Morris, Lawrence “Butch,”
Morris, Lawrence “Butch,”
Morris, Lawrence “Butch,” American singer; b. Long Beach, Calif., Feb. 10, 1947. He played with such West Coast legends as Bobby Bradford, Horace Tapscott, and Charles Moffett. Moffett led a rehearsal band at an Oakland joint called Club 7, and sometimes would put compositions aside and cue the ensemble through group improvisations in a manner Morris had never seen before, slowing them down, or speeding them up, or giving accents for the band to play. Moving to N.Y. in 1976, he joined the energy jams on the “loft scene,” where the music raged for hours, sometimes leaving him concerned that there was no way to preserve, or even to repeat in that very performance, the passing moments of brilliance. Teaching in Rotterdam, he began to build on Moffett’s gestural language, progressing toward his first full-blown conduction in 1985. He continues to expand his conductions (they numbered 50 as of early 1995, when he released his opus conduction collection). He also worked on the Robert Altman film, Kansas City and is collaborating with Murray, folk-blues singer Taj Mahal, and former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir on a Broadway musical about the life of Negro baseball league star Satchel Paige.
Discography
Current Trends in Racism in Modern America(1986); Homeing(1989); Dust to Dust(1991); Burning Cloud(1996).
— W. Kim Heron