Big Band-era boogie woogie singer Morse dies in Bullhead City

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1999 | 9:26 a.m.

The British music anthology album "Giants of Rock 'n' Roll" features some of the top music artists of the 1950s.

Among them are Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Ella May Morse, whose recording of "Mr. Five by Five" is featured on the disc.

While the first four names are easily recognizable as founding fathers of rock 'n' roll, the last name would be familiar only to the most ardent of pop music devotees, who would regard Morse as a founding mother of that genre.

Morse, whose World War II-era recording "Cow Cow Boogie" became the first million-selling single for the then-fledgling Capitol Records label, died Saturday in Bullhead City, Ariz., of complications from respiratory problems. She was 75.

Services in Southern California are pending, said a spokesman for Diamond and Son Funeral Home in Bullhead City, a small Colorado River community across from Laughlin, an-hour-and-a-half drive from Las Vegas.

Morse, who lived in Bullhead City for just eight months, was a Big Band-era boogie woogie singer. But while many Big Band performers faded into obscurity in the mid-1950s, Morse refined her sound with elements of country, blues and jazz to help usher in the pop sound that has dominated the record charts for the last half of the century.

Elvis Presley once praised Morse as an early influence.

Born in Mansfield, Texas, in 1924, Morse began her career at age 9 in her parents' ragtime band. By age 14 she was singing in the Jimmy Dorsey Band.

In 1942, with Dorsey's pianist Freddy Slack, 18-year-old Morse recorded "Cow Cow Boogie," which launched her career. It also was the first step in making Capitol Records one of the largest recording companies in the world.

A year later Morse was in Hollywood making the film "Reveille with Beverly" with Ann Miller, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. In 1944 Morse made "Ghost Catchers" with Olsen and Johnson.

During her career Morse earned 10 gold records and sold 100 million records and compact discs. She stopped recording in 1957 but continued performing at clubs and concerts until 1987.

In 1997 Morse's five-disc box set "Barrelhouse Boogie & The Blues" was released on the Bear Family label, featuring "Cow-Cow Boogie" and 133 other songs.

Morse's survivors include her husband, six children, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren. The Associated Press

and Los Angeles Times contributed to this story.