Joe Morris (1922 – November 1958) was an American jazz and rhythm and blues trumpeter and bandleader.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, Morris began his career as a jazz trumpeter, working and recording with Earl Bostic, Milt Buckner, Arnett Cobb, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Griffin, Buddy Rich, Dinah Washington, Big Joe Turner, and Lionel Hampton. After working with Hampton as a writer, arranger, and trumpeter, he left in 1946 to set up the Joe Morris Orchestra. This featured, among others, Johnny Griffin, Elmo Hope, Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. One of his first credited recordings as bandleader was with Wynonie Harris on "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee".
Morris signed with the then fledgling Boston Records, and released "Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere", with vocals by Laurie Tate. This rose to number one on the U.S. R&B chart in 1950, and he followed up with "Don't Take Your Love Away from Me". The band functioned as the unofficial house band for Atlantic Records in the early 1950s, and several future stars passed through its ranks, including Ray Charles and Lowell Fulson.
In 1953, Tate left for a solo career, and Morris replaced her with his new discovery Faye Adams. He moved to Herald Records, where he backed Adams on her number-one R&B hit, his own composition "Shake a Hand", and its follow-up, "I'll Be True", also an R&B number-one hit. At the same time, he had his own hit with "I Had a Notion", featuring vocals by Al Savage.
Morris died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1958, aged 36.
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or morris:
“While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.”
—William Morris (1834–1896)