Although I would see him many times, this photo is how I remember Frank Morgan. The way he looked in 1988, the first time I saw him play in the Bay Area. I don’t recall where that was; however, it was in an odd location, not one of the usual Bay Area jazz hot spots. My good friend Luis and I went to see Frank play that night with the Cedar Walton Trio. It was a small room and not many people were there, so we were able to sit up real close. It was a defining moment in my jazz journey.
Here’s the song that makes me most feel the way I did the first time I heard Frank Morgan play:
Knowing what I did about Frank Morgan’s journey before I saw and heard him that night, I was surprised first by his sense of peace and strength of spirit and then by the quality of his playing.
In the Fall of 1988, about the same time I first heard Frank Morgan play, I was reading a lot of Isak Dinesen. In particular, I liked Anecdotes of Destiny.
The second story in the book, Babette’s Feast, particularly caught my attention. In some ways, I could identify with General Loewenhielm. And his character reminded me of Frank Morgan. Reflecting on his life with a group of old friends, the General gave this soliloquy:
“Man, my friends, is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble. We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For Mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!”
It took Frank Morgan 30 years for mercy and truth to meet together.
Here’s another song, playing a duet with Kenny Burrell, that makes me feel the way I did when I first saw him.
When we left off, I was living in Campbell. I lived there for a while until the fall of 1989, when I found a place in Cupertino, just before the big earthquake. I had left the Marine Division of Westinghouse (too much like the Army) and got a job at a small company, Altus Corporation. We were trying to figure out how to make rechargeable lithium batteries. I did that for a while and then moved on to work at Sequoia-Turner, a medical company making blood analyzers. That company was eventually bought by Abbott Labs, and I ended up getting transferred to headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, just north of Chicago. But that is another story for a little further down the river.
Shortly after I moved to Cupertino, I picked up a job on the weekends working for Tom Hayden at Wessex Books in Menlo Park. I’d go there after work on Friday and then work on Saturdays. It was a great little place, and I had a lot of fun there. I worked with an English teacher from Foothill College, Luis. We became close friends.
So here’s a true confession. As I look back on my jazz journey, I can say that it has been a solitary journey. I fancy that my journey was something like Fred Astaire’s great song from The Band Wagon: By Myself.
Perhaps a little dramatic, but it was a solitary pursuit until I met Luis. It would be over 30 years later before I would share my journey with another, a gentleman and my jazz mentor, Lenni.
Anyway, Luis and I struck up an instant friendship at Wessex Books. We were both completely into jazz, and, luckily, the late 1980s was a terrific time to be in the Bay Area. The Jazz scene at that time was really hot. Luis and I would pick out all the cool shows and go together. As I look back now, it’s incredible the amount of great Jazz music we were able to take in. Perhaps the best of all was that first Frank Morgan show.
Pre-prison Releases
Frank Morgan’s musical career was cut short by his constant struggle with addiction. He recorded sparingly. Here’s one of my favorite early Frank Morgan songs on Lyle Murphy’s Four Saxophones in Twelve Tones.
Here’s another classic from his debut LP, with the great Carl Perkins on piano and Howard Roberts on guitar:
Surprisingly, both of these albums I got from Honest Jon’s in South Carolina.
It’s important to backtrack a little here. Up until that time, I came to jazz via first the old 78 RPM records and movie soundtracks, then the more jazz fusion sounds of Grover Washington Jr. and Weather Report. Later, I found the old New York label LPs in Ground Zero - the West Point library. I caught some good jazz shows in the Village and then again in the Netherlands and London, more in the funk and hard bop vein of the Blue Note re-issues. Now, back in California, steeped in West Coast Jazz, I never really listened to Be Bop. It seems odd to have skipped over Charlie Parker and then circled back to him years later, but that’s the way my journey went. Frank Morgan was a Be Bop player. At the end of his shows, he would always say, “Be Bop Lives.”
So I came to Be Bop via Frank Morgan and the movie, “Bird”.
Bird came out with much fanfare in 1988. I saw the film premiere at the UC Theatre Berkeley on Oct 13, 1988. It was part of the Jazz in the City 1988 program. After that, I started to explore Be Bop’s roots.
In 1989, Luis and I went to A Salute to Charlie Parker, as part of the KJAZ 30 Years of Jazz show at the Calvin Simmons Theater in Oakland. It was a terrific show that featured Frank Morgan on the alto sax. The second half of the show was Frank Morgan playing with strings.
In 1989, Frank Morgan was on top of the world. But his journey there was a long and hard one. And the sound of Frank Morgan’s horn was the sound of redemption.
This is how I do not want to remember Frank Morgan: A71037, his San Quentin inmate number.
Following in the footsteps of his hero Charlie Parker, Frank Morgan started taking heroin at 17 and subsequently became addicted. He supported his drug habit through criminal behavior, like robbery, check forgery, and fencing stolen property. His first drug arrest came in 1955, the same year his debut album was released. By 1962, he was in San Quentin State Prison. In 1985, while out of prison on parole, he made his recording comeback with the Contemporary Records LP, Easy Living. His final incarceration, for which he turned himself in on a parole violation, ended on December 7, 1986.
Frank Morgan said, “I was a superstar in prison. All the fear of going to prison was taken out of the whole thing because it became a really comfortable haven. It's taken me a long time to get out of the comfortable situation of the prison and really face up to life. If, after my first solo at the Village Vanguard after I came out, they hadn't applauded me so loudly, if someone had said "Boo", I'd have run back to San Quentin.”
In 2014, Frank Morgan’s story was released in the film Sound of Redemption. This is a thoughtful and wonderful dedication.
Here’s the trailer for the film:
Coming Home
Frank Morgan returned to Minneapolis in the fall of 2005. I would go on to see him play at the 2006 Twin Cities Hot Summer Jazz Festival, with a quartet and duets with Ronnie Mathews at the Dakota Jazz Club, and with George Cables at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul. He was, it seemed to me, at peace.
This is from a 2007 interview with Wanda Ali Batin Sabir:
Wanda Sabir: So you hadn’t lived there (Minnesota) since you were six? So when you left to go to Los Angeles to live with your father….
Frank Morgan: Well actually I left to live with my father’s mother. I was raised by both my grandmothers. In Minneapolis I lived with my mother’s mother. Then when I moved to Milwaukee I lived with my father’s parents: Grandmother Lizzy. (Both were Native American, his grandfather full-blood.)
I played at my father’s funeral in Hawaii and more recently at my mother’s memorial services in Minneapolis, which prompted me coming home. I came home to see my mother a few months before she died. I left because I had to go on the road. She died 20 minutes after I left. They called me in Chicago, and I came back and a few months after that my family called me and said, ‘We’d like you to come home to live so we can take care of you.’
And Frank Morgan’s musical journey ended with his family back home in Minnesota. He died in Minneapolis on Friday, December 14, 2007, nine days before his 74th birthday.
Next week, we’ll take a journey a little further down that Big River called Jazz and follow it into some deeper jazz waters….
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Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….
Until then, keep on walking….
One of the (many) things I loved about this one, is that I had the songs playing in the background as I read on....especially in the earlier part as each song endd when there was another to link off to. Hearing Frank's music as I was reading was epic....but then later on there were too many songs to link off to. Maybe pick the best of the best for listening as you read, and then the rest at the end (?)