The Jazzcat

Morgan on the alto saxophone,” said Wynton Marsalis. No wonder, because Frank

Morgan was a protégé of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker whose style and ranking was

somewhere between Parker's and Art Pepper's and who had, as a mere boy, for a

couple of heady nights played Johnny Hodges' role in the Duke Ellington band.

Morgan also spent 30 years in prison and the band he played with most regularly

during his life was the warden's band in San Quentin prison. “I was a superstar

in prison,” he said.

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

bebop, but in the last two decades he spread his style to reveal masterful

ballad performances and a sensitive and delicate approach to his playing that

was much more cosmopolitan.

played in the Ink Spots, Frank Morgan took up the guitar at an incredibly early

age (claimed to be two). “When my mother was pregnant with me,” he said, “my

father used to stand behind her and reach around and play his guitar against her

stomach. That's how soon I started getting the vibes.” The family moved from

Minneapolis to Milwaukee when Morgan was six and the boy switched from guitar to

clarinet. His father, who by now had worked regularly with jazz musicians, took

Frank to hear the Jay McShann band in Detroit. Charlie Parker was its

to learn how to play one of those things,” Frank Morgan recalled.

time. I remember I was mad at Bird for a while for insisting that I should begin

on clarinet and then go to saxophone. It was good advice and the next day my

father got me started on clarinet.

of him and his music that have sustained me throughout my life. He is certainly

Morgan won a talent contest that led him to record a solo with Freddie Martin's

band. Then, in 1948, he had an audition with the Duke Ellington band. “I went

backstage at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and into Duke's dressing room.

He said, 'Take your horn out and play anything you'd like to play.' ”

Ellington's long-time star altoist Johnny Hodges was leaving the band and

Ellington wanted Morgan to start immediately. But because of his age, Morgan

couldn't legally go on the road with the band. “I played a couple of Easter

skills that his many devotees tried to emulate. Parker was the first major

heroin addict on the jazz scene, and many musicians thought that, if Parker

indulged, it must be good. Morgan was one of them. Parker was horrified to find

that by the early 1950s, his disciple was already addicted. “It broke his

heart,” Morgan recalled. “He said, 'I thought you would be the one who had sense

enough to look at what it's done to me.' ” The preaching stopped when Morgan got

out an ounce and a half of cocaine and the two injected. “After we got high, he

talked to me about dying. In a tragic sense, I think Bird felt he could set a

better example by dying.”

Hampton band. Like many musicians he resented the low pay and Hampton's

continuous scrounging of cigarettes from his men. At this time, Morgan made this

first recordings with top-line musicians like the vibraphonist Milt Jackson, the

drummer Kenny Clarke and the saxophonist Wardell Gray. He went to prison for the

records under his own name in 1955, Morgan had been driven to crime by his

addiction. The exciting and accomplished tracks that he made with the trumpeter

Conte Candoli and Wardell Gray proved to be a tempting foretaste of what was not

to come, for he was soon in San Quentin (where he befriended Art Pepper) for

narcotics offences.

in some of the Los Angeles clubs, but didn't make a stir outside the city. It

wasn't until 1985, after a parole violation that saw him jailed again from June

to November, that his success story began. His drug habit defeated and behind

him, he made his mark nationally and, like Art Pepper, began a “born again”

regularly as a leader and used many top musicians like Wynton Marsalis, George

Cables and Buster Williams as his sidemen. Morgan had always feared playing in

New York, lacking the confidence to impress what he saw as a sophisticated

audience. His first appearance there at the Village Vanguard in 1986 was a

triumph acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. “I'm glad to be alive and

well,” he reflected. “That's the sum total of things at present. I've been

practising hard and developing my playing and planning for a peaceful

life.”

to record for a variety of companies and his career flourished until his return

home to Minneapolis on 20 November last after a three-month European tour

implosions (1986), Celebrating Bird: the triumph of Charlie Parker (1987) and