Biography
A legendary presence in the formative era of North Carolina’s music community, pianist Loumell Morgan entered the world in the state capital and may have been no older than fifteen when he first turned professional inside an ensemble directed by C.S. Belton. Even before that engagement he had already appeared with the Capital City Aces; during the late thirties he absorbed the arts of swing and showmanship from bandleaders Baron Lee and Tiny Bradshaw, proved equal to the unpredictable antics of Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart, and by the forties maintained a thriving piano trio of his own. Although he never attained the visibility of fellow trio leaders such as Ahmad Jamal or Erroll Garner, Morgan secured consistent club work and recording sessions issued under his own name across several decades. By the seventies his performances were concentrated almost entirely within the greater New York City area, yet his inventive spark remained undiminished.
Listeners drawn to jazz that pairs musical surprise with theatrical flair still discover Morgan’s economical keyboard style—defined by an unwillingness to add any unnecessary note—on the surviving Slim & Slam sides. He belonged to the original Flat Foot Floogie Boys, the group formed as a concession to censors offended by the implications of “flat-foot floozie”; the hit title “Flat Floot Floogie (With the Floy-Floy)” likewise softened the original lyric. The selections he recorded for himself on Sunbeam in Chicago and Atlantic during the early fifties carried forward the playful irreverence of Slim & Slam as well as the boisterous manner of Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan, and he even revisited several numbers associated with those hitmakers. His programs encompassed standards, rhythm-and-blues novelties, and Americana, echoing the broad repertoire he had known since his earliest professional years. What distinguished him was an unpredictable equilibrium between sentiment and humor that persisted throughout his career. On the stage of New York City’s Apollo Theater, a venue especially hospitable to his ensembles, he delivered the traditional buoyancy of “Dark Town Strutters’ Ball,” let “Old Man River” flow past any risk of sentimentality, and generated an enduring demonstration of rhythmic interplay in “Blues in the Night.” His treatment of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is regarded as an early instance of musical deconstruction. His given name occasionally appears in print as “Laumel.”
Listeners drawn to jazz that pairs musical surprise with theatrical flair still discover Morgan’s economical keyboard style—defined by an unwillingness to add any unnecessary note—on the surviving Slim & Slam sides. He belonged to the original Flat Foot Floogie Boys, the group formed as a concession to censors offended by the implications of “flat-foot floozie”; the hit title “Flat Floot Floogie (With the Floy-Floy)” likewise softened the original lyric. The selections he recorded for himself on Sunbeam in Chicago and Atlantic during the early fifties carried forward the playful irreverence of Slim & Slam as well as the boisterous manner of Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan, and he even revisited several numbers associated with those hitmakers. His programs encompassed standards, rhythm-and-blues novelties, and Americana, echoing the broad repertoire he had known since his earliest professional years. What distinguished him was an unpredictable equilibrium between sentiment and humor that persisted throughout his career. On the stage of New York City’s Apollo Theater, a venue especially hospitable to his ensembles, he delivered the traditional buoyancy of “Dark Town Strutters’ Ball,” let “Old Man River” flow past any risk of sentimentality, and generated an enduring demonstration of rhythmic interplay in “Blues in the Night.” His treatment of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is regarded as an early instance of musical deconstruction. His given name occasionally appears in print as “Laumel.”