Ill Wind
after Lee Morgan’s “Ill Wind”
In retrospect, the piano tiptoes in
like someone expecting a killing blow
from not just the weather but
a stranger or a lover even
at night on the Lower East Side
with only factories and no passersby.
The graffiti-less trucks cross the street
as if they were actually driverless
devices from our 24/7 future.
The trumpet is the dry, gritty wind,
sweeping the street, scraping filthy bricks,
bringing down snow from the deadpan
sky. Flakes fall first as feathery
drums and bass, then as saxophones
blotting the way out of this
place. But all that this song
foretells took place six years later.
This ill wind forces the man
in the drab Koratron raincoat to
hike up his collar and walk
a little faster to his car.
It isn’t cold enough for snow,
and he still loves his Helen.
like someone expecting a killing blow
from not just the weather but
a stranger or a lover even
at night on the Lower East Side
with only factories and no passersby.
The graffiti-less trucks cross the street
as if they were actually driverless
devices from our 24/7 future.
The trumpet is the dry, gritty wind,
sweeping the street, scraping filthy bricks,
bringing down snow from the deadpan
sky. Flakes fall first as feathery
drums and bass, then as saxophones
blotting the way out of this
place. But all that this song
foretells took place six years later.
This ill wind forces the man
in the drab Koratron raincoat to
hike up his collar and walk
a little faster to his car.
It isn’t cold enough for snow,
and he still loves his Helen.
Lee Morgan -- crade.one
Harold Arlen composed over 500 songs, many of them with Ted Koehler. Throughout the early and mid-1930s they wrote revues for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club. Their last show for the venue was the "Cotton Club Parade 1934," the highest-grossing show ever to appear at the club. The show opened on March 11, 1934, and ran for 8 months, attracting over 600,000 paying customers. It included 'Ill Wind" ("You're Blowin' Me No Good"); te melody came to Arlen while he was visiting his future wife.
ReplyDeleteBlow, ill wind, blow away
Let me rest today
You're blowin' me no good
No good
Go, ill wind, go away
Skies are oh so gray
Around my neighborhood
And that's no good
You're only misleading
The sunshine I'm needing
Ain't that a shame
It's so hard to keep up
With troubles that creep up
From out of nowhere
When love's to blame
So, ill wind, blow away
Let me rest today
You're blowin' me no good
No good
You're only misleading
The sunshine I'm needing
Ain't that a shame
It's so hard to keep up
With troubles that creep up
From out of nowhere
When love's to blame
I'll wind
One of the notable performances was by trumpeter Lee Morgan on his 1967 album “Cornbread.” One of his bandmates said he had “a very pure, open sound. Clear tone, and very legitimate -- how the trumpet’s supposed to sound.” Morgan himself claimed, “I like to hear a trumpet shout.” As a teenager he played with Dizzy Gillespie’s band, then with Art Blakey, a lifelong heroin addict who gave his bandmates drugs instead of money and dropped them from his band when they began to affect their performance. By the early 1960s Morgan was a full-fledged junkie; his teeth had been knocked out and some of his braces were broken; he had pawned his trumpet to get money to buy heroine. Helen More got his instrument and clothes out of hock, took over his management, and became his common-law wife. In 1963 during a recording date his band ran out of material; Morgan disappeared into the bathroom and came out with “The Sidewinder,” a 10-minute blues number scratched out on a few sheets of toilet paper. The song cracked the pop charts in 1964, becoming his biggest hit. The $15,000 he made from it did not last long, however; though he kicked his heroin habit but shot cocaine instead. By 1967 it was long gone; he was sleeping on the curb outside Birdland without shoes, or sleeping on pool tables in bars, wearing a dirty suit over his pajamas. It was then that Helen again rehabilitated him and revived his career, but they drifted apart, got together again, drifted apart, got back together…. In February 1972 Helen got his quintet a week-long gig at Slug’s Saloon, a narrow little bar in New York that record producer Michael Cuscuna described as “like a railroad flat,” with grimy windows and sawdust on the floor. On opening night Morgan had an automobile accident that left him badly shaken. He walked to the club badly shaken and recounted the incident. “‘We were making this turn and the car slid, and I thought we were gonna die,” he said, and the conversation turned to reminiscing about his mentor Clifford Brown, who had died in a car accident on a snowy night 15 years earlier. The next night, Helen felt nostalgic and decided to see him perform. She arrived after midnight, during a break between sets, with a gun that Morgan had given her to protect herself in his absence. The woman with Morgan said to him, ”I thought you wasn’t supposed to be with her anymore, and Morgan said, “I’m not with this bitch, I’m just telling her to leave me alone.” According to saxophonist Billy Harper, “He was being Lee. He was being kinda cocky about it. She said, ‘You know I have the gun.’ And he said, ‘But I got the bullets.'” Then, according to Helen, “About that time I hit him. And when I hit him I didn’t have on my coat or nothing but I had my bag. He threw me out the club. Wintertime. And the gun fell out the bag. And I looked at it. I got up. I went to the door. I guess he had told the bouncer that I couldn’t come back in. The bouncer said to me, ‘Miss Morgan I hate to tell you this but Lee don’t want me to let you in.’ And I said, Oh, I’m coming in! I guess the bouncer saw the gun because I had the gun in my hand. He said, ‘Yes you are.’ And I saw Morgan rushing over there to me and all I saw in his eyes was rage.” She shot him in the chest. “I ran over there and said I was sorry. And he said to me, he said, ‘Helen, I know you didn’t mean to do this. I’m sorry too.'”Due to the heavy snowfall, he bled to death before the ambulance arrived. He was 33.
ReplyDeleteIn 1961 Koret of California invented Koratron, a process for permanent press fabrics that was widely adopted in the clothing industry.
The documentary I Called Him Morgan shows many of these events and is well worth watching.
ReplyDelete