Kenneth Morris

28 August 1917—1 February 1989

Kenneth Morris, Martin and Morris Music Company Records, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

KENNETH MORRIS was born 28 August 1917 in Jamaica, NY (part of Queens, NYC), son of Ettuila White and John Morris. Morris studied music at the Manhattan Conservatory of Music and was initially drawn to jazz. In 1934, Morris and his jazz band traveled to perform at the Century of Progress Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago. Due to illness, he elected to stay in Chicago to recuperate. His skills as an arranger and his ability to notate music came to the attention of Lillian Bowles, and in 1937 he was hired into the Lillian Bowles House of Music publishing company. While there, he arranged Bowles’ song “God’s gonna separate the wheat from the tares,” which was recorded by Mahalia Jackson in 1937. Shortly after joining Bowles, he was introduced to Rev. Clarence Cobb, who offered him a position as organist and choir director of Chicago’s famed First Church of Deliverance. The church had a strong radio ministry, which gave Morris a platform to promote gospel music. In this capacity, Morris especially had the distinction of introducing the new Hammond organ to black church music:

Reverend Clarence Cobb was looking for a new organ for his church. . . . One of our large stores here, Lyon and Healy, was selling the Hammond organ. They had just come out with what they called an electric organ, a Hammond organ, which was entirely different in concept in every way from the Wurlitzer organ. . . . I wanted nothing else. It sold itself. People came from all over just to hear me play that organ. Oh yes, it swept! It swept! Instantaneously! I kept experimenting with it, and I was getting all kinds of [sounds] out of it that had never been heard by anyone else before—so much so that Lyon and Healy hired me to exhibit the organ.[1]

Morris is also credited with introducing the Hammond organ to the gospel recording industry when he accompanied Mahalia Jackson on the 1947 recording of “Move on up a little higher.” Rev. Cobb privately funded the printing of one of Morris’s first songs, “Heaven Bells,” in 1937, and it was distributed through the church. Morris’s song “I’ll be a servant for the Lord,” written in 1939 and sung by the Wings Over Jordan Choir, became a nationwide hit.[2]

His job at First Church of Deliverance brought him into contact with singer Sallie Martin (1895–1988). In 1940, they joined to form their own publishing company and music store, Martin and Morris Music Studio, with Morris acting primarily on the publishing side, while Martin used her group, the Sallie Martin Singers, to promote the music. Through this venture, they published the first known arrangement of “Just a closer walk with thee” in 1940. In the 1940s, Morris’s involvement with the annual National Baptist Convention meetings brought him notoriety in Baptist circles. He used that platform to introduce and promote one of his most enduring hymns, “Yes, God is real.” Unlike their main publishing competitors, Martin and Morris did not limit themselves to publishing only their own material; they served as publishers for other major gospel artists and composers, including Lucie Campbell, Sam Cooke, and Rev. James Cleveland. According to historian Clarence Boyer, “the Martin and Morris firm was the only publishing house to solicit and publish songs of most of the established and new composers during gospel music’s golden age, 1945–1965.”[3] In the 1950s, Morris expanded his business to include non-musical fare for churches, including his Choir Manual and Officers Guide (1977). Martin & Morris acquired the catalog of Morris’s former employer Lillian Bowles in 1959. Sallie Martin sold her interests in the company in 1973. Morris bought out the catalogs of Roberta Martin and Theodore Frye around 1978.

As the music landscape changed, gospel music became disseminated more easily and more widely through records, and consumers became less reliant on purchasing scores. In addition, as gospel labels grew and were managed by larger record companies, music scoring was handled in-house. These factors led Morris’s company to shift toward being a music store and distributor rather than a publishing company. At the time of his death in 1989, his business at 43rd Street and Indiana Avenue was described by his wife Necie as “the last black gospel music store still going in Illinois.”[4] Necie continued to operate the business until 1993, at which time much of the company’s materials were acquired by the Smithsonian. She died in 2005.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
29 January 2020

  1. Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Kenneth Morris: I’ll Be a Servant for the Lord,” We’ll Understand It Better By and By (1992), pp. 337–338.

  2. Reagon (1992), p. 336.

  3. Horace Clarence Boyer, “Kenneth Morris: Composer and Dean of Black Gospel Music Publishers,” We’ll Understand It Better By and By (1992), p. 313.

  4. Kenan Heise, “Kenneth Morris; Had last black gospel music store,” Obituary, Chicago Tribune (5 Feb. 1989): https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-02-05-8903030112-story.html

Featured Hymns:

Just a closer walk with thee (arranger)
Yes, God is real

see also:

Peace Be Still

Publications of Hymns and Songs:

For a partial chronological list of Morris’ compositions, see Horace Boyer (1992), p. 315.

For lists of compositions and publications, see Manuscripts & Archives below and WorldCat.

Manuscripts & Archives:

Martin and Morris Music Company Papers, Chicago Public Library:
https://www.chipublib.org/fa-martin-and-morris-music-company-papers/ 

Martin and Morris Music Company Records, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution:
https://sova.si.edu//record/NMAH.AC.0492

Luvenia A. George Collection (3.1: Chicago Composers and Publishers, 1905–1983), Indiana University:
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/findingaids/view?docId=VAC1952&link.id=VAC1952-00513

Columbia College Chicago, Center for Black Music Research, Gospel Sheet Music Collection:
https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=cmbr_guides

Related Resources:

Kenan Heise, “Kenneth Morris; Had last black gospel music store,” Obituary, Chicago Tribune (5 Feb. 1989):
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-02-05-8903030112-story.html

Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Kenneth Morris: I’ll Be a Servant for the Lord,” We’ll Understand It Better By and By (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1992), pp. 332–333.

Horace Clarence Boyer, “Kenneth Morris: Composer and Dean of Black Gospel Music Publishers,” We’ll Understand It Better By and By (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1992), pp. 318–323.

Horace Clarence Boyer, How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel (Washington, DC: Elliott and Clark, 1995).

Robert Marovich, “Kenneth Morris,” Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music (NY: Routledge, 2005), pp. 264–265.

Robert Marovich, A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015).

Kay Norton, “Yes, [Gospel] Is Real: Half a Century with Chicago’s Martin and Morris Company,” Journal of the Society for American Music, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Nov. 2017), 420–451: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196317000360