"Yeah, I'm Nate Morgan. I'm going to play with you all." That's how a teenage Nate Morgan introduced himself to Horace Tapscott after hearing The Giant Is Awakened on the radio and tracking down the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. Not "I want to" - "I'm going to." He'd already been studying with Joe Sample and Hampton Hawes, but Arthur Blythe's wailing saxophone on that Flying Dutchman LP had gone straight to his heart. A spiritual experience, he called it. Over the next decades, Morgan became a central figure in UGMAA, bringing new players like Jesse Sharps into the fold, recording three albums for Nimbus West, keeping the flame alive in late-night jams and private sessions throughout South Central LA.
But Morgan moved through worlds. During the 1970s he put in years with Rufus & Chaka Khan. He played on Willie Hutch's Foxy Brown soundtrack. He collaborated with Bone Thugs N' Harmony. He worked with Arthur Blythe, Gary Bartz, Azar Lawrence. A musician's musician who could stretch from spiritual jazz to funk to R&B and back again without losing his center.
Live in Santa Barbara captures Morgan in trio format with two musicians who knew his playing intimately. Bassist Jeff Littleton - one of the most versatile players on the West Coast, who has toured with Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Lloyd, Billy Higgins, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard - and drummer Fritz Wise, who anchored Morgan's Nimbus West studio albums Journey Into Nigritia (1983) and Retribution, Reparation (1984). This is the same rhythm section, now stretching out on a set of standards and one Morgan original.
Six tracks, 53 minutes. Miles Davis's "All Blues" opens the set. Charles Lloyd's "Forest Flower" gets a twelve-minute exploration. Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood" stretches past eleven minutes - Morgan's McCoy Tyner-influenced touch finding new depths in the old melody. Dizzy's "Night In Tunisia." Bronisław Kaper's "Invitation." And between them, "Darius The Bold" - Morgan's own contribution, holding its ground among the classics. This is Morgan away from the Arkestra's full ensemble, away from the spiritualized fire of his studio work - just piano, bass, drums, and the American songbook filtered through a consciousness shaped by UGMAA's communal ethos. Littleton's deep-note sustain, Wise's shimmering cymbals, Morgan telling truth with every chord. The interplay of three musicians who've logged serious hours together, listening and responding with the ease that only comes from trust.
Nate Morgan died in 2013. One of the most woefully under-recorded greats of our time, they say. This live document adds another precious title to a discography that should have been three times as long.
