I started reading this book as I was writing up some research into how jazz histories are mediated, and so these issues were uppermost in my mind as I thought through my review. McMillan's book is part of Lewis Porter's prestigious Jazz Perspectives series, which mainly covers accounts of key jazz musicians who have not always been the subject of book-length analyses. The series, and this book, is part of a substantial body of jazz scholarship, and an increasing seriousness about trying to understand individual musicians and their playing styles within the wider context of a cultural history of jazz. It is possible to see this book, then, as part of a paradigm of established jazz studies, and so reflections on this study of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan can, to some extent, raise questions about the historiography of jazz as a whole.

Lee Morgan's music is perhaps most widely known through the 1963 recording ‘Sidewinder’ (named after the North American snake, rather than the US airborne missile), and possibly his iconic status as a Blue Note recording artist. The ‘Sidewinder’ recording, released as a single, was a jukebox hit in the US, and both 7 inch and LP versions appeared in the Billboard pop and R&B sales charts. I grasped something of the aural power that this recording must have had in early 1960s African American bars, because this was one of the first Blue Note records I heard, just over ten years later when it arrested my attention on the sound system of a record shop. I bought a copy of the then hard-to-find LP re-release, and that started a Blue Note fixation I have never really grown out of. Today, the track is a staple of compilations of the Blue Note label, and its hard bop sound stands for many as the archetypal Blue Note sound. McMillan's book gives a whole chapter to the pivotal importance of the recording for Morgan, and later chapters pick up much of the influence of the recording on the trumpeter's later career. It is notable, though, that the author picked another, less widely known, Morgan LP to name the book. I surmise that this title is meant to indicate something of Morgan's compositional style, because the author emphasises this part of his subject's life throughout.

Like most jazz (and musician) biographies, the book takes a chronological approach, with chapters for key periods of the trumpeter's life, which included a notable role in Art Blakey's Jazz messengers, a role in Dizzy Gillespie's last big band, and his own albums for Blue Note as leader and sideman. In addition, and in line with the book's sub-title The Life and Music of …, there are also chapters which reflect the musician's personal life, including his problem with drugs and his untimely death at the hands of his jealous lover. The book is exceptionally well written, and one need not share my obsessive interest in this period of music to find it stimulating and informative. It certainly does an excellent job of laying out the political and social world in which Morgan made his music, and something of the economics of the record and music events industry within which he performed. For those interested in the detail, there is also much to value. I could not, however, find the promised full online Morgan discography at the publisher website. This is the first book-length analysis of Morgan, the emphasis on his compositional contributions is important, and through some primary analysis the author brings many details of the musician's life to the public domain. These qualities are not surprising when one learns that McMillan is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark University masters degree in Jazz History and Research.

Reflecting on my experience of reading the book, though, other wider issues come to mind. I do not offer these as criticisms because, as I have indicated, this is an exemplary instance in an established field of jazz biography. Rather, I think we need to ask what version of jazz does a book like this produce, and what does that imply about how we write about jazz, or any other popular music history? Well, it places Morgan at a key moment of a developing jazz, and thus constructs jazz as a progressive form moving from Gillespie's bop innovations, through an African American soul jazz, and on to an experimental free music. It identifies Morgan, and in some sense all jazz musicians, as a virtuoso, an artist, and an accomplished composer. The discussion of ‘The Sidewinder’, and the attempts by the record company to repeat its success, reveal something of the tensions between the discourses of art and commerce that are at the centre of jazz culture. However, like all the social, economic and political factors that the book deals with, these matters are the backcloth on which Morgan's life is accounted. In essence, I think I am suggesting that ‘jazz’ is an unproblematic idea which lies at the heart of the story that is told here, rather than something that was being made and remade by Morgan and his contemporaries. In the end this is a realist story of one musician in a taken-for-granted cultural context.

Exactly how one re-engages with research and history as story telling without losing the virtues of a book like this is a difficult question to answer. Jazz scholars, and popular music scholars interested in jazz, will find considerable value in this account of one musician. Fans of Morgan's music will be delighted by the detail and clarity of the account. Those seeking to understand jazz as a more complex field of popular culture will find lots of material and ideas to work with, but not a clear model of how to interrogate exactly what jazz is.