MONDAY RECOMMENDATION: SUPERB LEE MORGAN FILM

I Called Him Morgan, A Film by Kasper Collin (FilmRise)

Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin’s documentary recounts the exhilaration and tragedy in trumpeter Lee Morgan’s short life. He tells the story of Morgan’s rapid rise, his wife Helen rescuing him from the ravages of addiction, and his death at 33 when she shot him. Collin’s melding of rare film clips, audiotape and minimal narration is an ingenious use of slight source material. Before she died in 1996, Helen recorded essential parts of the Morgan story for a friend in her hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. New interviews with Wayne Shorter, Paul West, Bennie Maupin and other Morgan colleagues fill out the tale. Bassist West credits Helen with “making it possible for Morgan to function as a human being.” As the film winds down, performance sequences include, to heartbreaking effect, Morgan soloing with Art Blakey’s sextet on pianist Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere” and his own “Angela.”