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Joe Morris
Enthusiasm takes sometimes divinatory proportions, and about the guitar playing of Morris we can read in the press afirmations like “if Ornette Coleman were Jim Hall, he would be Joe Morris” (Gary Giddins, The Village Voice) or “...the future of the instrument” (Ben Watson, Hi Fi News).
Truth is that this Connnecticut born living in Boston is one of the great inovators dealing with the fretted six strings. He uses fingerpicking techniques more usual in country-folk music and in the Delta acoustic blues tradition, and with these he developed a pointillistic aproach characterised by a great profusion of notes and chords, produced freely but with a structural sense of dynamics.
His very personal style is uncommonly aware of the ethnical string musics of the world, specially the West African one, be it plucked or bowed. Playing an electric guitar with no pedal effects, soon he turned a requested presence in combos with such different people as violinists Billy Bang and Malcolm Goldstein, drummers Andrew Cyrille and Hamid Drake, reed players Joe McPhee and Joe Maneri, bassists Peter Kowald and William Parker, pianists Matthew Shipp and Borah Bergman and trumpeters Roy Campbell Jr. and Lawrence “Butch” Morris. In what concerns trumpets, is important to signal that Joe Morris played recently in London with a Portuguese group lead by Sei Miguel, pointed by critics as “the best kept secret” in our national creative music.
Since 2000, Morris has the double bass as second instrument, and even if he’s not a revolutionary with the upright fiddle as he is with the guitar, he also established himself as a very competent bassist.
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Joe Morris's records on clean feed
