Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin's documentary is a musical biography told in the form of a tragic love story. Although Lee Morgan (1938-1972) was famed for his trumpet playing, his death was a mysterious affair. Collin reconstructs the events leading up to Morgan's end through people who knew him and his common-law wife, Helen. A radio interview from 1996 provides Helen's voiceover, which serves as the spine of the film. As a teenager in Wilmington, NC, Helen had two children and lost her first husband, after which she moved to New York. Octogenarian saxophone player Wayne Shorter remembers hearing Morgan with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, giving the band leader a run for his money. Morgan was talented, and knew it, and along with Shorter he would go on to play with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, but while Shorter stuck to alcohol, Morgan succumbed to heroin addiction. At that low point, Morgan met Helen, a woman 14 years his senior who liked to entertain the jazz crowd. Helen facilitated Morgan's journey back to sobriety, but things took a lethal turn when he started hanging out with a younger woman. On a dark, snowy night, in front of dozens of jazz-club witnesses, Helen shot and killed Morgan. Collin traces the arc of her life in the aftermath, making this documentary as much a portrait of a complicated woman as it is of her more famous husband. A poignant film featuring Francis Wolff's fine photographs, cinematography by Oscar-nominee Bradford Young, and Morgan's resonant music, this is highly recommended. (K. Fennessy)
I Called Him Morgan
FilmRise, 91 min., not rated, DVD: $24.99, Blu-ray: $31.99 Volume 33, Issue 2
I Called Him Morgan
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