Alice Nadine Morrison (1892-1978), birth name Alice Nadine Lanterman, was an American songwriter and musician. With her husband Howell Oakdeane "Morrie" Morrison (1888-1984) she was involved in numerous music-related business ventures, including Morrison Records.

Peter Blecha Peter Charles Blecha is an American historian, curator, essayist, author, musician, and director of the Seattle-based Northwest Music Archives. He is primarily known for research related to aspects of Pacific Northwest musical history. In additio ...

Morrison, "Morrie" and Alice -- Northwest Music Industry Pioneers
HistoryLink, November 20, 2005. Accessed online 2009-08-02.

Life

Born in Anacortes, Washington, while still in her teens she accompanied silent films in local theaters. She married

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-born dance instructor and drummer "Morrie" Morrison in 1912. The couple had a son, Lew, in 1913, and moved to Bellingham, Washington in 1914. In 1919, she wrote the

waltz The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wa ...

" My Love Is All For You." The Morrisons started the Morrison Music Company to publish the

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...

; it was successful enough that

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-based

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licensed the song, issuing it as "Say You'll Be Mine (My Love Is All For You)." The song became a national hit in 1920; a reported half a million copies of the sheet music sold; a player piano roll was issued in

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by Film Music Company and the

Green Brothers Novelty Band The Green Brothers Novelty Band was a recording ensemble active from 1918 to 1939. The group was led by brothers Joe Green (1892–1939) and George Hamilton Green (1893–1970), xylophone artists along with younger brother Lew Green (1909–1992), ...

released a recording on

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's Emerson Phonograph Co. label. She and her sister-in-law Nellie Morrison co-wrote a second hit in 1920, " Love's Ship." With Forster's involvement, the sheet music sold a reported million copies. It was included in the

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for the 1920

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

'' Shore Acres''. Tenor Joseph O'Hara recorded the song for Brunswick Records; the Club De Vingt Orchestra released a medley of "My Love Is All For You" and "Love's Ship" on Edison Records. A third song, "Sweet Anabel," (1922) sold a reported 100,000 sheet copies, published by

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

's Capitol Music. She and her husband formed the Morrison's Marimba Xylophone Orchestra and briefly opened Morrison's Dancing Academy in Bellingham, but soon relocated to San Francisco, where they took a suite 502 in that city's Pantages Theatre Building. Her husband pursued various ventures, including another dancehall/school, while she worked as a song-plugger at

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and Kress. She also performed in the Fox Follies at the Fox-Oakland Theater and played

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

solos live on KPO radio. However, in San Francisco the Morrisons' star soon faded. Their orchestra became a touring group "performing,"

writes, "in upended barns, grange halls, open fields, anywhere and everywhere." Home was successively

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, Weed, Roseville,

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, and finally, with somewhat rising fortunes, back to Seattle in 1931. Over the next decade, the Morrisons (now including son Lew) would tour around Washington State, and slowly expand an empire of dance halls that would become the G.T.M. Corporation. By 1940, the G.T.M. Corporation had 128 other dancehalls in the Western United States, six of them in Seattle. Her songwriting career revived in the 1940s. The Ink Spots recorded "Goodbye, Little Girl, Goodbye" (1944) and The Andrews Sisters picked up "Please Don’t Sing That Song Again" (1946). In this same period, her husband started Morrison Records. A major part of their business was an offer to "Get Your Poem Set To Music." Alice, husband Morrie, or son Lew would write a tune, the Morrison Recording Orchestra would record it, and one of them, or often the customer, would sing. They also picked up some more major performers (such as Paul Tutmarc and Bonnie Guitar and scored a national distribution deal with

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. An inheritance around 1954 allowed the Morrisons to purchase a mansion at 1025 1st Avenue W on Queen Anne Hill, the pre-World War II residence of the Japanese Consul in Seattle. With the mansion as a headquarters they continued various ventures in music (and even film), but with changing styles in music they never again reached the level of success they had in the 1920s and '40s. Morrison died in 1978, her husband in 1984. Their son Lew played professionally until about 1994, son Ken (professionally a freelance television producer) remained a locally active musician as of 2005.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morrison, Alice Nadine 1892 births 1978 deaths Songwriters from Washington (state) People from Anacortes, Washington Musicians from Washington (state) 20th-century American musicians