Phillips County blues singer, songwriter, and radio personality James Morgan was recently presented with the Delta Cultural Center’s 2024 Sonny Payne Award for Blues Excellence, prior to his Thursday, October 10, performance at the King Biscuit Blues Festival.
In 1986, Helena-West Helena native James Morgan returned to his hometown after a seventeen-year musical career in Detroit. Freed from a life in the fast lane, Morgan began to seek success on his own terms, working as a popular disc jockey at legendary radio station KFFA and operating his own night club. In addition, he issued his own musical releases that reflected not only his deep roots in the Arkansas Delta, but his experiences from performing at large northern venues.
It seemed appropriate that Morgan would work at Helena’s KFFA because he had known “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, who was the station’s’ Blues Hall of Fame host of the Peabody Award-winning “King Biscuit Time” since early childhood. This legendary radio personality is also who the Sonny Payne Award for Blues Excellence is named after. For many years before Payne’s death in 2018, Morgan would provide the daily introduction that alerted listeners the show was about to start. Even today, a house advertisement created by Payne promotes Morgan’s Sunday evening blues show on KFFA.
Writing liner notes for Morgan’s “Gone for Food, But Not for Long” album years ago, Payne said this of the singer:
“Before James ever went into show business, he had the style, the class, and the determination to put his heart and soul into every song he ever did.”
Payne also compared his vocals and mastery of phrasing with Lou Rawls and Frank Sinatra.
A member of Detroit’s Ju-Par Universal Orchestra during the 1970s, James Morgan toured throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. His R&B and contemporary blues style was in the mode of Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Bland, and Tyrone Davis.
Throughout his career, Morgan has been known by several nicknames such as “The High stepper,” “The Thin Man,” and James “Gone for Good” Morgan, after his signature song. Other popular tunes include “I’m All Good,” “Child,” “Juke Joint Woman,” and “Backyard Blues Party.”
The DCC’s Sonny Payne Award for Blues Excellence – called “The Sonny” – recognizes individuals who have strongly influenced the blues music of the Arkansas Delta. The honor is named for “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, longtime host of the Peabody Award winning “King Biscuit Time” program, broadcast each weekday form the DCC Visitor Center at 141 Cherry Street on AM radio station KFFA. The Delta Cultural Center is a museum of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism.
Along with ties to Arkansas and the Delta, “The Sonny” Award is traditionally given to musicians with distinguished status and a lengthy career.
Previous recipients of the “Sonny” include Robert Lockwood Jr. and Houston Stackhouse (posthumously) in the award’s inaugural year of 2002, Sam Carr and Pinetop Perkins (2003), CeDell Davis and John Weston (2004), David “Honeyboy” Edwards (2005), Michael Burks and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith (2006), Hubert Sumlin (2007), Bobby Rush (2008), Red Holloway (2009), B.B. King (2010), James Cotton (2011), the Cate Brothers (2012), Willie Cobbs (2013), Big George Brock and Sonny Burgess & The Legendary Pacers (2014), C.W. Gatlin and Larry McCray (2015), Charlie Musselwhite (2016), James Yancey “Tail Dragger” Jones (2017), Bob Stroger (2018) and Mary Lane and Eb Davis (2019), Mavis Staples (2022) and Manis “Detroit Johnny” Johnson (2024).