Brief Biography of Russ Morgan

    Best remembered for his ''wah-wah'' trombone style, Russ Morgan was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1904 and began studying music at an early age. Both his father, a coal-mine foreman, and his mother were former professional musicians. Russ himself began to work in the mines at an early age to pay for piano lessons.

    At 14, he earned extra money playing piano at a Scranton movie theater and bought a trombone. He spent a year with the Scranton Sirens, working alongside Jimmy Dorsey, before heading off to New York in 1922, where he arranged for Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa. He toured Europe with Paul Specht's orchestra in 1923 and a year later was invited to Detroit to arrange for Jean Goldkette.

    While in Detroit, he also served as musical director at WXYZ radio and arranged and played for the Detroit Symphony. After a serious automobile accident in 1929 put Morgan out of the music business and the stock market crash finished Detroit as a major music center, he went back to New York, where he found steady work writing arrangements and playing in studio orchestras.

    Another automobile accident sidelined Morgan in 1933. Unable to play his trombone during a long period of recuperation, he went to work for Freddie Martin in 1934 as a pianist and later became musical director at Brunswick Records. He formed his own orchestra in 1936, with the help of friend Rudy Vallee, and spent the next two years at the Biltmore Hotel. He later served as a staff conductor at NBC radio and was musical director for the Lifebouy and Philip Morris radio series.

    Morgan both sang and played trombone in his new orchestra, which used the famous moniker ''Music in the Morgan Manner.'' Its music was soft, loose, easy-going, well-blended and had an infectious lilt. His musical style leaned toward the commercial, and he had a knack for knowing what the public liked.

    After suffering financially in the early forties, the orchestra experienced its greatest popularity after the war. During the fifties, Morgan's orchestra remained a popular dance band in the vein of Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo and was featured in its own television program in 1953. His sons, Jack and David, joined the band in the early part of the decade. Jack took over the orchestra when his father passed away in 1969. It remains active to this day.

The above was transcribed from  http://www.parabrisas.com/d_morganr.html   
Additional information is found in the Russ Morgan website at  http://www.russmorganorchestra.com/
Bix, Russ, and Jean Goldkette.
  
    Russ Morgan knew Bix Beiderbecke personally. Russ joined the Jean Goldkette Orchestra in 1924 at the recommendation of Fred “Fuzzy” Farrar. Farrar, just like Russ Morgan, as well as  Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, was an alumnus of the legendary Scranton Sirens and may have played with Russ with the Pennsylvania band.

    In the January 1989 issue of the IAJRC Journal, Stan Kuwik writes, "Trumpeter Fred Farrar recommended Russ Morgan <>from Eddie Gilligan’s Band in Pittsburgh. A telegram to join the band sounded so good that it brought Morgan to Dettroit. After hearing the band he was ready to go back to Pittsssburgh. He told Goldkette he wouldn’t play in the band if he was given $1,000 a night. "Fire the whole band and I’ll show you how to organize a good hot band.!"  When Goldkette expressed his desire to be the “Paul Whiteman of the West,” Russ suggested that he become the Jean Goldkette of the World.” This so impressed Goldkette that he hired Morgan right then and there. Morgan’s tenure ushered a new era in the development of the orchestra. Apart from his musical ability, he was an able arranger from which the orchestra derived much benefit. It wasn’t long before Morgan was promoted to be musical director, replaced in the orchestra by Spiegle Willcox, a beautiful-toned trombonist from Paul Whiteman’s Collegians. Morgan reworked the rhythm section and the Goldkette Orchestra emerged with its new unmistakable sound.”

    In the Spring of 1926, Russ Morgan accepted a position as arranger for one of Detroit’s main theatres and remained there for over a year.

    Bix joined the Goldkette Orchestra for a short time, about a month, in November of 1924.  Bix played, briefly,  with one of the Goldkette outfits in the summer of 1925. Bix was with the Goldkette band for over a year between May 1926 and September 1927. 

    Bix and Russ knew each oher during the periods when both were members of the Jean Goldkette organization.

    Russ Morgan's autobiography "Coaldust to Stardust" as told to Cleo Lucas has not yet been published. One chapter in the biography is devoted to Bix Beiderbecke. I am pleased and honored, through the courtesy of Jack Morgan, to be able to publish this chapter in the Bixography website. I am indebted to Jack Morgan for his generosity and for his permission to transcribe the chapter here.

CHAPTER SIX

“THE KID FROM DAVENPORT”

From

COALDUST TO STARDUST

by

RUSS MORGAN

As told to Cleo Lucas

The Kid From Davenport

    Some people become legendary only after they are dead. Bix was a legend while he was living. He belonged to the Jazz Age as much as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong. Or Clara Bow.

    He breathed in its music and blew it out again, enriched, chastened and embellished with little pieces of his soul. If he had been born in another era he might have been a Paderewski, for there was in him an inherent yearning, a driving for the classic. But he stubbed his toe, and fell into the Roaring Twenties and there he stayed and played his music the only way he knew.

    Dorothy Baker, in her forward to her book, “Young Man With A Horn”, states clearly that her inspiration was “the music but not the life of Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke. ---a statement that most people seem to ignore.

    The real Bix has become so fused with the Baker story that I want to correct a few of the misconceptions about him and to humbly place my own private laurels on his everlasting crown.

    If there were a “Who’s Who of the Jazz Age”, Bix would certainly be in it even though there could be only one short sentence after his name – "Played cornet and piano" – for that is all he did.

    The rest of the statistics would be brief:

          Born- March 10, 1903, Davenport, Iowa

          Died – August 6, 1931, New York City

          Played in jazz bands all over the country. Made a few recordings for

Gennett. Best known for appearance with the Wolverines

    No one can run up much for a recap in the short span of twenty-eight years, of which only half of them were spent in playing a cornet and piano. What can never be written in books is how he played them.

    With a naturalness and rich originality and a consuming love of music he devoted himself to his art. He gave everything he knew about it and learned about it with all his heart and soul, and eventually, with his life.

    I think the tragedy of his life should be an example to many musicians who permit the somewhat inchoate turmoil of their music to make a crazy quilt of their lives.

    Bix was picking out tunes at a tender age, and when he was only three, his wonderful ear for music had already developed to such an extent that he knew the air of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody. In the lazy summer nights when the neighborhood kids were out playing games, Bix  stole silently away to the river boats that were anchored on the banks of the Mississippi and listened to the jazz that drifted out over the dark water like music from another world.

    He took a few lessons on the piano, not enough to learn to read music, and he taught himself all that he ever knew about the cornet. His fingering was crazy and unprofessional, but somehow, with it he developed a rich firm tone that later so hypnotized people who heard it that they trailed in his wake like children after the Pied Piper.

    His period of education was brief because he had no time for anything except music. At the Lake Forest Academy in Chicago he was at the head of his class in his one favorite subject, but he refused to study the required curriculum and consequently he flunked out.

    But the school was in Chicago and jazz was in Chicago. The war was out and Prohibition was in. Capone had organized his famous syndicate and Jazz rocked along with it in the new strange world it created.

    In the reeking, smoke-filled, dingy atmosphere of the speakeasy, Bix listened to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings beating out their tempestuous “Wabash Blues”. To the clarinet of Leon Rappolo and the silver trumpet of Louis Armstrong. To George Brunies on the trombone. He listened and learned and played back their tunes to them like a tape recorder. And they, in turn, listened to him and took him into their lives.   
      
    He played with small pick-up bands until 1923 when a piano player, Dick Voynow, who was with an outfit called The Wolverines heard Bix play. He grabbed him. There were some records for Gennett. Hoagy Carmichael heard the recordings and brought the band to Indiana University for a prom date. There were eight return engagements and The Wolverines almost overnight became one of the sensations of the year. More recordings and more success and young Bix was on his way.

    Bix was playing at Hudson Lake, a resort about seventy miles from Chicago when he stretched out his hand for my telegram. Aside from he fame of the Goldkette band, I think that Bix wanted to join the band where he thought he could play semi-classics.

    Although I heard him on recordings I had never heard him play in person, but I had heard plenty about him. It simply never occurred to me that a guy whose fame was spreading so fast could not read music.

    I stood there looking at the placid puss of a kid with mousy hair and a suit of clothes that had obviously housed somebody else, and wondered what to do with him.

          “Well,” I said, “if you can play, -- play.”

          “What do you want?”

          “Oh,” I said, casually, “give me Spanish Shawl”.

          “Don’t know that one”, Bix said. “You give it to me first.”

    I guess it was the spiritual look about him that got me. Maybe it was curiosity. Anyway, I sat down and played it through.

    “Now”, said Bix.

    He sat down and played the piece back for me, note for note without a single deviation except his own embellishments which he moved into so subtly that I wondered if the notes were actually there and I hadn’t read the music right.

    It was magic. It was mystery. Like meeting a person coming out of the jungle and hearing him speak perfect English. A thing like that gives you a shock because there is no way to figure it out.

    I came out of my coma. Bix was still fooling around on the piano and the rest of the boys were standing in a kind of trance-like silence.

    “You play cornet, too,” I said.

    Bix took out the silver horn from his case. “Name it”, he said.

     He blew a few notes and put them together with so much rhythm and feeling that I wanted to shout with joy. Here was a guy who had been positively slugged by Euterpe, and the easy way he played and the sort of blank look he gave me made me wonder if h knew the old goddess had even brushed against him.  

    No part was ever written in the orchestration for Bix. After the band was through rehearsing, I summoned him and let him add his own part to the pieces. With this kind of arrangement there is usually some distortion to the melody, but with Bix there was none.

    I don’t know how to describe his embellishments because I’ve never heard anything like them before or since. The only way I can explain it is the way it came through to me. It was like hearing and seeing and feeling something all at the same time. It was soft and delicate., like looking a t a piece of beautiful lace. And knowing that the lace was woven with thread so fine that it would break it you touched it. That each pattern was something you wanted to remember because you knew it would not be duplicated.

    There was a touch almost bordering on femininity in his work, and yet the masculine strength was also there so that like himself, his music was a strange paradox.

    That he was a genius is an indisputable fact, and like all geniuses, he was impossible to reach. He lived in a world that only he could understand. His actions and reactions simply did not fit on this earth.

    When the night’s work on the stand was over he wanted to stay right there and keep on playing. The other boys found plenty of earthly pleasures to pursue. They couldn’t get their horns in their cases fast enough, but Bix, whatever else he was, was an artist in the true, unalterable sense of the word.

    It was as if some strange force was constantly driving away all human desires – women, food, success and rest, and pressing him to always play his music.

    If I believed in such things, I would say he might have had a premonition of his early death, and that he must take advantage of every minute to do the only thing he ever loved.

    There was never time enough for Bix to get all the music out of his system. He talked music, ate and drank music and lived music.

    He never slept. He was always awake at any time of the day or night you happened into his room.

     “When do you sleep?” I asked him.

<>     “I don’t” Bix said solemnly, “not anymore “. He smiled. Somebody was always waking me up. It seemed easier to just stay up."

    I knew this was true. His fame was phenomenal. He was besieged by people. They came from everywhere. They were everybody. And he let them all in. Generously he shared with them then the greatest treasure he had to give.

    Besides his reputation as a musician, people were drawn to Bix because of the unbelievably soft nature and disposition. He was never known to engage in an argument of even the smallest dimension. Any offense or insult he received was justified by him because he said the offender must be ill and therefore deserved sympathy. He waited patiently for the apology that inevitably came.

    One time I was sitting quietly with him in a bar. His eyes happened to be looking down toward the end of the room where an oversized gent and his lady friend were having a little tête à tête.

    The man had no way of knowing that, as usual, Bix’s mind was worlds away. He thought his trance-like gaze was fixed on the girl friend. He came up and tried to pick up a quarrel, and since this was an impossibility with Bix, he hauled off and landed a haymaker right across his face.

    Bix was a little fellow. He fell over like a mechanical doll that had suddenly run down. I picked him up and then I started in on the big guy. I was ready to do battle but Bix came to his defense like a shot. The apology that came from the gent when he discovered who he had pasted so erroneously, was one for the record.

    I don’t want to give any false impressions, Bix was different. He was strange. He was ethereal, but he could do things that could simply drive a band leader crazy. Even so, he had a kind of innocent trust that precluded any ordinary discipline.

    One of these times occurred when the Goldkette orchestra was on its way to play an engagement at Notre Dame.

    About forty miles this side of our destination the train stopped at a small town. I happened to be looking out the window and I was almost certain I saw Bix standing on the platform as the train pulled out. A quick check of the boys confirmed my doubt. Bix was not on the train.

    At the next stop I got off and hired a taxi to drive me back to the little town that was now twenty-five miles away.

    I stormed and fretted every inch of the way. What was he up to? Was he off on a binge or ditching the band for good, or just plain mute? When the taxi rolled up to the station, Bix was sitting on the platform, his hands folded over his cornet case.

    I was so mad I decided to say nothing until I had a chance to cool off. I got him into the taxi and on the way back I felt calm enough to talk.

    “Look, Bix,” I said gently, “I’m not mad. I’m just curious, that’s all. Why the hell did you get off the train back there?"

    He shot me a look of pure wonderment. “A lot of people got off there, Russ."

    There was no answer to that one. After a little he took his horn out of the case and began to play. He played for twenty minutes straight, when he quit I was speechless.

    It was his turn to be surprised.

    “What’s wrong,” he asked, “why are you staring at me?”

    “Because it was superb music,” I said.

    He looked at me strangely.

    “What was it?”

    “You don’t know?”

    Bix shook his head.

    “It’s Stravinsky’s ‘Berceuse’ from the “Firebird Suite””, I told him,   “note for note. And it was the sweetest rendition I ever hope to hear."

    Bix looked at me in complete amazement. “But I don’t know Stravinsky’s ‘Berceuse’ ” he said stubbornly, “I wonder where I ever heard it."

    I gave up.

    “I don’t know,” I told him honestly, “Maybe it was in your dream world. While you were getting off back there at the station.”

    And maybe it was.
___________________

End of Chapter Six,  "Coaldust to Stardust" by Russ Morgan as told to  Cleo Lucas.
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