Edward Lee Morgan was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. One of the key hard bop musicians of the 1960s and a cornerstone of the Blue Note label, Morgan came to prominence in his late teens, recording with bandleaders like John Coltrane, Curtis Fuller, Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Mobley and Wayne Shorter, and playing in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
Morgan in 1959
Morgan (left), Jymie Merritt (center), and Wayne Shorter (right)
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, 1960. Pictured are Lee Morgan (left), Jymie Merritt and Wayne Shorter (center), and Art Blakey (right)
Horace Silver Quintet in Amsterdam, 1959
Horace Silver
Wynton Marsalis, an important figure in the revival of mainstream jazz