By Gary Lee Stuber
“Playing music is the best paid vacation you will ever have,” John Morris of Ivydale chuckles when he says that. He should know. He has been playing music since he was ten. He masters the guitar, banjo, violin, and mandolin, and if that is not enough, he writes music too. John lives in Ivydale in a home that was once his grandmothers. He has as many as 70 antique vehicles and a passion for old cars – but his passion for music is greater.
Born in 1948 to Dallas and Anna Morris, who were both schoolteachers, his life has always been influenced by music. His mother and father both played music. They both were influenced by music in their homes growing up and both loved Jimmy Rogers, among many others. His father played guitar and banjo. His mother played guitar and finger picked. He had an oldest brother born stillborn, and a brother two years older than himself, so that would make him the baby.
John probably picked up an instrument before he was eight. But it would be a couple of years “before you could recognize what I was playing was music,” he said. He hasn’t looked back since. Words alone are not adequate to hear the talent in this man. He has a huge presence on YouTube and must be heard to appreciate.
“My brother David and I played together for seven years. We toured all over the place. The east coast, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and even California.” All around him in his living room, on walls, on lamps, and on cabinets, are hundreds and hundreds of various colored ribbons that not only attest to his talent for winning contests, but provide lucrative proof that music for John really was the best paid vacation he ever had.
In 2020 John received the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts when he was chosen as one of the 2020 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows. He was the first West Virginian chosen in 20 years. The prize included a trip to Washington DC to play at the Kennedy Center in front of Presidents. But Covid ruined even that. He would not be invited to Washington until 2023, but he arrived with 40 others and with a crowd so large, they decided not to hold a concert that year.
“I have held three business licenses with the State of West Virginia,” said Morris. “I became a carpenter and contractor. The second was for my music business. The third was J.D. Morris Enterprises. I owned a fleet of coal trucks and contracted with the mines for ten years. At one point I had 34 employees.” If he was still healthy enough at 76 to work in one of these businesses he still would. He needs surgery on his back that he cannot get. So even his music festival and concert appearances have diminished.
“I was a good contractor. I have built many houses. My last job was a total bathroom rebuild for a man who wanted released from a nursing home but needed a bathroom that would supply his needs. I built a showcase handicapped bathroom.” He laughs when he says, “I used to have a card that said, ‘I Build Shacks of Distinction.’”
If there is another area in his life where John excels, it is his music writing. Sometimes, he just takes original songs, short and sweet as they are, and adds new versus and rearranged the order to make them sing more like stories and ballads, and his humor in them is impeccable. He sang “Jack of Diamonds” and “Cherry River Line” from his rocking chair, and made these old familiar songs both new and refreshing. And in his 50 some years of gathering music he has tale after tale to tell. He used to have a television show on WOAY Television out of Oak Hill. Fifteen episodes aired. He also credits Doc Frank Smith, Ivydale’s most remembered physician, with teaching him how to play some of the finest and best historical tunes on the violin. There is a photo he carries in his violin case of the local Odd Fellows lodge in 1959. On the right side of the first row stands his grandfather, O.M. Morris ,and on the left side of the front row is Doc Smith. The entire photo reads like a who’s who of local legends. But those two gentlemen in particular had a tremendous influence on his life.
John’s mother attended Glenville State College, and while she was there she wrote an essay how she lamented that the rich Appalachian music heritage was disappearing and how it needed preserved. Her professor, Dr. Gainer, saw the merit in it and between the two of them created the first West Virginia State Folk Festival at Glenville. He had an uncle who had a team of horses in the early 1920’s who sledded mine and gas well equipment from the train depot at Ivydale. He could write a book just on family alone. And while we live in an information-rich society that posts regularly even about meals we eat, it is somewhat disheartening that much of the rich heritage, and particularly the traditional music that John has amassed, may someday disappear. John has much to tell and no article could do justice to this with words alone. Please take the time to find him on the web and listen to some of West Virginia’s finest music ever performed.
