Death of renowned choirmaster Eddie Morrison

Mar 4 2008 Eddie Morrison Jnr

In his 90th Year, Eddie Morrison, musician, inspirational music teacher, conductor, Musical Director and celebrated Choirmaster of St Joseph’s, Blantyre and St Cuthbert’s Burnbank, died on 25 February in Hairmyres Hospital after a short illness.

Eddie was born on the 24 May 1918 the 7th of 10 children born to Hannah Monaghan and Thomas Morrison, a Burnbank Coal Hewer.

He was soon recognised as a prodigious musical talent and at the age of only 12 became the organist for St Cuthbert’s, Burnbank where his father was choirmaster, a position which he himself was to fill on his own father’s retiral.

Thereafter, he transferred to St Joseph’s, Blantyre, where he was the Choirmaster for over 30 years. The Choir of St Joseph’s soon grew in reputation as one of the finest Church Choirs in the diocese if not the country.

Eddie would always claim, though, that he truly learned his trade as a musician at St. Cuthbert’s Parochial Hall on Sunday nights when, as barely a teenager, he was the resident pianist for the scores of wannabe Al Jolsen and Al Bowlys from all parts of Lanarkshire and Glasgow who would plonk their dog-eared scraps of music in front of the quivering 13 year-old and tell him “That’s ma tune, son, but ah’ only sing the first bit of it in G and the rest in A flat”. As he warmed up to sing ‘The Very Thought of You’ he tried to find the first note and asked Eddie, “Hey son, does that note sound like ‘The’ to you?” 

Following what for him was, by his own admission, a good war spent largely arranging and leading a military band in Shropshire, Eddie went off to work as a Big Band musician and arranger for Butlin's in Filey near Scarborough and was so successful that he was offered a position at the Company’s Head Office in Oxford St, London.

The Fat Cat Promoters and fellow musicians were truly amazed when he turned their handsome offer down citing prior commitment to Post Graduate Teachers Training at Jordanhill and romantic ties with his then sweetheart, Margaret Tonner, who wouldn’t dream of uprooting herself from her beloved Burnbank to go to Blantyre, never mind London.

His first teaching position was to be in Larkhall Academy in 1948 where, by dint of begging, stealing and borrowing of various instruments, he formed Lanarkshire’s first School Orchestra.  Furthermore, through an imaginative allegiance with a former fellow undergraduate student from RSAMD, he actually pioneered peripatetic instrumental tuition in Lanarkshire.

Eddie’s imaginative Head Teacher agreed to pay his colleague the handsome fee of 1/6d to instruct 4 students in Violin. Shortly afterwards the number had risen to 12 and she cut her own fee to 1/- because it was such a joy.

Thereafter, literally thousands of young men and women in Larkhall, Our Lady’s High School in Mothewell and latterly, St Patrick’s High School in Coatbridge, fell under the inspirational influence of Eddie Morrison leaving most with wonderful memories and a life-long love of music while for some, it was to be the springboard to highly-successful careers in the world of music- two of Eddie’s most celebrated alumni were John Pitcaithley, Course Director of Music at Glasgow University’s Education Department, and Pat Doyle, composer of many internationally-acclaimed film scores including, of course,  Harry Potter.

Throughout his life, Eddie devoted his professional energies tirelessly to endless musical enterprises in and out of school and everything he touched turned to gold. To him the word Amateur only meant that you didn’t receive financial remuneration- in every other respect, he demanded and exacted the highest professional standards from school pupils and aspiring adult divas alike.

In partnership with Beryl Dixon from D’Oyle Carte, he led the Our Lady’s High School Light Opera Society to triumph in the International Waterford Festival in 1975 with The Gypsy Baron. The fact is, they should have won the top award two years earlier in 1973 when the performance of The Gondoliers was an outstanding success but it wasn’t regarded as protocol in Waterford for a company to walk in on their debut appearance and sweep the board.

As Ray Lunny of the Society explained, “It was amazing. At one point following the Cachuk,  Bill Tulips, the Grand Inquisitor came on to launch into the next number but had to go off again because the audience wouldn’t stop applauding and were demanding an encore of the Cachuka. The judges didn’t know where to look. The whole situation was unheard off but we still couldn’t win. Bottom line was, Ye had tae earn yir stripes”. 

He later became the Musical Director for The East Kilbride G&S Light Opera Society and some of their greatest productions were performed under his baton.   There were countless of Eddie’s School Choirs, Orchestras and individual instrumentalists who swept the board in local and national competitions.

But his legacy is not measured in the number of formal achievements or awards but in the sheer love of music he transmitted to friends, family and all who had the good fortune to engage him in musical conversation or, better still, to actually hear him play his beloved piano from which he was inseparable.

When recovering from a serious heart attack 20 years ago, he was instructed to commit to a programme of tedious physiotherapy. After 3 sessions he told the hapless physio a story, “Listen”,  he said, “When I as in the army, my trumpet player was a mathematician and he came to me one day and said Eddie, did you know that a pianist doing a 4-hour set expends the equivalent level of energy as someone shifting one and a half tonnes one and a half inches?  So, if you don’t mind, son, I’ll skip the physio lark and go back to playing the piano.” He never went back.

The influence of Eddie Morrison on the teaching of Music in Lanarkshire and on Church Music is immeasurable which was borne out by the presence of representatives of all the choirs, schools and operatic groups with which he had worked in his lifetime at his Requiem Mass on Friday 29 February at St Leonard’s Parish Church which was concelebrated by His Lordship Bishop Divine who himself paid tribute to the immense contribution of Eddie to the diocese of Motherwell.

Eddie was married to his lifelong sweetheart, Margaret, for 56 years before her death last June. He is survived by 5 children, Margaret, Anna, Tom, Eddie and Damian and by 10 grandchildren.