Track Listing 1. Yes I Can, No You Can't 2. Trapped 3. Speed Ball 4. Gigolo 5. You Go to My Head
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Billy Higgins, Harold Mabern, Wayne Shorter | | Distributor: | MSI Music Distribution | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes Personnel: Lee Morgan (trumpet); Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Harold Mabern (piano); Bob Cranshaw (acoustic bass); Billy Higgins (drums). Producer: Alfred Lion. Reissue producer: Michael Cuscuna. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on June 25 and July 1, 1965. Includes liner notes by Nat Hentoff. Japanese remaster in an LP-replica sleeve. CD comes in Jpn LP Sleeve. More quintessential hard bop from one of the genre's leading figures at the height of his considerable powers as a composer and trumpeter. Morgan had just returned to solo work a year earlier after his second stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers; in 1965 the trumpeter also released CORNBREAD and THE RUMPROLLER and did numerous sessions as a sideman. Morgan composed the title track, and three others including the Coots/Gillespie ballad "You Go To My Head" round things out. "Yes I Can, No You Can't" opens with the rhythm section laying down a churning vamp; the horns enter with a typical Morgan statement, funky, swaggering and confident. "Speedball" is a bebop-style blues, but more relaxed, with a secondary theme appearing in the third chorus of the head. "Trapped," a modified minor blues, is more urgent, while "The Gigolo" is a brooding and majestic jazz waltz more evocative of a bullfight than of the ballroom. Throughout, the ensemble work is tight and the solos crackle with passion and joy.
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