The Sidewinder by Lee Morgan

The Sidewinder is a 1964 album by the jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan, recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood, New Jersey, U.S. It was released on the Blue Note label as BLP 4157 and BST 84157. The title track, "The Sidewinder", was one of the defining recordings of the soul jazz genre, becoming a jazz standard. An edited version was released as a single. The album became Blue Note's best-selling record ever, breaking the previous sales record roughly ten times over. Record producer Michael Cuscuna recalls the unexpected success: "the company issued only 4,000 copies upon release. Needless to say, they ran out of stock in three or four days. And 'The Sidewinder' became a runaway smash making the pop 100 charts." By January 1965, the album had reached No. 25 on the Billboard chart. The title track was used as the music in a Chrysler television advertisement and as a theme for television shows. Many subsequent Morgan albums, and other Blue Note discs, would duplicate (or approximate) this album's format, by following a long, funky opening blues with a handful of conventional hard bop tunes.