Bill Morris

Bill Morris was raised by his grandmother in Western North Carolina, on land originally granted to the family in the 1780s for service in the Revolutionary War. As a child, he was surrounded by musical treasures and storytellers on all sides.

Bill recalls his paternal grandmother, Una Hawkins Morris, sitting on the porch singing old songs and telling stories.  Mama Morris stressed the importance of knowing the family history and brought it alive with an abundance of colorful anecdotes. 

          Bill's Grandfather John Morris, also a storyteller, was infamous for playing a fiddle while dancing on two wooden legs.  John had lost his legs while performing with a Wild West Show in Kansas in 1911. Uncle Lewis Boyd, another family showman, played everything – fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, and harmonica -- and performed with a Medicine Show in the 1920s.

Mamie Yates Boyd, Bill’s maternal grandmother, cultivated an abiding love for the "old" music and passed it on to him. “There is a story behind every song,” Mama Boyd would say, while despite arthritic hands, she patiently taught Bill to play banjo and guitar.

       In addition to storytelling and singing, Bill plays guitar, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. He has been performing professionally since 1943 when at the age of three, his mother and Aunt Helen routinely took him to the old Eckerd's drug store in Asheville, NC, a gathering place for soldiers and sailors during World War II, where dressed in a sailor suit one time and a soldier’s suit another, he would sing songs like “Madie Groves,” “Barbara Allen,” and  “It’s A Bloody War” for nickels and dimes.