The Sidewinder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sidewinder
The Sidewinder cover
Studio album by Lee Morgan
Released 1963
Recorded Dec 21, 1963
Genre Jazz
Length 40:59
Label Blue Note
Producer(s) Alfred Lion
Professional reviews
Lee Morgan chronology

The Sidewinder
(1963)


The Sidewinder is a 1963 album by jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan. The title track was one of the defining recordings of the soul jazz genre, becoming a jazz standard. An edited version was released as a single. The album was to become a huge seller, and highly influential - many subsequent Lee Morgan albums, and other Blue Note discs, would duplicate (or approximate) this album's format, by following a long, funky opening blues with a handful of conventional hard bop tunes.

The original album's five tracks feature tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, then 26, whom Morgan (then 25) claimed at the time to be mentoring. Also present are the noted free jazz drummer Billy Higgins, and double bassist Bob Cranshaw, who would soon switch to electric bass and begin a decades-long association with Sonny Rollins.

All of the compositions were written by Morgan; all but the Cole Porter-like "Hocus Pocus" are heavily blues-based.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "The Sidewinder" – 10:21
  2. "Totem Pole" – 10:11
  3. "Gary's Notebook" – 6:03
  4. "Boy, What a Night" – 7:30
  5. "Hocus Pocus" – 6:21

[edit] Personnel