The Procrastinator, an album from jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan, will join the Blue Note Classic Vinyl series. The reissue, which sees Morgan alongside other jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, will be released on August 15.
Between 1963 and 1968, Morgan experienced a truly prolific period, recording over a dozen albums for Blue Note. However, many of these wouldn’t be released until years later, and The Procrastinator was one of them. Though mostly recorded in 1967, it wasn’t released until 1978, some six years after Morgan died. By the time Morgan recorded The Procrastinator in 1967, he had already achieved crossover success with his 1964 album The Sidewinder, with the title track even charting on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Procrastinator is comprised of six pieces, all of which were composed by Morgan and Shorter. Morgan leads a sextet of some truly inimitable musicians, including Shorter on tenor saxophone, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. While The Procrastinator is not Morgan’s best-known release—that would be The Sidewinder—it nevertheless has become a favorite among Morgan’s fans.
Throughout his life, Morgan was not shy about speaking on the importance of jazz music and how he felt it deserved more respect and attention than it received from popular culture. “If it wasn’t for music, this country would have blown up a long time ago, in fact, the whole world,” the musician bluntly said in his final interview before his death, printed in Down Beat. “Music is the only thing that spans across all ethnic groups and all languages. Music is the only thing that awakens the dead man and charms the savage beast. Without it, this would be a hell of a world!”
Order Lee Morgan’s The Procrastinator on vinyl now.
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