Search for the New Land

Morgan, Lee

album cover

A Soul-Jazz Icon's Most Daring Expedition

Two months before he made this album, one of the most inventive of the hard bop era, the trumpet player Lee Morgan recorded a careerdefining hit called "The Sidewinder." A kicky boogaloo filled with slurry late-night solos, "The Sidewinder" stood apart from everything happening in jazz in 1964. It became one of the first crossover records of the 1960s, showing countless jazz musicians a (soon to be worn-out) path toward commercial viability marked "soul jazz" or some such.

During the brief period before "The Sidewinder" reached the marketplace, before anyone could have anticipated its impact, the twenty-four-year-old Morgan turned up at engineer Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey home (and studio) with a different band to record this gem. Compared with "The Sidewinder," Search for the New Land is an "art" statement—the solemn title suite alternates between a tempoless rubato and a broken African rhythm, and his other originals are loaded with characteristically tricky hard-bop challenges, explorations guided by the inquisitive interplay of pianist Herbie Hancock and guitarist Grant Green.

After "The Sidewinder" exploded, Morgan's career changed. He was persuaded to make a series of less interesting soul-jazz titles, among them the patently derivative blues The Rumproller. He was murdered (by his mistress) on the bandstand in 1972, leaving behind a stack of "Sidewinder"-style crowd-pleasing recordings, and the much more vigorous music he found, briefly anyway, on this Search.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1964, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Search for the New Land," "The Joker," "Mr. Kenyatta."
Catalog Choice: The Sidewinder; Live at the Lighthouse
Next Stop: Wayne Shorter: Speak No Evil
After That: Freddie Hubbard: Backlash
Book Pages: 521–522