Jazz Trumpeter Lee Morgan's Murder Resurrects His Music Legacy in the Doc. "I Called Him Morgan"

Lee Morgan was a musical prodigy (b Philadelphia 1938.)   As a teen, he gained the notice of Dizzy Gillespie and became a featured trumpet player & composer for Art Blakey's band.  This compelling doc "I Called Him Morgan" is an intriguing biopic of a gifted & tormented jazz musician who was fatally shot at the age of 33 by his common law wife, Helen Morgan.  This is not a notorious crime picture.  It's a cool, jazzy & beautifully shot film which features a montage of arresting black & white photos of Lee performing or collaboring with other artists.  Credit photographer C Ron St Clair for capturing Lee & other great jazz musicians in sharp black/white photos that come to life on screen.  (St Clair's startled photo of a camera shy Helen is a deer caught in headlights.)  This engrossing & artful film is more a virtuoso tutorial in jazz with its generous score & interviews by Morgan's colleagues than a titilating riff counting up to Helen's fatal shooting Lee in a NYC nightclub.  Dir Kasper Collin (b Sweden 1972) cunningly spreads the storyline of Morgans life by beginning with a partially taped interview Helen agreed to do a month before her death in 1996.  Helen's gravelly voice retains a steely quality chronicling her bio prior to meeting Lee, their loving duet and the discord ending in tragedy.  The reminiscences of Lee's colleagues including Wayne Shorter, Paul West & Jymie Merrit passionately expound on jazz history.  They talk of admiration & anger at Helen.  Collin wisely gives these interviews free range lending the film its intelligence, credibility and resonance.  Helen was credited for bringing Lee "back from the gutter" with his heroin addiction.  Helen, 15 years Lee's senior (with a son the same age) became Lee's ubiquitous manager.  Helen's son and Lee's contemporaries were in agreement that they had a loving relationship.  Helen says in her interview "I Called Him Morgan because I didn't like the name Lee."  There's little doubt Helen was a domineering force in Lee's life.  One hook is trying to unravel where things went wrong.   The brilliant recordings of Lee's music and the cinematography captures the look of NYC in the 1950's-60's along with its vivid still photos.  "I Called Him Morgan" is a jazz ballad and a stirring tribute of a talented trumpet player gunned down in a crime of passion.  The mysteries remain why it took an ambulance more than an hour to arrive which might have kept Lee alive.  And, how is it Helen's prison time was so fleeting?   There's no doubt Collin's documentary hits all the right notes that give rise to the breath of life & music with their range of tonalities.