41 f I
n 1942, Morse was singing in San Diego when she spied the pianist Freddie Slack. Slack had played with Jimmy Dorsey during Morse’s stint and, when Morse was fired, Slack had told her that one day he would have his own band and wanted to work with her again. Remembering his words, Morse shouted after Slack; he had indeed struck out on his own, securing a contract with Capitol Records. Morse joined up, and the band toured California.
Morse, Slack, and the orchestra hit the Capitol studio with Johnny Mercer in May 1942. The song they recorded, Cow Cow Boogie, was a Don Raye and Gene dePaul composition intended for Ella Fitzgerald to sing in the Abbott and Costello vehicle Ride ‘Em Cowboy. Never used there, it fea- tured instead in a contemporary cartoon by Walter ‘Woody Woodpecker’ Lantz as an affectionate tribute to the actor Herb Jeffries. Jeffries was, as the lyrics put it, a “swingin’ half breed” (he had an African- American father and an Irish mother), and the first non-white star of Westerns.
A part of Slack’s live set, Morse was already well familiar with Cow-Cow Boo- gie. The first take was barnstorming and – although Morse pleaded for another go at her vocal – Johnny Mercer held firm. His instincts were right. Morse’s jumping fresh style, set against the accomplished spine of Slack’s piano and Bruce Squire’s trombone created a quirky boogie-woogie immortal, with a contemporary country swing to it. It was Capitol Records’ first hit, and Mercer signed Ella Mae Morse to a solo contract on the back of its success.
Her early career was focused on this type of askance boogie-woogie, sucking in influences from R&B, jazz, and jump blues. However, Morse’s sympathy with the 1942- 43 American Federation of Musicians’ strike suspended her recordings almost as soon as they began. Rather than cross the picket line, she switched to live appearances, radio shows and feature film cameos.
When Morse returned to the studio in October 1943, it seemed that – for Capitol – no time had passed, and the label gave her songs largely of the Cow-Cow Boogie ilk, but often skirting far closer to the facile; by mid-decade, this sounded dated. Morse would often record songs with greater emotional depth in the studio, and she must have felt frustrated when fine ballads like Take Care Of You For Me were left in the can. 1945’s Buzz Me was a rare exception. The gutsiest and most sensual song Morse had recorded to date, it showed the breadth of her capabilities and the extent of her vocal passions when the right song came along.
That right song was just around the
corner. When Morse ran into Freddie Slack again, he told her of this new song he’d written with Don Raye. And it really was new. It was The House Of Blue Lights, and a precursor to rock ‘n’ roll. Opening with Slack’s bar-room jive (he deliberately had his piano ‘roughed up’ to achieve this effect) while Morse and Don Raye traded hip, flirtatious insults, The House Of Blue Lights was a pulsating, hard-edged, rhyth- mic firestorm. Like Buzz Me, it scored bet- ter on the R&B charts than the pop charts.
“Ella, baby, I thought you were one of us!”, Sammy Davis Jr apparently exclaimed upon meeting Morse. Assuming she was black was common among those who had only heard Ella’s vocals. “I was compli-
mented by it,” Morse said. “I don’t think they always meant it that way, but I was flattered.” She featured on the Armed Forces Radio Service Jubilee radio shows aimed at black servicemen; she also received an award from an African-Ameri- can college as their female singer of the year. Black singers may have influenced Morse, but her sound did not rip them off, nor was it affected in order to consciously moderate a black style for white audi- ences. She had both instinct and natural accessibility in her vocal style, and it wasn’t a contrivance. This is plain when compar- ing her takes on a song to those fashioned by other white artists such as The Andrews Sisters and Nancy Walker.
After consolidating The House Of Blue
Lights with other modish blues numbers like Early In The Morning and Get Off It And Go, Ella Mae Morse took her first retirement in late 1947 for family reasons. But the hiatus lasted only until 1951. “Too many folks think I’m in my late 30s or past 40,” she told Ted Hallock upon her come- back, when she was 27. “They forget I recorded Cow Cow Boogie with Freddie Slack when I was 17.”
Back with Capitol, and recording mainly with Nelson Riddle, she regained her popularity quickly; 1951’s The Black- smith Blues became her biggest hit. Now Morse took seriously an influence she had hinted at before: country music. It was apparent in her hits of the time, most notably in Okie Boogie, and also in the 1952 session with ‘Tennessee’ Ernie Ford. Still, she never abandoned her R&B feel, and it reached an apex in 1953. Covers of beauties like Money Honey, Have A Little Mercy, Baby and 5-10-15 Hours were the substance of the 10” album Barrelhouse, Boogie And The Blues. This record show- cased Morse’s assured, sultry vocals amid hearty drums and sweltering sax.
Rather ironically, just as rock ‘n’ roll was exciting teenagers across the globe, Morse faded. Logic said she was well-
placed to take up the new form since she was skilled at R&B and literate in country, and she was respected by the new breed of musicians (Elvis was a fan, while Little Richard nodded to The House Of Blue Lights in Good Golly Miss Molly). Yet it was left to other white female singers such as Janis Martin and Wanda Jackson to make that final leap, despite Morse having stood on the precipice as early as 1946. She released one final album, the patchy The Morse Code in 1957 (comprising mainly Tin Pan Alley standards) before leaving Capi- tol that same year.
E
With the exception of an early 1960s session, Ella Mae Morse did not record again, and live appearances became rare. Morse’s post-Capitol setlists usually com- prised The Morse Code end of her career rather than the R&B jumpers. She stopped performing completely in 1987.
lla Mae Morse died in 1999, at the age of 75. Intermittent attempts to reinstate Morse’s reputation have occurred, includ- ing a substantial reflection on
her career in Nick Toches’ 1984 book The Unsung Heroes Of Rock & Roll and a major five-CD retrospective boxed set from Bear Family, Barrelhouse, Boogie And The Blues, in 1997. More recently, Bear Family have collected her most exploratory mate- rial on the CD Ella Mae Rocks.
“Isn’t it amazing how young people hardly ever take time to think?”, Ella Mae Morse reflected in 1997. “So many of these songs have completely escaped from my memory, [but] one thing that has settled lovingly in my heart and mind are the great talents that accompanied me.” Morse brought out the best in the musi- cians she worked with, as they did with her. Ella Mae Morse can be called a boogie swinger, a blues stylist, a torch song diva, and a rock ‘n’ roll spearhead; she can also be called one of the most underrated vocalists of all time.
www.bear-family.de F
Photo: coutesy Bear Family Records
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84