On April 9, 1969 a local performer with an odd song that ran to a radio-unfriendly six-and-a-half minutes saw his first solo single slip into the Top 40 at #33. There were only four other Australian songs on that chart – not uncommon then – and few local hits rose to the top.
Russell Morris’s The Real Thing did though. By the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, it had spent a month atop the charts. It was one small step for Russell Morris, one giant leap for Australian music.
Russell had had a couple of minor hits with the band Somebody’s Image, but the Dylan fan wanted to be a solo act. Ian Meldrum, then managing Russell, chanced upon a gentle Johnny Young ballad and turned it into an audacious, psychedelic rock epic of Wagnerian proportions with Australia’s finest rock musicians. The Real Thing is perhaps Australia’s best known rock moment.
Keen fans noted the songs had been called The Real Parts I and II. By September, Russell had recorded and co-written the dizzying follow-up, Part III Into Paper Walls. It was bookended by a reprise of the first single that cleverly wrapped around a Russell original. This seven minute classic also topped the charts. At the end of 1969, Russell, barely known a year earlier, had the year’s best selling song.
In 1970, Russell kept up the momentum with Rachel and muscular self-penned rocker Mr. America.
The year after, he settled in to record an album of songs he would write for his debut album, Bloodstone. He tapped into the folk and country sound of The Band whose Music From Big Pink had changed the way rock music thought of itself. Even The Beatles had moved on from the formidable complexities of Sgt Pepper. Bloodstone was an extraordinary collection of songs about love lost and found, while tales of battlers and sin and glorious redemption abound. Robbie Robertson would have killed to have come up with The Cell, O Helley or Lay in The Graveyard. At the end of side two was another unforgettable hit, Sweet Sweet Love. A year after those triumphs, Russell was back with a soaring classic, The Wings of an Eagle.
In 1974, Russell relocated to America and it seemed he had gone quiet but he was diligently working away at new songs that he recorded at the legendary Hit Factory for his US debut self-titled album that featured the cream of East Coast session players: the inimitable Brecker brothers – Michael and Randy; David Spinozza, guitarist of choice to various Beatles; drummer Rick Marotta (Paul Simon, John Lennon, Boz Scaggs); and Hugh McKracken (Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin). The smooth sophistication of these players helped make lost classics of I Remember When, Sail With Me, When The Mockingbird Sings and the ethereal Don’t Rock the Boat.
He was back the next year with a rockier sound, partly driven by the keys of Roy Bittan from the E Street Band, with the album, Turn It On, included the driving Running, Jumping, Standing Still, the beautiful Cloudy Day and Winter Song.
Back home he entered the white hot pub rock circuit with his Russell Morris Band and Russell Morris and the Rubes releasing two albums with such fiery gems as The Roar of the Wild Torpedoes, In The Heat of the Night and Doctor In The House.
Thereafter came the acclaimed A Thousand Suns, a wonderful collection of songs that didn’t fit between the guard rails of timid radio programming and pearls such as the title track, Stay With You and the robust Tartan Lines were largely overlooked.
He joined forces with Ronnie Burns and Darryl Cotton to form Burns Cotton & Morris. Later Jim Keays replaced Burns and, as Cotton Keays and Morris, they issued albums and played their hits – and some sparkling covers including Russell’s update on Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, considered by many to be definitive.
In 2008, Russell was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, a welcome if belated acknowledgement of his long-term influence on Australian music.
About 2012, Russell started knocking on industry doors to try to sell the idea of his next record. No one was interested in a collection of blues songs about gritty Australian characters of the Depression Years until he met Robert Rigby and signed with independent label Ambition Entertainment. Sharkmouth went on to be Russell’s most successful album, topping the blues and roots charts and staying there a year while winning the 2013 ARIA for Best Blues and Roots Album. The opening track, Black Dog Blues, had been written with the ailing Keays who, with his days counting down, pushed his friend to complete the album. Others told the story of the Depression-era heroes like the mighty racehorse Phar Lap, or the modest reformed alcoholic Arthur Stace who every night wrote in copperplate on Sydney buildings and footpaths his single-word sermon “Eternity”.
That year also saw The Real Thing officially given legend status when it was admitted into the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia register which notes music of cultural significance and includes John Farnham’s You’re The Voice, Archie Roach’s Took The Children Away and Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh.
Liberated from record company concerns, Russell followed Sharkmouth up with Van Dieman’s Land and broadened his view of an Australia whose stories risked slipping from view. These included Loch Ard Gorge, Breaker Morant and the deeply personal Sandakan, which tells the tale of the half dozen survivors of the barbaric death marches across Borneo enforced on Allied troops by their cruel Japanese captors. Russell’s father, Norman, was one of them.
Joining Russell on this album were fellow music greats Joe Camilleri, The Living End’s Scott Owen, Midnight Oil’s inventive drummer Rob Hirst, Phil Manning (who had starred across Bloodstone), Ross Hannaford (Daddy Cool) and Russell’s old mate from early days of Australian rock and Rick Springfield (another Bloodstone veteran). Van Dieman’s Land lodged at #4 in the album charts. It seemed that Australian liked hearing stories, some lesser known, of our country’s past and Russell kept telling them.
He completed his unplanned blues trilogy with 2016’s Red Dirt, Red Heart, another hit album of songs of Australia’s human landscape with a few more Big Pink moments rounding it out Lonesome Road in which he heads out west from Tully. Red Dirt, Red Heart also won the ARIA Award for Best Blues and Roots Album.
On Australia Day, 2018, Russell was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of his significant service to the performing arts as a musician, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, as well as his support of charitable organisations.
Never one to stand still, the following year Russell swerved again with a feisty set of rock songs on his next album, Black and Blue Heart, produced by Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning and Nick DiDia whose noted clients have included Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Rage Against The Machine. Black and Blue Heart rose to #12 on the ARIA Album Chart propelled in part by the sinewy guitar lines on songs like Sitting Pretty that recalled the unforgettable guitar launch of The Roar of the Wild Torpedoes almost four decades earlier.
More recently he has been recording songs with Springfield inspired by Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration and collected on Jack Chrome and the Darkness Waltz. It’s blues again with the dark shadings of Americana that attracted him to those musical seams so long ago.
Topping off all these achievements were the daring series of symphonic concerts with a 50-piece orchestra with which Russell toured Australia in 2023. These took place after businessman Clive Palmer, a Russell fan from years back, was surprised to see him playing before a few hundred people in pubs and RSL clubs. He urged Russell to think big.
In the end these momentous shows sold out and thousands of us spent two hours mesmerised by songs we knew so well transformed in this magisterial setting.
Of course each classy occasion was set by a brilliant overture that hinted at The Real Thing and ending with Paper Walls. How could it not? For the first time we saw the instrumental fulfilment of overlooked masterpieces such as A Thousand Sun, Only a Matter of Time and, for good measure, one of the finest versions of Nights in White Satin anyone had heard.
Each night, Morris, his band and orchestra filled 2,000 hearts with The Real Thing in all its mighty resplendence. “That’s it then,” an excitedly drained new friend on my right said. I told him I was not so sure. Russell came back for his own Wings of an Eagle and a thunderous Sweet Sweet Love. That was indeed it. What a victory.