Buddy hiccupped his way to stardom. Elvis rocked out in his blue suede shoes. John, Paul, George, and Ringo started a revolution.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for – well – your entire life, you’re at least somewhat acquainted with these song legends. Their timeless sound will carry on for generations and generations to come. They are some of the most influential figures in the history of pop-culture, having developed rock and roll, forever changing the way we listen to music.
But where did their influence come from? How did this incomparable style of music come about?
Forget your conventional history course when you register for Craig Morrison’s Rock & Roll and its Roots, where musical foundations are explored and it’s not an uncommon trend to break out into song at any given moment (musically-challenged students need not fear; this course is designed for those outside of the Music Program).
Morrison brings his own passion for music into the classroom, a passion that enveloped him when he was a young child growing up in Victoria and has shown no sign of letting him out of its grasp. Intrigued by the pumping of the pedals, like “watching a ghost play,” on the family’s player piano, he became familiar with a collection of old songs. Though he’s managed a rare feat by turning his love of music into a livelihood, he says that back in his adolescent days, it was simply the trend.
“The high school band movement was much stronger than it is now and we [joined] the high school band because every kid [joined] the high school band. And when The Beatles came . I picked up a guitar because everybody picked up a guitar. So it didn’t immediately present itself as something I could do for a living.”
Once the time came to choose a path, however, Morrison stuck to what he knew best.
“When I got to be about 18 I started to think more about what excited me the most and what direction I wanted to go in and I was able to go to music school in Boston. That’s one thing I’m really thankful for.”
Morrison, who finally emerged from York University as an ethnomusicologist, says of his job, “I’m interested in not just what the music sounds like but why it sounds the way it does.”
With two books under his belt, the Rock and Roll volume of the encyclopedia set American Popular Music Collection and Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and its Makers, which functions as a required reading for his class, Morrison may just know a thing or two in his field.
And evidently, you really can’t have too much of a good thing. Morrison is involved in not one, not two, but three different bands. You can imagine his discography.
He joined Vintage Wine several years ago, a party-playing retro band that specializes in music from the 1950s to 1980s.
He is also involved in a harmonious duo called the Never-Be Brothers.
“We’re like the Everly Brothers, but not quite,” chuckles Morrison of the group’s clever title. “The duo is for the love of singing and harmonies.
“Our record has a bit of the old standard, a bit of The Beatles kind of era and some of the country classics. If you trace a line, The Beatles sing the way they sing because the Everly Brothers and groups like that sang like that from the country tradition. We’re kind of putting all that back together,” a choice he says came naturally at their venue, The Wheel Club, and more specifically, the club’s successful Hillbilly Night.
Then there is The Momentz. Morrison co-formed the band in 1985 after becoming tired of playing the “wedding circuit” and wanting to play more original material, the new group functioning as his creative outlet.
“We concentrated on just original music but of course we didn’t get too much work so little by little we started introducing other types of music. But The Momentz always had a more artistic side. We played either our own songs or songs that we felt like doing but didn’t feel obligated to do and we could do them any way we wanted.”
They have since stopped playing regularly, but reunite once a year in an annual performance.
On top of that, Morrison does volunteer work once a week singing and playing music for patients in the Palliative Care Unit of the Montreal General Hospital, a gesture he says is rewarding not just for the patients.
“I think any kind of volunteer work is very rewarding. I think society needs all it can get.”
“I’ve been in rooms where you can feel like death is right there; it’s coming tonight or tomorrow. I’ll just try to play something that they know and they like.”
“One of the most touching things I’ve ever seen was a man literally dying today or tomorrow … and at one point I actually saw his toe moving in time to the music. The power of music [goes] right to the end. [All the volunteers] are experiencing something extremely poignant and that brings us together too.”
And in addition to the classroom he occupies at Concordia, Morrison offers courses for fun, and private music lessons.
“It’s a busy life. It has its ups and downs, but it’s the life I chose and the life I enjoy.”
The Momentz’ annual concert will take place at Concordia’s Oscar Peterson Concert Hall this Friday, Feb. 2, a date that holds great significance in the music world.
“The first [concert we played on that date] was just total chance but every one of them has been the first weekend of February and I very quickly realized, ‘wait a sec, this is the day when the music was supposed to have died,” says Morrison of the anniversary that provoked Don McLean to write American Pie, the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death.
Craig Morrison plays the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall Friday Feb. 2, 8 p.m. 7141 Sherbrooke St. W.
