still a teenager, joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers not much after, by his early-20s Morgan had played on four continents and dozens of albums.The trumpeter would go on to cultivate a personal and highly influential style, and to make records - most notably "The Sidewinder" - which would sell amounts almost unheard of in jazz.While what should have been Morgan's most successful years were hampered by a heroin addiction, the ascendant black liberation movement of the late-60s gave the musician a new, political impulse, and he returned to the jazz scene to become a vociferous campaigner for black musicians' rights and representation.But Morgan's personal life remained troubled, and during a fight with his girlfriend at a New York club, he was shot and killed, aged 33.