Laurie Morgan 1926-2020
Simon Morgan
Friday, February 28, 2020
Rolling Stones’ sticksman and jazz lover Charlie Watts says of drummer Laurie Morgan, who has died aged 93: “Laurie was a major influence in the early days of bebop in Britain, and an inspiration for many British drummers.”
Self-taught Laurie played his first pro gigs in 1941, joining 14-year-old saxophonist Don Rendell in variety quartet The Rhythm Racketeers. He honed his timing working US camp shows, accompanying Jimmy Cagney’s dynamic song-and-dance act. In 1947, on the cloakroom gramophone at the Fullado Club, a tiny Soho cellar favoured by American servicemen, Laurie first heard Charlie Parker. “It was a clarion call,” he said. Aged 21, Laurie flew to New York, becoming Britain’s first jazzman to witness Bird and Dizzy Gillespie live.
From Ray Nance’s House of Note record store, Laurie brought home a trove of bebop 78s. Unknown before in Britain, these discs became required hearing for London’s wannabe modernists. In 1948, Laurie and 10 confederates founded Club Eleven, Britain’s seminal modern-jazz institution. Propelled by Laurie, Johnny Dankworth’s quintet shared the residency with Ronnie Scott’s group.
Laurie experimented and pioneered. Around 1960, he joined a loose collective comprising British beat poets, jazzmen, and future blues stars. Their New Departures happenings mixed improvised jazz and poetry, and toured colleges and jazz festivals. Laurie wanted a jazz that could speak the true British experience, evoking its places and history. In 1961, with tenorist Bobby Wellins, he composed Culloden, foreshadowing Stan Tracey’s better-known Under Milk Wood suite.
At the nascent National Theatre, from 1964 to 1976, Laurie was resident percussionist, then Assistant Musical Director, working on accompaniments for shows helmed by Sir Laurence Olivier. An easy performer, Laurie was often on stage, a drummer in a Shakespearean army or costumed band. He loved and learnt the Bard.
From 1975-2000, Morgan combined with pianist Iggy Quayle and bassist Coleridge Goode. An institution of the jazz underground, the Iggy Quayle Trio anchored all-comers sessions at Dingwalls in Camden, where punk-violinist Nigel Kennedy was one to join the jams.
In the 1980s, they managed their own Sunday stay at a North London bowling club. Lunchtime gigs were mini-festivals, family picnics and games spilling onto the grass. In 1985, the trio moved to the King’s Head, Crouch End – a residency Laurie’s son, Paul, holds to this day.