THE SLAPPING CAREER OF BASSIST AL MORGAN 4

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Albert ‘Al’ MORGAN
(August 19, 1908, New Orleans – April 14, 1974, Los Angeles)
 
Now forgotten and eclipsed by Milt Hinton, his brilliant successor in Calloway’s orchestra, Albert ‘Al’ MORGAN, however, benefits from the image of an exceptional double bass player, considered one of the pioneers of slapping, in the same ranks as Wellman Braud or Pops Foster. During his career, Al Morgan walked his bass from the Riverboats on the Mississippi to New York, Europe, Boston, and Hollywood.
 

PART 4: Back in California

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Joe Darensbourg's Dixie Flyers at the Lark Restaurant, Los Angeles, July 1957.
From left to right: Harvey Brooks, George Vann, Joe Darensbourg, Mike DeLay, Warren Smith, Al Morgan

Dixie, Jack, Nellie and the last duet…

What caused Al Morgan’s move to California in February 1957: the sun?  The envy of meeting again his friends from his movie era or his former bands mates?...  None of this: it was his wife Sally’s work hired as a pathologist for the University of California that brought the family there from Boston.

Without going back to New Orleans, Al went back to his roots by playing in clarinet player Joe Darensbourg’s Dixie Flyers.  New Orleans Revival went strong at that time and many groups found success.  Darensbourg’s was one of them.  His old friend Frank Paisley introduced Al to him.  In his autobiography, Joe Darensbourg remembers how much he appreciated his bassist:

“Al Morgan fitted in the band perfectly.  He was very quiet, never drank, smoked or nothing.  (…)  He was a capable bass player and I respected him as a musician and as a man.  He was just a nice fellow with a beautiful manner.”

For Jazz Beat in 1997, he added: “Al Morgan displays here a quiet, controlled beauty that breathes new life into an old warhorse.”  They played at the Lark Hotel and many other venues in the Los Angeles area. Several radio airings preserved by Darensbourg himself helped to get testimonies of the sound of the Dixie Flyers. For instance, listen to the live recording of “Blues for Al” where you can enjoy Al’s expertise on bow.

The band was invited four times on Bobby Troup’s (composer of “Route 66” and Julie London’s husband) Monday TV Show, “Stars of Jazz.”  One of the appearances was released on a LP and contains an electrifying “Milneburg Joys.”  Apparently, no kinescopes of their TV performances survived.

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Behind Elvis Preslay are Al Morgan, Teddy Buckner (tp), Joe Darensbourg (cl)

But a more important appearance on screen was more than unexpected!  In the movie King Creole released in 1958 with Elvis Presley, during the “Trouble” scene, you can spot Al in a typical New Orleans outfit (this time on tuba) along with trumpetist Teddy Buckner, and Joe Darensbourg on clarinet. Al will be back on screen in 1959 for a sequence in The Gene Krupa Story.

In 1961, Joe Darensbourg will join Louis Armstrong All Stars with whom he recorded one of Satchmo’s biggest hits: “Hello, Dolly!”

Let’s not forget that in 1957, Al Morgan also contributed to a recording session with clarinet master Barney Bigard for an album released on Liberty.  On three titles, this “fine, fine bass player” —as stated by Bigard in his autobiography With Louis and the Duke— shows his skills: “Rose Room”, “Mahogany Hall Stomp”, and “Mood Indigo.”

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July 10, 1959, The Sacramento Union

Al Morgan joined Jack McVea’s combo doubtless in 1958-1959.  Famous for his composition of “Open the Door, Richard” a decade ago, McVea used to play in Sacramento’s area (Al and Jack were together in Eddie Barefield's orchestra in 1936).  Before Al, his bassist Warren McOwen was billed as a bassist-vocalist. McVea was Al’s friend from the Barefield orchestra years.

He then went to another kind of experience, accompanying singer and pianist Nellie Lutcher until 1960.  As for Jack McVea, I haven’t found yet a genuine proof of their collaboration other than what is written in a short notice about Al Morgan. 

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July 22,1965, South Gate Press

Starting 1961, Al Morgan formed a duo with pianist Ulysses ‘Buddy’ Banks (former sax tenor and bandleader) at the Tudor Inn in Norwalk, CA.  It lasted there until 1971.  They still both appeared at the cocktail-lounge restaurant Dixie Belle in Downey, until Al’s very last day.  He apparently died a few hours after leaving the stage.

Sax player Caughey Roberts (who played with Al in the 30s during Fats Waller’s gig at The Famous Door) remembers:

“Al was a nice guy who ended up doing a duo with Buddy Banks.  They worked together for years and years.  Always something goin’, so if one of them had to go to the can, the other had to stay up there and work.  Sometimes Al would be singing; sometimes he’d be playing bass.  That was their philosophy, always something going on.  He was a good bass player.” (From Swingin’ on Central Avenue, by Peter Vacher)

The Los Angeles Clef Club is an all-Black social organization with the old musicians from the local 47 AFM.  His president was Buddy Banks.  There, you can mingle there with the likes of Nellie Lutcher, Paul Howard, and probably Al Morgan.  Their annual Christmas party set in late January is a gala dinner for the club members and their guests.  This kind of club with regular meetings and mailings is a genuine opportunity to meet and cheer with former bandmates and to get news from ailing friends.

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April 4, 1969

The last time Al Morgan appears in the press is in 1969 when he wins $5,000 [more than $40,000 today] at a Shell contest!  But he would deserve much more as a musician…

In its March-June 1974 edition, the jazz magazine Mecca wrote: “Services for Morgan were held in Los Angeles with many jazz fans and musicians in attendance.  Cab Calloway and Buddy Banks served as pallbearers, and as part of the service.  Teddy Buckner played a trumpet solo of ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’.”

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When Al Morgan died in Los Angeles on August 19,1974, he’s forgotten by most, while the world of jazz bass remembers him when listening to Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan, Chu Berry, T-Bone Walker and Cab Calloway!  Critic Georges Avakian always wondered if Al Morgan didn’t have an electric drum hidden in his double bass...  Good question!

 

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Al Morgan explains his playing

“Al’s playing was characterized by powerful tone, an energetic swing and versatility, all of which put him in the same class with two other famous New Orleans bassists, Pops Foster and Wellman Braud; and that is very good company indeed.” (Mecca, March-June 1974)

Fond of him since the beginning, Hugues Panassié writes in his book Real Jazz (1944):

“Al Morgan has a more imaginative style than Foster. He rarely holds to the simple complementary notes, but follows the melodic contours of the theme rather than its harmonic base. This is what is called the "walking bass a definition which suggests very well the counter-who is in perpetual motion instead of remaining on fundamental notes. However, Al Morgan proves to have an unusual harmonic sense in his daring inventions. The mobile power he displays causes his playing to swing a great deal.”

When in 1940, Al was asked to describe just what is meant by "walking bass”, he explained in Down Beat:

“It really means doing more than just pounding out two beats to a measure, and it’s tied up with picking or bowing; slapping the bass is not so good and it’s going pretty well out. A good walking bass means tone control with the fingers just the same as tone control on a wind instrument with the lips. If your fingers can give you that tone control and volume you’ve got a walking bass, that means real drive for the orchestra and also an added instrument for taking solos.”

In March 1934, for the British magazine Tune Times, Al twists the truth claiming that he has never taken any music lesson:

“I’m one of those musical freaks who honestly admits that he never studied note of music in his life. Understand, I’m not boasting, I’m just staring a fact. I wish I did study music in my younger days. But I did have a born ability to play the ‘bull fiddle,’ and through a lot of rehearsal, plus plenty of hard work, I finally got down to what it was all about. The boys all claim that I am the ‘rehearsing man alive.’  I have to be to keep up with them and to hold my place with the other bass players. The greatest thrill I ever got was when a real student of music complimented me on my hot and accurate stringing. I never told him the real truth. I hope you’ll keep it a secret, too.”

In fact, after WWII, while in Boston and in order to learn be-bop which he greatly appreciated, Al Morgan even took modern music classes with Professor Quincy Porter in the Department of Popular Music at the New England Conservatory of Music for 3 and a half years:

“I been playing a long time, and I know practically every type of there is. Coming up, during my time, I played Dixieland, I played swing, and here is this modern jazz come in, so everybody’s going to study. I says, ‘Well, I’m going to join in the rest of them. It’s nothing to do.’ I didn’t do anything in the daytime, so I went on studying music. I played progressive music. Matter of fact, I like all music, all types of music. Most people will ask you, what do you like, do you like this jazz better? It’s all good when it’s played good. Because that soul of music, regardless of what type of music there is. I played lots of semi-classics in the school symphonies and it’s just good music. Once you’re a musician and you get that in your soul and your love of music.  You’ve got to learn to love any type, and know it.” (1958 interview)

 

Al Morgan’s best tracks

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With Cab Calloway

(note that Reefer Man excepted, Al is not highlighted in the songs. The bass would only be featured in January 1941 with Milt Hinton’s Ebony Silhouette:

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Al Morgan on screen:

 

Sources:

  • Al Morgan, Interview by Wiliam Russell, August 19, 1958, HJA, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (audio + transcript)
  • George A. Borgman, “Boston’s Grand Old Man Of Jazz”, The Mississippi Rag, August 1994
  • Frank Büchmann-Møller, Is this to be my souvenir? – Jazz photos from the Timme Rosenkrantz Collection, Odensee University Press, 2000
  • Mark Cantor, “Louis Jordan and “Caldonia” The Partnership”, Celluloid Improvisations
  • Samuel B. Charters, Jazz New Orleans, 1885-1957, Walter C. Allen, 1958
  • John Chilton, Who’s Who of Jazz, Da Capo Press, 1985
  • John Chilton, Let the Good Times Roll: The Story of Louis Jordan and His Music, University of Michigan Press, 1994
  • Eddie Condon, Hank O’Neal, Eddie Condon’s Scrapbook of Jazz, Galahad Books, 1973
  • Joe Darensbourg, interviewed by Barry Martin, Jazz Oral History Project, Rutgers University, 1984
  • Adrienne Faillace, “Foundation Interview: Donald A. Morgan, ASC,” Television Academy Foundation, 2023
  • Pops Foster, New Orleans Jazzman, Autobiography, Backbeat Books, 2005
  • Richard V. Freedman, “Is Al Morgan the ‘Forgotten Man’ of American Jazz?”, Down Beat, Feb 1, 1940
  • Nat Hentoff, “Morgan - Riverboat Bass”, The Jazz Record, February 1946
  • Roger House, South End Shout - Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age, Lever Press, 2023
  • Hadley Meares, “Mapping the jazz clubs that made Central Avenue swing,” LA.Curbed.com, 2018
  • Manfred Selchow, Ding! Ding! A Bio-Discographical Scrapbook on Vick Dickenson, 1998
  • Jon Silberg, “Multi-Talented: Donald A. Morgan, ASC”, The ASC.com, 2020
  • W. Royal Stokes, Swing Era New York, The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson, Temple University Press, 1994
  • Richard Vacca, The Boston Jazz Chronicles, Troy Street Publishing, 2012
  • Peter Vacher, Swingin' on Central Avenue, Rowan & Littlefield, 2015
  • Stu Vandermark, “Boston Jazz Scene,” 2017
  • Dan Vernhettes with Bo Lindström, Jazz Puzzles, Volumes 1 and 2 (especially for the three Morgan brothers fascinating profiles), Jazz Edit, 2012 and 2015
  • David E. Williams, “Donald A. Morgan, ASC Subject of New Career-Spanning Interview,” American Cinematographer, 2023

 

Thanks to †Yvan Fournier, Dan Vernhettes, Richard Vacca, Charles Telerant, Maxime Schmitt,
and the indispensable and invaluable Keller Whalen.

 

 

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