However, it wasn't until his freshmen year at Glen Burnie High School that he finally found the opportunity to acquire what he had long been seeking. "I saved seventeen dollars and got myself a guitar and then started hanging out with these other musical cats in the area," he said. One of these, Marty Arnold, an Army brat, became a rather pivotal figure who helped the young Reggie with rudimentary picking and chord changes. Later, in his senior year, he saw Jimi Hendrix at the Baltimore Civic Center, an event which was to have profound impact on his future musical direction. Ironically, another native guitarist, Larry Dennis, who now leads Wild Rice (catch them at Leadbetter's in Fell's Point) attended the same spectacle and he, too, was awe-stricken, so much so, that he was determined to make a living emulating his hero.
But soon after high school, Reggie became inspired by another Personage. Religion, since his stay with his grandmother, had always been of special significance in his life. But, it has been a life-long struggle, wrestling with its implications, as far as entertaining was concerned. When his education was over, his spiritual side became a controlling factor in his choice of vocations and he put music on the shelf for three years. Secular music, especially blues and rock and roll, had always been at odds with his church's precepts and Reggie had to make a decision. For him, there was no middle ground. Therefore, the period of the early 70s was a musical hiatus, but proved merely a temporary hibernation in his development as a player.
Gradually, his passion for music began to exert its sway, and Reggie returned to the blues with a vengeance in 1973. He began buying any blues related records of the day--Cream, Jeff Beck, Ten Years After, and, of course, the classic Jimi Hendrix albums--Band of Gypsies, Are You Experienced?, Rainbow Bridge, and Axis Bold As Love. "I'd be playing these 45's and LP's over and over trying to copy those chops 'til I got them down pat," he said. After a year or so of intense practicing, Reggie felt ready to form his first band. He found an able bodied bass player and a percussionist and the group was christened Midnight Landing. "We were doing some pre-Robin Trower stuff and a little Mahogany Rush, but our main man was Hendrix. I tried to dress like him and even look like him. The band was, for all practical purposes, a Hendrix revue," he added. A popular draw in the region, the outfit was a regular attraction at the Paragon Club in Laurel and the reconverted New Glen theatre on the sleazy strip of tattoo parlors and adult book stores on Crain Highway in Glen Burnie, all since demolished by urban renewal. And during the summers, Midgnight Landing also was in great demand at resort hot spots in Delaware and Ocean City, as well as a whole host of biker functions.
After several years of this wild existence, Reggie grew weary of this grind. "Night after night for four sets, it was this Hendrix bit. I didn't know who I was as a musician. Even when I covered the Rolling Stones' hits, it sounded like Jimi. It was time to call it quits," he said. The year was 1977.
After this episode, there was another interruption in his musical time line. Religion, again, played a part in it. No doubt, though, the simple fact that he was now married probably contributed as much to curtailing his former rambling lifestyle. For a while, Reggie, now as a dutiful husband, was conscientiously attempting to "walk the straight and narrow."
About 1984 came the most significant encounter in Reggie's life. Through a fellow musician, he was introduced to Gerald Robinson, pseudonym Gypsy Wade, player and staff writer for CBS records who had associations with many R&B heavyweights of the day--Bobby Womack, Billy Paul, and Freddie Jackson. In 1985, Gypsy Wade won a regional talent contest sponsored by Budweiser--the $10,000 Bud Showdown--along the lines of Ed McMahon's program, Star Search. Locally, the competition was held over radio station B-103 and Gypsy Wade's single on Polygram, "Hangin' Tough," bested all the other area rivals.
Shortly after winning the challenge, Gerald was in dire need of a lead guitarist and Reggie, who by now was ready to come out of mothballs, came to his rescue. From 1985-89, he remained with Gypsy Wade, touring extensively, including venues in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia. Although rap music was and is still the rage, this show band prospered by featuring a program of uptown blues-laced R&B such as Z.Z. Hill, Latimore, and Tyrone Davis.
This four-year stretch was an invaluable experience for Reggie in that it seasoned him as a musician and taught him professionalism as a performer. As a matter of fact, his playing during this rigorous stint became so expert as to land him session work in studios such as Power Play in New York.
In 1989, Reggie again took a short career detour, but this interlude would only last two years. Unlike his earlier retreats from the the public arena, it wasn't a totally inactive sojourn. In 1990, he supplied the guitar obbligato and co-produced Charlie Taylor's single, "Low Down Blues," at Carney's Toyz Studio.
In 1991 Skip Fields, a local drummer, who recalled his days as part of the Hendrix revue, approached him about organizing a blues band. Skip, then a veteran percussionist of 19 years who had run the gamut of all outfits from classic rock to metal to R&B, also knew a bass player, Keni Hornaoff, with whom he formerly collaborated in a rhythm section. Coincidentally, Keni, himself, who is only slightly less experienced than Skip, with a resume that includes Top 40 bands and Southern Rock, was also in the mood for a new experiment. By mutual consent, this trio, after "extensive jamming to remove the cobwebs," started the Baltimore Blues. Soon their ranks swelled to five, as pianist Charlie Davis, ex-sideman for the Sonny & Cher Show, and vocalist, Susan McCoy, were added. It wasn't long before the Baltimore Blues were one of the the main attractions at all the familiar blues shrines around town, such as the now defunct 15 Mile House on Reisterstown Road and the Cafe Tattoo on Belair Rd. But their versatility also admitted them to other non-exclusively blues clubs, like the Loft and the Driftwood. A highlight of this
band's promotional package was an invitation to perform at the 1991 AFRAM(Afro-American) jamboree in Festival Hall.
When Charlie and Susan left the latter part of that year, the original trio renamed themselves From the Bottom and their first order of business was to tape a demo--a project which expanded into full length cassette, A New Sound, which was also recorded at Toyz Studio. A successful record release party was held at the Crossroads Bar on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, then one of the group's regular gigs, which also included all the prior haunts of Baltimore Blues with the addition of E.J. Bugs and the Full Moon Saloon, the latter two still going strong in Fell's Point.
The aforementioned cassette, A New Sound, was about as an eclectic aggregation of songs as I've ever heard that ranged from rock ("Come On Over Baby") to funk ("Hot Love") to straight-ahead blues ("Left Alone"). For the most part, it was composed of originals, but also contains versions of the Stones' "Last Time" and Howlin' Wolf's "Ain't Superstitious." The title cut, "A New Sound," is actually a pop tune, and a big production number, replete with strings and chorus overdubs. It has a hymnal quality about it, like Lennon's "Imagine," in which Reggie reveals his gospel heritage. Although the selections were too diversified for the tastes of the typical blues fan, the tape, owing to Reggie's growing popularity, managed to sell well in record outlets in the vicinity, like Kemp Mill. But when Reggie tried to promote and market it nationally, he found that his music fell upon deaf ears. Nowadays, all such products need to occupy their particular niche. And despite its merits, A New Sound was too much of everything and not enough of anything to attract the interests of program directors.
But Reggie did not make the same mistake again with his first CD release in 1998, Gotcha By Your Blues (Round Robin GDO47), with Steve Loecher on drums and Wade Matthews on bass, a package (recorded at Cue Studios, Falls Church, VA) which contained several of Reggie's compositions as well as a slew of blues standards like B.B. King's "Woke Up This Morning," Barney Kessel's "Chitlin' Con Carne," Sonny Boy Williamson's (Aleck or Rice Miller) "Help Me," Slim Harpo's "Baby Scratch My Back," St. Louis Jimmy Oden's "Going Down Slow," and Freddy King's "Tore Down." Despite the fact that it also covered Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower (a Hendrix staple)" and the Rolling Stones' "Can't Always Get What You Want," it was a decided blues album and ably demonstrated a move in a positive direction. Produced by the highly-esteemed Baltimore blues historian Larry Hoffman, who recently was engaged in a similar endeavor with guitarist Corey Harris on Alligator, it was critiqued by Living Blues in which it received a fair and overall favorable evaluation--"while Morris's choice of covers is as shopworn as it is eclectic, the idiosyncratic phrasing and enunciation of his vocals and his predilection for exploring the lower registers of guitar give the music a distinctive flavor that places[it] among the year's more interesting debuts."
Gotcha By Your Blues wasn't an unqualified triumph, but as a calling card it was to open many a door that its predecessor could not. First of all, with the help of longtime agent/secretary/partner, Gina Davis, Reggie managed to wrangle a national distribution deal through City Hall Records out of San Rafael, CA, which would ensure that copies of it were on the shelf of megastores like Tower and Virgin. By then Reggie had become a fixture on the annual Baltimore Blues Festival held at the Yacht Basin and on its 1998 installment, he appeared on the same stage as guitar great Earl King, Black Top's Big Joe and the Dynaflows, and acoustic guitar wizard John Mooney. The same year, Reggie also opened for Southern blues giant, Bobby Rush, at the beckoning of the Baltimore Blues Society. Also, as a direct consequence of the success of his first CD, Gina was able to land him a three-week tour of Italy in the fall of 1998 which included sold-out stops in Torino (Turin), Milano (Milan), Roma (Rome), and Rovigo, the site of another grand annual blues festival. Back home, he finally broke through at another Washington blues shrine, the Zoo Bar on Connecticut Ave, where he still holds court with drummer Ezell Jones and bassist Harry Werner on at least one Friday per month.
If Gotcha By Your Blues was an improvement over earlier efforts as far as an overall blues theme and creativity were concerned, his newest CD (recorded at Ambient Studio, Beltsville, MD) is an attempt to go one step further--an album Reggie can truly call his own. Blues Binge(GD048) is an all original (he collaborated with long-time friend and producer[Harvey Scales, Jesse James, and Kenny Wayne] Gerald Robinson on some cuts), rollicking celebration of no holds barred, kick ass bar blues and it's been well worth the wait. Some numbers like "Rock N Roll Blues" and "The Blues Is In The House" are truly outstanding dance numbers that just grab the listener viscerally and carry him along and the Holiday House regulars can second that emotion.
But what sets the 13-track Blues Binge apart is how Reggie approaches each song--with a new-found self-assurance and confidence. Reminiscent of the breezy, fluid style of say a Freddy King (except that Reggie has a flatter, less tremulous voice), he can move from such aforementioned barn burners to plaintive, gut bucket numbers like "Woke-Up This Morning (with echoes of King's 'Have You Ever Loved A Woman')," handling each with equal aplomb, be it spirited or soulful.
Indeed, Blues Binge is a quantum leap in Reggie Wayne Morris's maturation process and other bluesmen have remarked how far he has come. "Reggie sings like his life depends on it and sings with the enthusiasm of a little child playing with a ball for the first time....It's all original and I take my hat off to Reggie," said Bobby Rush, commenting on the new CD.
Washington-based blues legend(who recorded for Vee-Jay, V-Tone, and Black Top) Bobby Parker added, "Reg has a lot of good songs, very well constructed. The production of the whole project is hot."
Finally, soul diva Millie Jackson concludes that Blues Binge "is what you expect blues to be when you hear blues, like B.B.King, Bobby Bland, and Little Milton."
The reader will probably agree that this is pretty heady company for such a "relative unknown" to be keeping. But that designation is going to change very soon. Already a French concern DixieFrog (Tino Gonzales, Popa Chubby, and Van Wilks) is expressing quite an interest in it and it is receiving quite a bit of airplay around the country. No, Reggie Wayne Morris won't be toiling in obscurity too much longer. And tell all the non-believers and gainsayers you first heard it here. Larry Benicewicz
|