The Gert Town Kid Who Made SNL History
Garrett Isaac Morris was born on February 1, 1937, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in the Gert Town neighborhood — a working-class Black community wedged between Carrollton and Hollygrove. He sang in church choirs as a boy, and the music stuck. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music, trained as a classical vocalist, and graduated from Dillard University in 1958. Before he ever told a joke on television, Garrett Morris could sing an aria.
His early career was pure music. He recorded South African Freedom Songs with Pete Seeger in 1960, performed with the Belafonte Folk Singers, and worked the folk and protest music circuit of the early sixties. But fate had a different stage in mind.
Saturday Night Live's First Black Cast Member
In 1975, Lorne Michaels assembled the original cast of Saturday Night Live, and Garrett Morris was there from day one — the first Black cast member in the show's history. He was also the oldest at thirty-eight, surrounded by younger performers like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Dan Aykroyd. Morris created Chico Escuela, the Dominican baseball player whose catchphrase became a part of American comedy vocabulary. He occasionally surprised audiences by deploying his classical training, singing opera and art songs in the middle of a sketch comedy show.
Morris served on SNL from 1975 to 1980, five seasons that defined American comedy and launched careers that shaped entertainment for decades. He was the quiet pioneer in a room full of larger-than-life personalities.
A Career That Kept Going
After SNL, Morris built a long career in television: Uncle Junior King on the Jamie Foxx Show from 1996 to 2001, Earl Washington on 2 Broke Girls from 2011 to 2017, roles on Martin and in films like Ant-Man. In 2024, at eighty-seven, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. From Gert Town to Juilliard to Studio 8H to the Walk of Fame — Garrett Morris took every stage he was given and made it his own.
Leave a comment
All comments are moderated before being published.
This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.