"I Called Him Morgan" : A Lee Morgan Documentary

This weekend I watched a great documentary on Lee Morgan. The film is not totally related with his musical life but more on his personal life and most importantly about his charisma and unfortunate death. The film takes the viewer to the New York of 50s, 60s and early 70s with some really good footage from those amazing times.

Just take a look at the trailer below, and if you are curious about the brilliant but damaged life of the Morgans, watch the film...

I Called Him Morgan:

The 2016 film is written and directed by a Swedish documentary filmmaker called Kasper Collin. He is also the director of another beautiful jazz documentary, "My Name is Albert Ayler".

"I called him Morgan" tells the viewers Lee Morgan's and his common-law wife Helen Morgan's lives in a dramatic way and depicts the tragic story how she had shot him in 1972. 

In the film you can see many notable jazz musicians who were his colleagues and friends, such as Wayne Shorter, Bennie Maupin, Charli Persip, Billy Harper and Albert "Tootie" Heath speaking about Lee Morgan's life and his musical talent. 

"The Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan

The story of the film is based on the interviews of Helen Morgan by a local Wilmington, North Carolina radio host, Larry Reni Thomas, who had the opportunity to meet Helen and hold a series of meetings just before her death in 1996.

You can see and hear the fascinating stories how Lee Morgan arrives in New York at a young age, how he became famous playing side by side with Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, his drug related problems in the later years and amazingly how Helen Morgan saved him from totally going down and pulling him out of his heroin addiction.

At the same time the film very well reflects Helen Morgan's life since childhood, how she ended up in New York and her interactions with the jazz community.

The film is also a good opportunity to get to know Lee Morgan and his talent a little better and how he could easily become a trumpeter maybe bigger than Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis if he hadn't died so early. In one part of the movie, Lee Morgan talks about jazz music and says he does not like the word "jazz", finding it an imposed definition especially for the black people's music. He chooses to use the "black classical music"...Something else to ponder about, right?

I think it is a sad documentary. It is beautifully structured, blending very well the talent of a young jazz artist with a true crime and it does this in a very humane way. Everyone being interviewed is so sincere, mainly Helen Morgan. The director's concentration on specific emotional parts of the couple's intense relationship make the documentary a real pleasure to watch. But one cannot stop to think what would be of Lee Morgan if it hadn't snowed so heavily in New York that very night or the ambulance had arrived on time.

It is bittersweet and it is tragic but at the same time makes one to remember virtues like forgiveness and compassion which turns the film to a poetic and atmospheric one...