{"id":2627,"date":"2017-03-11T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2627"},"modified":"2024-01-23T09:03:49","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T14:03:49","slug":"king-jelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/king-jelly\/","title":{"rendered":"King Jelly&#8217;s Good Morning Irene Song (Bill Morrissey)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"King Jelly&#039;s Good Morning Irene Song\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/luhZ_W3mVZs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So there I was opening for Mose Allison at Palms Playhouse in Davis, California, back in 1983, and I wanted to play something appropriate for his audience and obviously couldn&#8217;t fall back on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/everybody-crying-mercy\/\">Everybody Cryin&#8217; Mercy<\/a>&#8230;&#8221; so I turned to Bill Morrissey.<\/p>\n<p>Bill was one of my closest friends at that point, and I was doing at least one of his songs in pretty much every set &#8212; usually &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/oil-money\/\">Oil Money<\/a>&#8221; or &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/texas-blues\/\">Texas Blues<\/a>,&#8221; but there were plenty of other options, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2636 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Bill-looking-cool.jpg?resize=239%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"239\" height=\"300\" \/>because his lyrics were so well crafted that I would hear him sing something a couple or three times and find I knew it all the way through, without making any effort to learn it. (The most striking example being his early masterpiece, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/small-town-river\/\">Small Town on the River<\/a>.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1980s Bill was becoming pretty well known as a singer-songwriter in the post-Dylan mode, but one of the things that brought us together was his affection for old blues and jazz. He could play decent clarinet, sax, and even a bit of trumpet, and he&#8217;d fronted a ragtag aggregation in Newmarket, New Hampshire, (sometimes called the Mental Retreads) that played a unique country\/jazz\/folk\/hipster pastiche. He&#8217;d been influenced by Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Beatles, but also by Slim Gaillard,\u00a0 Dan Hicks, and Tom Waits &#8212; not to mention Dave Van Ronk, whose shared friendship and mentorship originally brought us together.<\/p>\n<p>Until he died in 2011, I&#8217;d get a call from Bill every year or so complaining about how bored he was by the folk scene and announcing that his new album would have jazzier stuff, including some of the old New Hampshire jive numbers &#8212; maybe &#8220;Sweaty Woman&#8221; or &#8220;Morrissey Takes a Dive&#8221; (which he recorded with the Retreads, and I&#8217;ve posted from <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/elijahwald\/morrissey-takes-dive\">their very lo-fi cassette<\/a>), or his regional vout masterpiece, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candlepin-swing\/\">Candlepin Swing<\/a>.&#8221; He&#8217;d be practicing clarinet and talking with horn players who could sit in &#8212; his last album included a song he wrote for a collaboration with a sax player he&#8217;d found who&#8217;d toured with Billie Holiday, &#8220;He&#8217;s Not From Kansas City&#8221; &#8212; but then the album would come out, playing it safe again, with a mellow singer-songwriter or soft rock vibe.<\/p>\n<p>I loved and admired Bill, and I&#8217;m glad he had some success on the singer-songwriter scene, but I wish he&#8217;d taken more artistic chances after the early days, and written more stuff like &#8220;King Jelly&#8217;s Good Morning Irene Song.&#8221; I&#8217;m guessing this was written under the influence of Dan Hicks, whom we both liked, and our friend Geoff Bartley recorded a fine version with Mike Turk on harmonica.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2637 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Elijah-Wald-rayograph-blog.jpg?resize=317%2C248&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"317\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Elijah-Wald-rayograph-blog.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Elijah-Wald-rayograph-blog.jpg?resize=300%2C235&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px\" \/>I have lots more about Bill in other posts, but meanwhile, getting back to my story, I played this for Mose&#8217;s crowd and it went over gangbusters, as well it should have:<\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\nI&#8217;m standing on a corner thinkin&#8217; &#8217;bout all the women in France<br \/>\nOn Guggenheim grants,<br \/>\nWhen a guy come struttin&#8217; down the street<br \/>\nLike he was tryin&#8217; to shake loose<br \/>\nA broken roll of change from the leg of his pants&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So there I was opening for Mose Allison at Palms Playhouse in Davis, California, back in 1983, and I wanted to play something appropriate for his audience and obviously couldn&#8217;t fall back on &#8220;Everybody Cryin&#8217; Mercy&#8230;&#8221; so I turned to Bill Morrissey. Bill was one of my closest friends at that point, and I was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/king-jelly\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">King Jelly&#8217;s Good Morning Irene Song (Bill Morrissey)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>King Jelly&#039;s Good Morning Irene Song (Bill Morrissey) - 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It's like a Raymond Carver story set to music, the kind of songwriting Bill did\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Bill-Morrissey-with-Studs-Terkel.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2938,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/rosie\/","url_meta":{"origin":2627,"position":1},"title":"Rosie (Bill Morrissey, with a story about Monte)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another from Bill Morrissey, written after he spent a summer working on a purse seiner out of Ketchikan, Alaska. That used to be a pretty common thing; I knew a bunch of musicians who went to Alaska to work the fishing and save some money to tide them\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Monte-photo-by-Maryse-Zeidler.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2187,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/oil-money\/","url_meta":{"origin":2627,"position":2},"title":"Oil Money (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 1980s, I rarely played a set that didn't include a Bill Morrissey song, and this was the one I sang most frequently -- in part because Bill didn't do it all that often, so I could kind of lay claim to it. Unlike a lot of Bill\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"bill-morrissey-lp","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Bill-Morrissey-LP-300x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2230,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/texas-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2627,"position":3},"title":"Texas Blues (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another song I did at that Passim Coffeehouse show in March 1983. I had just got my first mention in the Boston Globe, where Jeff McLaughlin called me \"a superb fingerpicker and distinctive singer\" -- \"distinctive\" being a word reviewers use when they're aware of problems but trying\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"jeff-mclaughlin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Jeff-McLaughlin-196x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5634,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/flying-dutchman\/","url_meta":{"origin":2627,"position":4},"title":"Flying Dutchman (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Bill Morrissey sounded like an old man long before he was one, which was weird, because he looked like a teenager long after he was one.\u00a0 When I met him, he was about thirty years old, fresh-faced, with the semi-long hair that went with being a high school student in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/older-bill-morrissey.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1943,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/small-town-river\/","url_meta":{"origin":2627,"position":5},"title":"Small Town on the River (Bill Morrissey)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When I got back from Europe toward the end of 1979, I set out to make a reputation on the US folk scene. It was exhaustingly slow going, but Dave Van Ronk was helpful as ever and gave me an enthusiastic introduction to Len Rothenberg, who had a club in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Bill Morrissey LP","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Bill-Morrissey-LP-300x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4916,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions\/4916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}