I Called Him Morgan

I agree with the positive reviews of this movie, and simply want to add my appreciation for how human-centered it is. It is not simply a collection of names, dates, and music samples, like many other Jazz documentaries. The latter, too, are essential, however this documentary is largely about people who were simultaneously creating jazz culture and being shaped by both it and their fellow denizens of that world. Prior to watching this movie I had known only that Morgan's wife shot and killed him, and was very surprised to see her treated with compassion by the documentarian, as well as by various people who were there at the time and were friends with her and Morgan.

There is a lot to be learned about jazz from watching this film, but it's ultimately its poignancy which make it so compelling.

Having never heard of Lee Morgan this was an interesting story, but the construction was very by- the-numbers. A standard talking head movie that relied on a tape made in the 90's that sadly didn't illuminate enough to really get a sense of the complete tale. Had this been made when more people involved were alive, it might have been stronger, but they made do with what they had and I can't fault them for that. An interesting TV documentary show episode and about at that level technically. Jazz fans check it out.

The two negative reviews here are based on the individual reviewers' ignorance of jazz music in general, and the life and music of Lee Morgan in particular. I found this film arresting and completely engaging, even if the pace is incremental. In my view, this is an excellent documentary of the life and TIMES of this great musician. For someone who is not really interested in jazz music of the fifties and sixties, this might seem interminably slow and pointless, but for people who love this period of music history it is told with reverence, love and care.

Surprising, I didn't know the musicians, nor their stories, sad, an action on impulse and destruction for a lifetime, I felt very sorry for Helen, children who are already born condemned to a suffering future, and when could they have risen again, an act thoughtless, interrupts a future that could have been happy... Love sometimes salvation, sometimes perdition... Beautiful and sad documentary...

If you love and understand real jazz--and especially if you love the long-ago New York City that gave birth to bebop and hard bop--there is nothing out there like this film. It is also fitting that a non-American made it, given that the United States has so turned its back on its greatest artistic creation and the musicians who created it. (Just compare this film with the shameful recent American documentary about Trane--with its pandering casting of Denzel Washington as narrator and utterly stupid and irrelevant choices of people to interview (Bill Clinton? Carlos Santana? Common? Cornell West? John Densmore?). From the late-night Larry Thomas jazz radio program and New York City snowfall and that opens I Called Him Morgan(and hey, whatever happened to that snow? It seems to have disappeared along with the jazz scene),the interviews with jazz musicians of Lee Morgan's time (one of whom who objects to the term "jazz," aptly preferring "black classical music"), and with it's beautifully paced rendering of acompelling American story of love and pain...for someone like me, who lived through all of that, it just could not have been better.