Yesterday, Today and Bruce Morrow:

“Cousin” Bruce Morrow/ photo © 2012 by Howard B. Leibowitz

Brooklyn Roads was honored to have a conversation with Radio Hall of Fame inductee and DJ legend, “Cousin” Bruce Morrow. A New York radio icon at stations WINS, WABC, WNBC and WCBS “Cousin Brucie,” now plays the music he loves on Sirius XM satellite radio. His  shows,Cousin Brucie’s Saturday Night Party-Live  and Cruisin’ With Cousin Brucie  are on Sirius’  “60s on 6” and both have playlists that include a healthy dose of Brooklyn rockers Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Jay & the Americans, The Crystals and one of his personal favorites, Little Anthony & The Imperials. “Anthony [Gourdine] is one of many artists who come on my show,” he says. “They’re all my kids. We’re still a family.”

It’s not all about oldies with Bruce. “I try to keep up with what’s happening now,” he says, “I’m glad about the resurgence of R&B.” Indeed, he was gratified to learn that Brooklyn artists such as Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are keeping old-school soul alive and that oldies shows with groups like Kenny Vance and the Planotones, another local act, still draw big crowds. That his native borough is at the forefront of such developments doesn’t surprise him because, as he puts it, “Brooklyn is a very magical place…very together,” adding nostalgically, “Brooklyn is home to me.”

That Little Brown Box

Bruce vividly recalls growing up in “a very diverse neighborhood” in Sheepshead Bay, going to school at PS 206 (and later, James Madison High School), and getting good and dirty playing in vacant lots. “That time of my life was very important to me,” he says. Like most kids in the 1940s, he also listened to shows on the radio, but otherwise took this media for granted. That changed on April 12, 1945.

“The first time I paid attention to the radio, really listened, was when I came home from school one day and noticed my mother and all her friends sitting on the porch crying. The radio was saying, ‘The President of the United States, FDR, has died.’ I realized that little brown box marked ‘Philco’ could make my mother cry. That’s when I first recognized the power and magic of radio.”

He never dreamed that one day he’d be a famous part of that magic.  “In fact, I was a very shy kid,” he says, but an English teacher thought the 12-year-old Bruce had some talent and encouraged him to try out for a play about dental hygiene. “I won the part — I played a cavity,” he laughs. It may have been an inauspicious start for a future Radio Hall of Famer, but, “I found I loved relating to the audience and my shyness left me overnight.”

Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Stay

Bruce’s destiny was assured in 1954 when Alan Freed, a Cleveland DJ who not only gave rock ‘n’ roll its name, but promoted it fearlessly, came to New York.  “He was our hero,” he says. “He was playing rock ‘n’ roll and doing shows, and the music [brought] a wonderful change to our lives.  It was about us and we related to it. When I started listening to this music, I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

Bruce speaks fondly of his forays to local record stores on Kings Highway. “They had listening rooms where you could play a record and then buy it if you decided you really liked it. Today you have the Internet where you can only audition 30 seconds of a record before you buy it. It has me a little upset because I like to be able to ‘kick the tires.’ I want to touch an album, even a CD — it doesn’t have to be a piece of black shellac.”

Although it was the likes of Bill Haley, Fats Domino and the early Doo-Wop groups that would stir his passion, the first piece of “shellac” he ever bought was a 45 rpm EP of Mario Lanza.  “I used to listen to his show on the radio and I loved his instrument — his voice. I’m very eclectic when it comes to my music.”


The Most Beautiful Instrument

He singles out the Everly Brothers as an example of the era’s great harmony music. “It’s so simple and so easy to remember. When you can hum or sing part of a song the first time you hear it, you know it’s something special. It wasn’t so technically cluttered that you couldn’t hear the singing.” In his book Doo-Wop, he discusses how this great vocal tradition was born of financial necessity. “These artists, most of them black, worked with ‘kitchen record companies’ owned by relatives. They couldn’t afford big productions and instrumentations, so they had to rely on the best instrument in the world – the human voice.”

Bruce believes that, since the late 1970s, too many artists over-rely on technology and have forgotten that “the human voice is the most beautiful of all instruments when used properly.” Bruce has nothing against technology, in fact he loves it, “but not when it interferes with or supersedes the human experience.”


But Sirius-ly Folks.

Fast forward to the present, where technology enables Bruce to “keep our music alive” and share it with the whole world. “My Sirius audience is huge [because] people are very hungry for this music,” he says. “They’re not getting it on terrestrial radio, where the programmers have decided if you’re over 48, you might as well be dead and buried.”

Bruce’s place among the world’s most recognizable voices was confirmed a few years back with his contribution to Across the Universe. “I got a huge amount of reaction from that film — and I was just a radio voice in a taxi,” he says. “Right away people know who the voice is. It’s nice to know that people appreciate it.”

When he’s not on the air, doing voiceovers, making public appearances or writing (including his latest book isRock ‘n’ Roll: …And the Beat Goes On), Bruce works tirelessly for Variety Children’s Charity. “They take care of kids with physical, emotional and social problems,” he says, adding emphatically that “All the money goes to these kids — it doesn’t disappear into administrative costs. I’ve been a very lucky man and feel privileged to give back with my time and energy.”