Review: ‘I Called Him Morgan,’ a Jazz Tale of Talent and Tragedy

The jazz great Lee Morgan in Kasper Collin’s documentary “I Called Him Morgan.” Credit Val Wilmer/FilmRise, Submarine Deluxe, Kasper Collin Produktion

In February 1972, in the midst of a blizzard, the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan died after being shot in a Manhattan nightclub by his common-law wife, Helen. The shooting was tragic and traumatic for those who were there — one of Morgan’s band mates stayed away from New York for many years after — but for the rest of the world, it has the qualities of a sad, strange, faded tabloid story.

“I Called Him Morgan,” a suave and poignant documentary by Kasper Collin, dusts off the details of Morgan’s life and death and brushes away the sensationalism, too. This is not a lurid true-crime tale of jealousy and drug addiction, but a delicate human drama about love, ambition and the glories of music. Edged with blues and graced with that elusive quality called swing, the film makes generous and judicious use of Morgan’s recordings. The scarcity of film clips and audio of Morgan’s voice is made up for by vivid black-and-white photographs and immortal tracks from the Blue Note catalog.

There are fewer pictures of Helen Morgan, who didn’t like to be photographed. But shortly before she died, in 1996, she recorded a series of interviews with Larry Reni Thomas, an adult-education instructor and radio host in Wilmington, N.C. where she was living at the time. Her voice — candid, funny and haunting — offers the counterpoint in a double biography, a chronicle of tenderness and self-destruction.

The former Helen More grew up in poverty in rural North Carolina and escaped, at 17, to New York, where she established herself as, among other things, a kind of den mother to the jazz scene. Her apartment in the West 50s, not far from Birdland, was a place where musicians gathered to mingle, listen to records and eat her famous cooking. One of them was Lee Morgan, who met his future lover at a low point in his career, in the mid-1960s, when he risked squandering his early promise and crossover success in the service of his heroin habit.

He had arrived in New York a decade earlier, a jug-eared, fleet-fingered teenage prodigy discovered by Dizzy Gillespie and nurtured by Art Blakey. Slender, stylish and ebullient, Morgan played the trumpet with speed, precision and an infectiousness that Mr. Collin wisely pauses to savor.

Moanin' - Lee Morgan Video by Bruce Cassidy

He also lingers over the reminiscences of Morgan’s colleagues — including Wayne Shorter, Paul West and Jymie Merritt — whose testimony provides a lesson in musical history and a primer on jazz aesthetics. Their bearing in interviews carries some of the essential qualities of the music: the wit, the dignity, the mixture of passionate feeling and critical intelligence. You could listen to these men talk all day, and then listen to them play all night.

You are always aware that Morgan is missing from their company, that he should have grown into an elder statesman alongside them. Regret isn’t the film’s only key, though. Helen, Lee’s senior by more than a decade, restored him to health and nurtured a creative rebirth. “I Called Him Morgan” lingers in the period of their happiness, as Helen recalls it, and doesn’t strain to make sense of the senseless violence that ended it.

What happened that night seems as simple and as mysterious as a murder ballad, and yet at the same time, more a terrible accident than a full-blown tragedy. It’s startling to realize how young Morgan was — 32 or 33, depending on which news article you believe — given how much he had lived. But that’s what art does, including documentary film: It expands the scope of life and distills its beauty and its pain.

I Called Him Morgan

Director Kasper Collin

Writer Kasper Collin

Stars Lee Morgan. Helen Morgan. Wayne Shorter. Larry Reni Thomas. Judith Johnson

Running Time 1h 32m

Genres Documentary. Drama. History. Music

Movie data powered by IMDb.com
Last updated: Apr 23, 2017

Follow A.O. Scott on Twitter: @aoscott

I Called Him Morgan
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes.

A version of this review appears in print on March 24, 2017, on Page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Trumpeter’s Grace Notes, in Life if Not Death. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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