Lee Morgan: The Complete Live at the Lighthouse

Suffice to say that if Blue Note's original Live at The Lighthouse (1970) lit a fire under you and all the subsequent expanded iterations did nothing to douse said flames, this definitive final word on a very good thing is going to grab your attention fast and hold it hard.

Fourteen previously unreleased whirlwind turns around the bandstand complete the picture painted that July weekend in California when trumpeter supreme Lee Morgan and his pirate quintet—Bennie Maupin on tenor, flute, and bass clarinet, pianist Harold Mabern, rogue bassist Jymie Merritt and amped drummer Mickey Roker—claimed Hermosa Beach as their own. Mabern's zigzagging "Beehive" cuts and cues and puts the audience (both then and now) on immediate notice: You're going to hear five men, in various stages of their evolution, take the music to task and make it their very special own. It's a pure joy to witness.

The playing fire never recedes. It gets hotter and hotter and scorches beach and memory as Maupin's aggressive tone attacks Merritt's rousing "Something Like This" (and its two unheard reincarnations) over the course of the entire weekend. "Peyote" holds its elastic sway. At the end of the evening, caught up in the frenzied, unfussy moments of a roiling, unapologetic "Absolutions," and the extra manic bop antics of "The Sidewinder," Jack DeJohnette takes over for Roker on Morgan's equally antic "Speedball."

As it has for over fifty years, Live at The Lighthouse shines a light on peak Morgan with a band that, if only for three days, stood the test of time. Produced by Zev Feldman and David Weiss from the original ½" 4-track tapes recorded by Francis Wolff, Live at The Lighthouse is available as both an 8-CD set and a limited-edition, 12-LP, all-analog 180g vinyl configuration.