Search for the New Land: Lou Waxman on Lee Morgan’s Blue Note Masterpiece

June 14, 2026

Green is Lou’s favorite color, and he learned recently that it is bad luck for actors to wear green during a performance. This superstition originated with the death of the French actor and playwright Molière on February 17, 1673. On that date, he collapsed on stage coughing and suffering a hemorrhage while performing his last written play. He completed the performance and died at home a few hours later. He was wearing green. Lou wanted to make perfectly clear that he is not an actor. This blog is not an act, so he will continue to dress like Steve Bannon.

Interesting tidbit. For the most part, the ancient Greeks did not depict death on stage. Euripides infamously broke this taboo. For example, in Medea, the title character appears on a chariot with the corpses of her children and in Bacchae, Agave, the mother of Pentheus, carries Pentheus’ head on a thyrsus after he was dismembered by the crazed female followers of Bacchus.

The three major Greek tragedians were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They were the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin of Greek tragedy. Maybe not. Don’t pursue this analogy too far. It probably does not hold up. This reminds Lou of a Greek tragedy course he took in college. For what it is worth, Lou almost had enough credits for a minor in Greek literature. In any case, it was during this course that Lou attended what remains to this day the most moving performance he has ever witnessed. The professor was dying of cancer during the semester, and he received chemo treatments throughout. Some days he was so weak he had to be helped onto a chair in the auditorium. His mind remained sharp. He did not rely on notes or any texts. The text of all the plays wasin his memory palace, and he could recite entire passages at will.

The last lecture the professor gave before he passed away was on Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, which was the final play of the Theban trilogy. In it, King Oedipus after years of exile, dies in Colonus. The professor, facing down death, gave a lecture on mortality and coming to terms with dying that was absolutely stunning. Lou remembers the silence in the auditorium after he was done. What Lou took away from it was how art can help one come to terms with whatever life throws at you. Even, and especially, death.

In contrast to Greek tragedy, Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy was a bloody spectacle. In The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon brilliantly and hilariously parodies their convoluted plot lines and violence. Hacks of the time relied on what are in the present-day special effect gore to keep the Groundlings interested. Even the greats like Shakespeare resorted to providing hard-R plays. In Titus Andronicus, a revenge tragedy and one of the Bard’s least respected plays, there are no less than fourteen deaths. This is the highest body count in all of Shakespeare. It is no Rambo IV, body count around 250, but still pretty gruesome stuff.

Molière may not be the first instance of actual death throes on stage, but it is the first truly famous one. Starting with the 19thCentury, dying on stage for reals becomes much more common. Heart attacks, mishaps in fight scenes, catching fire, being attacked by lions. Weird shit starts happening as with move forward through history.

In the 20th Century the trend continues. Maybe this is because there were just more performances or maybe life just got more violent and deadly. In 1941, British bandleader Ken “Snakehips” Johnson died while performing at the Café de Paris in London, when the venue has hit by a German bomb duringthe Blitz. Lou will refrain from stating the obvious about the quality of Snakehips’ performance.

The 21st Century added a new wrinkle to the death on stage phenomenon. Getting murdered on stage. Dimebag Darrell Abbott of Pantera and Damageplan is the most famous victim, when a deranged fan named Nathan Gale, shot Abbott at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. Christina Grimmie, a performer who became famous on The Voice, was shot at a meet and greet after a concert in Orlando, Florida. Not quite getting murdered on stage but close. Talking about death on stage, Lou often thinks of and replays the YouTube video of Mexican performer Chalino Sanchez, who sang about cartel life and received a death note on stage during a concert in 1992. He disappeared while driving home after the show. Chilling stuff.

Murdered musicians are not that uncommon. John Lennon, Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke come to mind, but murder during a performance is rare. Lou is shocked that it doesn’t happen more often. It’s only rock and roll but Lou likes it. The musician that always comes to mind when considering these sobering thoughts is jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan. On February 19, 1972 at Slug’s Saloon jazz club in the East Village of New York City, Morgan was shot between sets by his girlfriend, Helen Moore. Morgan did not die instantly but slowly bled to death as an ambulance could not get to the venue quickly due to a heavy snowstorm. Strangely, Moore did not rot in jail and served only a short sentence for the crim. Of course there is a documentary all about it, I Called Him Morgan, from 2016.

All this morbid shit comes to mind because Lou was happy to buy Lee Morgan’s Search for the New Land, a 1966 album on Blue Note. The sessions were recorded in 1964 with what Wikipedia describes as “a group of regular Blue Note sidemen.” Get a load of these names: Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Grant Green (guitar), Reggie Workman (double bass), and Billy Higgins (drums). Shorter, Hancock, and Green were major leaders in their own right, and some of the greatest ever to play their instruments. “Regular Blue Note sideman”. Holy shit, this is on the level of The Wrecking Crew or The Funk Brothers. It is crazy how talented this backing band was.

Search for the New Land is primo Lee Morgan and ranks up there with The Sidewinder. Morgan is extraordinary, which makes his death at 33 even more tragic. The mind reels at what he could have accomplished. Lee Morgan is one of the few jazzmen who crossed over into the mainstream charts. The title single from The Sidewinder peaked at 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Search for the New Land hit Number 16 on the Billboard R&B chart and 143 on the LP chart generally. The hard bop sound with its funk, soul, blues, and R&B vibes really appealed to the general listener of popular music. The thought of this happening today is unfathomable. When you look at the music charts of decades past, you must wonder if the general public of the present has become less adventurous in their tastes or if the public taste has become so fragmented and compartmentalized, like the nation’s political landscape, that there is no possibility for consensus and crossover any more. There is something in this growing fragmentation of musical taste that accounts for the rise in violence on stage and against performers. Lou will let you, the reader, speculate how this relates to society in general.