Season 2: Gospel Music in the Black Church Tradition - Maurice Morgan

In this episode, host Jean Greene sits down with Mr. Maurice Morgan Sr., a gospel guitarist and songwriter whose extraordinary journey took him from a sharecropping family in Wilson, North Carolina, to playing alongside some of the most celebrated names in gospel history — including Willie Banks, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and the Canton Spirituals. Rooted in a grandmother who shouted in the kitchen and a grandfather who played gospel on a scratchy radio in the fields, Maurice grew up steeped in the music before he fully understood it. His career carried him across the country and eventually overseas, performing in Germany and Switzerland with the Five Blind Boys, until gospel music did what it so often does in this podcast — it led him straight to Utica, where a convoy of gospel groups, a white Jeep, and a woman named Angela James changed the course of his life.

Now settled in Utica and recently celebrating his debut solo album Rightful Heir, Maurice reflects on what gospel music has meant across a lifetime of playing — its power to carry hope to people in hard circumstances, the difference between singing words and singing from the spirit, and the way every great artist develops a signature sound that is entirely their own. Like the guests before him, he has turned his attention to mentoring the next generation, offering his gifts freely to upcoming groups, community funerals, and church programs throughout the area. The episode closes with a shared sense of wonder that a small town like Utica could draw someone with Maurice Morgan's résumé — and keep him.

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