City Lights

Leonard Feather opens the original notes at Birdland, sitting with Dizzy Gillespie after a set. Feather had praised the way Lee Morgan, 19, led the band on "Night in Tunisia." Gillespie said it was both a little unsettling and encouraging to watch young players come up behind him, and that he didn't mind being copied.

Morgan was already on his fourth record as a leader, and he had used them to bring in other young players. This time the newcomer was George Coleman, a tenor and alto player from Memphis who had worked with B.B. King. Morgan and Benny Golson had heard him in Chicago. Curtis Fuller, 22 and from Detroit, joined on trombone. Golson wrote three of the five tunes and arranged the date.

It was Sunday, August 25, 1957, at Van Gelder's in Hackensack, with Alfred Lion producing. Ray Bryant, 25, from Philadelphia, played piano; Art Blakey, Feather reports, said his touch sat somewhere between a guitar and a harpsichord. Paul Chambers and Art Taylor completed the rhythm section. Five takes are listed for the day, and all five tunes made the record.

The title tune opens with bowed bass and voiced horns, a picture Golson describes as

a crowded city street with all its wondrous brightness – perhaps Broadway.

Benny Golson, in Leonard Feather's original liner notes

Coleman takes the first solo, then Fuller, Morgan and Bryant, and Chambers solos with the bow. "Tempo De Waltz" is an old Golson piece, once called "Waltz Fantasy."

I wrote it in 1947, during my first year in college.

Benny Golson, in Leonard Feather's original liner notes

Coleman switches to alto for it. On "You're Mine You," Morgan carries almost the whole performance, with Bryant taking 16 bars.

Side two has two long tunes. Golson told Feather the opening eight bars of "Just by Myself" gave it its lonely title. "Kin Folks" is Gigi Gryce's blues. Feather says Gryce sketched it on a napkin at about 5:30 in the morning, after a visit from relatives who were about to head home; Golson arranged it and wrote the introduction. Coleman is on alto again.

The sleeve is Reid Miles's design, with photography by Francis Wolff. It came out in June 1958. Scott Yanow, at AllMusic, later wrote that the teenage Morgan was "holding his own with his impressive sidemen."

Three weeks after this date, Morgan was back at Van Gelder's, playing on John Coltrane's Blue Train. It is Coleman's only Blue Note date in our listings.