Dave Morgan

Although released in 1971, the debut self-titled album by Spirit of John Morgan was actually recorded two years earlier, before the spirit of the '60s dissipated into the excesses of the '70s. But even back in 1969, the British quartet were already fish out of water, gasping for R&B in a Technicolor age of psychedelia. So they created their own, an entire album's worth of strong, shadowed, R&B numbers underlit by magnificent musicianship and powerful rhythms. The set opener, a menacing cover of Graham Bond's "I Want You," is a case in point, stalker-like in its intensity, with John Morgan's organ conjuring up a phantom of the opera from which there is no escape.

One of the great bebop altoists, Lanny Morgan can always be relied upon to enthusiastically dig into standards, preserving the melodies and chord changes but coming up with consistently fresh variations. On this Contemporary set, Morgan is joined by three of L.A.'s finest (pianist Tom Ranier, bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Joe LaBarbera), who give him stimulating and swinging support. Lanny mostly sticks to well-known standards, but somehow they sound new. "Stella by Starlight" is taken much faster than normal, "In the Still of the Night" cooks, "Body and Soul" is his ballad feature, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" is turned into a fast samba, and a blazing "It's You or No One" wraps up the ten-song session. There is not a throwaway track or routine moment in the 67 minutes of music, which is easily recommended to straight-ahead jazz fans.

In a period in which the boundaries between musical genres are rapidly dissolving, there still exist major differences between what we still call a “jazz” band and those of other musical classifications.Perhaps the most significant of these is that longevity in a jazz ensemble will nearly always have an entirely positive effect on the music. That’s clearly a huge factor when listening to the high-caliber international quartet put together over a decade ago by the New York-based guitarist-composer Scott DuBois.