Ella Mae Morse

Among the era’s most gifted yet underappreciated singers, Ella Mae Morse fused jazz, country, pop, and R&B, at moments edging so near the emerging sound that would later be labeled rock & roll. Before turning fourteen she seized an early shot at major exposure after Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra arrived in Dallas for an engagement at the Adolphus Hotel; she promptly requested an audition. The outfit happened to be searching for a replacement female singer without her knowledge. Accepting her and her mother’s assertion that she was nineteen, Dorsey took her on, only to dismiss her once a school-board letter arrived asserting his legal responsibility for her welfare. In 1942 she entered former Dorsey pianist Freddie Slack’s ensemble and, still just seventeen, helped record “Cow Cow Boogie,” Capitol Records’ inaugural gold single. Solo sessions began the next year. Although the discs remained reliably strong and moved respectably, Morse never built a large audience. She stepped away from the studio in 1957 and passed away from respiratory failure on October 16, 1999.