Sifting through Slugs' with the Sidewinder

Slugs' in the Far East - SOUNDS & FURY December 1965

The last few days I worked on a short story that took me back in times to a New York City jazz club, once saloon, called Slugs' in the Far East. It has long since been closed and is now a bakery, but in it's heyday, was a masterclass in post-bop jazz. Where the likes of Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, Albert Ayler, Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, and Wayne Shorter could all be found at one time or another hanging another note on the jazz tree. Where Art Blakey had weekly jam sessions and Sun Ra & his Solar Arkestra had regular Monday night performances. Where a young trumpeter and songwriter, yet to realize his full potential, succumbed to a lover's quarrel with the true makings of a remake of "Frankie and Johnny."

I pulled a historical fiction tool straight out of George Saunder's playbook and put a character in the jazz club who was never officially there, but might have been in spirit, as a fly-on-the-wall witness to the bitonality of two forces coming together in a murderous heat of passion during a blizzard in New York City that delayed the ambulance to attend to the victim by a full hour, allowing Lee Morgan to bleed out all over the sawdust floor.

I grew up listening to the Sidewinder album but never knew the real story. I spent the most time during the writing of my short story in my research gathering facts from old JazzTimes articles, Philadelphia newspapers covering the funeral, and interviews by both Lee Morgan and the culprit, his common-law wife, Ms. Helen Morgan (née: Moore or More). In all that I could not find what songs was on the setlist for his final set onstage. Lee was shot in between sets in the early morning hours of 19 February 1972.

The title of my story is Slugs' and the Sidewinder.

Here is the opening paragraph (still a work in progress):

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The snow fell outside the saloon’s dirty glass like quilts covering a cadaver as the band warmed up the crowd for the second set. A woman with eyes hard as the packed snow from whence she was just tossed stormed back into the club like a Nor’easter with fiery determination parting the sea of jazz-lovers anchored to the rickety chairs scattered about the Alphabet City bar. A rim shot exploded from the hand of the stalwart woman standing center mass, sending the audience screaming to the bar and bulkheads and a jazzman quizzically to his knees. Blood spewing from his hole-riddled heart pumped in time to a silent requiem covering the trumpet that fell to the floor before him. The last blues his soul would ever play, sanguinizing slowly through the unrequited, worn wooden slats, more stave than floorboard.

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Thanks for stopping by,

Fenyx Quinn

Trumpeter Lee Morgan during a performance with Art Blakey at Small’s in New York City. Pianist Bobby Timmons is at lower left (cut out) - 1959 © Francis Wolff