LEE MORSE

1900 - 1954

Lee Morse was a singing star of the Twenties, a contemporary of Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw. Morse recorded with the brightest and best musicians around. She picked up whoever was available and billed them as her Blue Grass Boys, pre-dating Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys by several years.

Morse made her stage debut in Los Angeles in 1920, on the Pantages vaudeville circuit. Later she would star as Raymond Hitchcock’s leading lady in the stage production Hitchy-Coo. This was followed by a New York appearance in 1923 at the Shubert Theater in Artists and Models. (I did not find her name in opening night cast lists of the show for any of its three versions, 1923-1925.)

One of the first Lee Morse recordings was a Ruth Etting hit, Everybody Loves My Baby. It’s listed on the label as a vocal accompanied by [her] own guitar, ukulele and kazoo.

By 1927 she had a more or less regular musical group called Lee Morse’s Southern Serenaders. Later that year the group’s name was usually the Blue Grass Boys.

In 1930 and 1931, her sidemen often included Benny Goodman on clarinet and Tommy Dorsey on trombone.

Morse’s recordings in a semi-country singing style and deep gravel throated voice put her in a class of her own. It was not uncommon for those who heard her on record or radio to think it was a man’s voice they were hearing. Her first name, Lee, was somewhat ambiguous. (Actually, it was later, during her 1949-50 comeback attempt that her voice took on its deepest tones. This was some 8,000 to 10,000 packs of cigarettes beyond her recordings of the 1920s and early 1930s.)

Trying to find biographical data on Lee Morse is a daunting proposition. She wasn’t really country-western so she isn’t in compendiums of CW history. It’s another strike-out for her in the jazz encyclopedias. Ditto for big band. I found but two or three references to her in an extensive search. One book mentioned her in a single sentence that contained her name along with those of Connie Boswell, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Lee Wiley. Not bad company to be in. Another book contained three Lee Morse cites, all being disparaging comments concerning her yodeling.

Then a fellow researcher in Oklahoma located a list of Morse recordings spanning the dates December 1924 to March 1938.

One fan, John Bartlett, the only other person I found who knew who Lee Morse was, had this to say:

“I have on tape two recordings of her that I think are great. They are the 1927 What Somebody Said, and a 1931 recording, It’s The Girl. Her yodel on [What Do I Care] What Somebody Said is phenomenal.”

Then, Bartlett came up with this wealth of information: Her name at birth was Lena Taylor. At some point she married Elmer Morse and Morse became her stage name. Another marriage followed, to Robert Downey, a cousin of Morton Downey. That marriage ended in divorce in the mid-30s. In the early 40s she married Ray Farese in Rochester, New York.

The clarinet work of a young (21) Benny Goodman is unmistakable on the It’s The Girl cut. He gets in a nice piece of solo work even though Morse was not known for giving sidemen such a featured spot in one of her musical arrangements.

Yes, she does have an almost unique voice. She was sometimes billed as “The Unique”. The

closest thing I have heard to Lee Morse is Edythe Wright, on a few of her recordings with the Tommy Dorsey Band. Early Lee Morse might also be compared to Irene Day. Day is best remembered for her work with the band of drummer Gene Krupa.

What is unique? Well, Kay Starr comes to mind. When you tune the radio in and catch Starr in the middle of a song you know immediately who you are hearing. If you catch a Lee Morse recording at a point where she is putting on a display of her tremolo or her yodel you also know just who you are listening to.

From the sound of her voice you might not picture her as being the physical size of Teresa Brewer, another “little girl with a big voice.” But, in fact, she was diminutive in stature. She weighed less than 100 pounds in her heyday.

In 1951 a Lee Morse recording called Don’t Even Change a Picture on the Wall was released to a cool reception. Cool most places, that is, except Paterson, New Jersey. There it became a smash hit on radio station WPAT. (Also a hit in her [then] hometown in NY I’m told.]

Disk jockey Dave Miller had a weekday country music show in Paterson and as he cued the new Morse recording he commented, “I don’t know if you will like this or not but I’ll play it once and let you decide.”

Much to Miller’s surprise, the listeners liked it. Was it the song they enjoyed or did they just want to needle Miller? Cards, letters and phone calls flooded in. All with the same message:

“Play that new Lee Morse record.”

None of the listeners had ever heard of Lee Morse before Miller popularized her via that one particular recording.

It became a hit, climbing to number one on the WPAT play list. The song was a generic tear jerker about someone who left home then wrote letters, promising to return someday. It was the last hit record for Lee Morse.

In 1949 RCA introduced a 45-RPM record player/changer. RCA’s record division, Victor, pushed vinyl records featuring the new speed. “Ask for the unbreakable record with the large hole in the center.” Initially, RCA sold the new 45-RPM record changers at cost.

The first record I ever bought was Don’t Even Change a Picture on the Wall. I went into a Paterson record shop and asked for a copy of it and the clerk said, “45 RPM or 78 RPM?”

I replied, “I don’t care. Whatever you have in stock.”

Fortunately, the clerk gave me the 45-RPM version. Fortunately as 78’s were on their way out and would soon be history. At the time I didn’t own a record player and had decided to buy one based on what kind of Lee Morse record I was able to obtain.

A week later I got, for about $12, an RCA 45 RPM changer that I wired into the amplifier and speaker of a table radio. It served me well for the next ten years.

Was I a big Lee Morse fan? No, I wasn’t. The record was really quite awful. (I thought then, not now.) I bought it to bug my father who had heard it on WPAT and remarked as to what a dud of a song it was. Of course I let on that I thought it was a stupendous recording destined to win an Academy Award or the Nobel Prize or some such high honor. I was just a teenager having some fun with my Dad via Lee Morse.

The tune was was on a black label Decca #9-27163 with Longing on the B side. Discographies list Pathe, Puritone, Perfect, Columbia, Grand Prix and Decca as her labels. Foreign labels included Actuelle, a Pathe subsidiary.

“The Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz”

has this to say about Morse:

“Female vocal stylist of 20s and 30s. Throaty, jazz-phrased, rather uninhibited style. Sometimes easy swinging style along Gene Austin lines with voice raised in a slight yodel. Extensive recording, often used outstanding musicians in the 30s.... Played Vaudeville for many years.”

Another reference (Brian Rust?) says that Morse was born in Tennessee, daughter of a minister.

Her stage debut was in Los Angeles in 1920. She played the Pantages circuit throughout the West for several years and was Raymond Hitchcock’s leading lady in Hitchy-Koo [sic]. She appeared in London at the Piccadilly theatre in 1926. “Personal problems” led to her retirement in the 1930s.

Found in BG On The Record, 4^th Printing, 1973: Lee Morse & Her Blue Grass Boys, July 8^th, 1931, New York, It’s The Girl. “B” side is I’m an Unemployed Sweetheart Looking For a Somebody to Love. Both sides feature Benny Goodman clarinet solos. Other Blue Grass Boys on the record are Mannie Klein, tpt; Tommy Dorsey, tbn; Irving Brodsky, piano; Eddie Lang, guitar.

Lee Morse did a lot of recording work. I’ll bet she did at almost as many disks as Glenn Miller. His total career output was 259 sides. She was in the business far longer than Miller. [Much additional Miller work survives via Camel Caravan radio show transcriptions, movie sound tracks, V-Disks, etc.]

In Time Magazine, December 27, 1954: “Died. Lee Morse, 50, blues-singing star of early radio, vocalist for the Blue Grass Boys in the 1920s and ‘30s, song writer (Shadows on the Wall), sister of Glenn Taylor, former left-wing Democratic U.S. Senator from Idaho; in Rochester, N.Y.” Time got her age wrong by four years.

In the New York Times, December 17^th, 1954: Rochester, N.Y., Dec. 16 (AP). Lee Morse, Singer Dies. Appeared on Stage and Radio. Composed Many Songs. Lee Morse, blues singer of the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties, died today. She was the wife of Ray Farese, communications operator for the city fire and police bureaus. Miss Morse starred in “Artists and Models” and Hitchy Coo” in New York in the Twenties. She started her radio career with “The Blue Grass Boys,” an orchestra that included Glenn Miller, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. She composed many songs, including Shadows on the Wall and Don’t Even Change a Picture on the Wall. Also surviving is Glenn Taylor, a brother, who was formerly the Democratic Senator from Idaho. He ran for Vice President on the Progressive ticket in 1948.

An LP album insert from “Benny Goodman, Collectors Gems 1929-1945.” Vocals by Annette Hanshaw, Lee Morse, others. “All but one [of 28 cuts] never before released on an LP.” Entry #6 is: It’s the Girl. Lee Morse, a star in the Twenties, had a semi-country style that sounds less strange today than it might have in 1940. BG stars, and the band includes Tommy Dorsey, Mannie Klein, Irving Brodsky on piano and pioneer guitarist Eddie Lang.” The record (which I don’t have) was published in about 1974 by Nostalgia Records (from Columbia masters) and marketed by the Nostalgia Book Club.

Another album, which I first thought was probably the same one as above is Sunbeam SB-111, “Benny Goodman Accompanies the Girls.” This latter album has four Lee Morse Cuts (not just one cut) so it’s different.

A third LP album found (a listing only) is a Columbia 3 disk set titled, “The Original Sounds of the 20’s” with an unknown number of Lee Morse cuts.

The first Lee Morse recording I have heard of was recorded on August 12^th, 1925 on the Pathe label. It’s Sweetman backed with Only This Time I’ll Be True. Pathe sold out to Columbia at the end of 1930 and Lee Morse began her association with Columbia. Morse recorded as: Lee Morse’s Blue Grass Boys, Lee Morse and Her Blue Grass Boys, The Blue Grass Boys (1926 recording without Lee Morse), Lee Morse’s Southern Serenaders, and once at least, as the Tampico Jazz Band. Personnel varied - Phil Napoleon, Red Nichols, Charlie Butterfield, the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, and other now great names appeared from time to time. One source says that Glenn Miller played trombone in a Morse group but I have my doubts about that. The Southern Serenaders is somewhat of a generic name as it was used in the recording studio by at least nine musical groups. For instance, Red Nichols Original Memphis Five used the name when moonlighting with record

companies they were not under regular contract with. When a song title was hot everyone wanted to get in on it. Here is an example: Five artists recorded It’s The Girl in June, July and August 1931. The first was Leo Reisman singing with his own orchestra on the Victor label. Next came Chuck Bullock’s vocal on Perfect with the Bob Haring Orchestra, on July 8^th. The Boswell Sisters did it for Brunswick, also on July 8^th, accompanied by the Dorsey Brothers. Over at Columbia (it’s still July 8^th!) Lee Morse did her version and one of the Blue Grass Boys was Tommy Dorsey. Tommy was on a roll and well acquainted with the tune because he did it a third time, in August, with the Fred Rich Orchestra (Elmer Feldkamp vocal). Eddie Lang, the guitar player, was featured on all three of the July 8^th sessions. One listing of her recordings shows It’s the Girl and I’m An Unemployed Sweetheart recorded on July 8^th, 1931 as her last Columbia session. Catalog number for that recording is 2497-D. Another source shows that record plus one more, Columbia 2530-D, Love Letters in the Sand backed with Mood Indigo, but no session date is given. It’s my hunch that 2530-D was done by someone else. Yet another source lists four Columbia sides of 1932; four Blue Bird sides of 1933; and a Decca session of March 2^nd, 1938. Two of the Decca cuts caught my eye: Shadows on the Wall with Morse credited as the author and Sing Me a Song of Texas. That 1938 session also resulted in two numbers recorded and rejected.

Fred Clark’s computer database shows an interesting relationship between the recordings of Lee Morse and those of Annett Hanshaw. Hanshaw, who’s long career started in 1926 when she was 15, also sang under the name Dotty Dare. Her real name wasn’t Hanshaw or Dare! The two singers recorded many of the same numbers, usually within a few weeks of each other but occasionally on the same day. Example: On February 20^th, 1931 they both recorded Walkin’ My Baby Back Home. Rube Bloom (piano) and Manny Klein (trumpet) played in Hanshaw’s four piece “small orchestra” and Morse’s “Blue Grass Boys” on both recordings.

Should you want to know more about Annett Hanshaw (and hear her music) go to: www.redhotjazz.com

There is a Lee Morse CD out. Sorry to say Don’t Even Change a Picture On the Wall isn’t on it and none of the great [infamous?] yodel songs are, either.

Check out EBay for Lee Morse Items. Here is a sample of what you might find:

“I have up for auction a great record(78) on the very dark maroon and gold Perfect label(brown wax), mid to later 20s. It is #12181 by the great Lee Morse, Vocal with Guitar accompaniment. The selections are "Lee's Lullaby" also written by her, and "All Alone"(Berlin). A truly unique style, probably well ahead of her time. The record looks almost brand new, little or no wear and hard to find a scuff or scratch. Labels and wax still very shiny and clean. Probably should give it excellent rating, but the pre-electric Perfect's don't have the clarity of sound that the later ones do. This one is truly as nice as one can get!”