I was hurrying down the hallway and frantically looking over the questions I had prepared the evening before when I realized I was in serious need of some caffeine. Luckily, choir had dismissed early, so I had enough time to grab some coffee. I had to be fresh for this one. I was soon to be sitting down to interview a couple that have been touring together as an internationally successful duo for more than 30 years and have so far produced 24 studio albums together, including their Grammy-nominated debut, After the Ball. William Bolcom, is Musical America’s 2007 Composer of the Year and recipient of multiple Grammy awards as well as the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Joan Morris is one of the country’s premier interpreters of American popular song—she has received rave reviews throughout America and abroad for her expressive voice and, as the Chicago Tribune puts it, an ability to project characters with an “irresistibly funny and winning personality.” Both are professors at the University of Michigan, and I wanted to make sure I was a well-prepared student.
As soon as I stepped through Professor Bolcom’s office door, he greeted me with a wonderful smile and a hearty handshake. “Joan will be along soon,” Bolcom assured me. “Make yourself comfortable!” As we waited for Professor Morris, I set up my recorder and got out my notebook, making sure I was ready to begin. When she arrived, we made small talk about the semester so far and then I set to the task of beginning the interview, but the truth is, I never really began it—they did.
“Ours is pretty uneventful,” Bolcom said, referring to their marriage. “We don’t have any children and we seem to have a good time. I hate it mostly when I have to go off and be away from her, because I very much prefer touring with her. We do a lot of concerts together but I have a number of things that take me away on my own. She also has many things to take care of on her own. For instance, she is putting together this very new and interesting class.”
Morris has been putting together a course for students this semester called “Writing Musical Theatre,” in which the students will write and perform their own musical.
“People tell us all the time about stresses [in their relationships],” Bolcom continued. Turning to his wife, he asked, “Can you remember any terrible problems?”
“Oh, well, certainly we’ve have had little spats when we’re tired,” Morris answered. “I remember we were flying back overseas from Heathrow and I had gone to a bookstore. . . . I can get lost in a bookstore!”
“And I came to find you and I was really very angry,” Bolcom adds.
“I know, I had just lost track of time, and I remember he was quite upset,” Morris said, smiling. After a few additional stories of travel, I jumped in with my questions.
So how long have you two been married?
Bolcom: Well, we got married Nov. 28, 1975, which happens to be William Blake’s birthday, which I didn’t realize at the time. [So] that makes us?
Morris: Thirty-three. This November it will be 33 years. Time is very odd you know. I can still remember our wedding out here [Ann Arbor] with all of our friends, some who are gone now.
WB: When we first met we were not interested at all in working together. We didn’t want to ruin our wonderful romance! We were having such a wonderful time as lovers and we hadn’t really thought about doing any music together. In our case, we were kind of afraid. What if I didn’t like what she did? What if she didn’t like what I did? We didn’t want to ruin our wonderful friendship by working [together].
JM: Well, after you came and heard me at the Waldorf you did write that song for us. It was called “The Same Thing,” subtitled “The Office Girl’s Lament.”
Is that what led to your collaboration?
WB: Well, there was this very famous torch singer named Ruth Etting. She was a wonderful singer and I was a very big fan of hers because she had something very beautiful about her.
JM: She has a famous recording of “10 Cents a Dance” by Rodgers and Hart. [Bolcom begins singing the first verse for reference.]
WB: So the moment I saw Joan I thought to myself, “My, she reminds me of Ruth Etting. I bet we could learn a couple of songs.” So we learned “10 Cents a Dance” and some other songs and started playing them at parties and such. If you got to a party and suddenly realized “Oh, I don’t want to hang around here,” one of the things you could do in order to leave gracefully was to do a song and skedaddle. A lot of parties are fun, but some parties you are just as likely to [need] an excuse to leave.
Then one day, H. Wiley Hitchcock who just died a few months ago, a wonderful musicologist who used to be on faculty here at University of Michigan, called me up and said, “Bill, the American Musicological Society wants to do a survey of the great songbooks of the 1920s and ‘30s.” So we presented this program one evening. Well not just us, also your mentor.
JM: My teacher, Clifford Jackson, who taught speech. He had also studied at the old Institute for Musical Arts, which became Juilliard.
WB: So we did this program a couple of times. We did it first in Brooklyn, [and] then somebody there asked as to come down to Roanoke to perform at Hollins University. Then somebody there said: ‘Why don’t you come to the Smithsonian.’ . . . We just kind of fell into it after Hitchcock called, [and] suddenly we just found ourselves touring.
What’s it like to share the stage with one another?
JM: I was delighted Bill could talk to the audience; I was coming out of the actress-having-that “fourth-wall-in-front-of-her” view. At the beginning I was really unwilling to talk at all. It took years for me to say a word here and there and talk about some of the stories I knew. [But] Bill would say, “You should tell that one,” you know.
I’ve always talked about the short experience I had with Barry Manilow. I was in an off-Broadway show called The Drunkard [with Manilow] and he had that same ability Bill does to breath with a singer. He knew when to come up under you, when to pull back, when you need a little more leeway, all those things. So on stage, I feel secure. If I make a mistake Bill has often worked it out and vice versa. We do it for each other.
Did collaborating help you grow and conquer some of your own stage fears?
JM: Oh sure, because I felt secure with Bill. I knew he wouldn’t pull any surprises.
WB: When she’s up there she’s fine, but she goes through the tortures every day before she goes on! Well, once you get up there you go through some transition. You have to leave your ordinary, daily self and do the performer thing. It hurts a little, like a birth, I guess.
JM: You are creating it all just out of your own psyche so you have to be very focused, and you have to be able to listen to what you’re getting back. Teaching also made a difference because it made me get up in front of people and talk. I was really shy when I was young and that was what made performing so attractive. I could step out of my persona, which was a little constricting, and be someone else, which is lovely.
How do you manage balancing each other in the rehearsal process? Do you offer critiques or suggestions to one another?
JM: I think we both know if we’re not there—you know, if it’s not working or the tempo is wrong. Sometimes Bill would try an exercise on me that I used to hate, but it’s a good one. He use to say, “OK, OK, just sing this one and pretend you are Minnie Mouse and weigh a thousand pounds.” [Morris then demonstrates how a thousand-pound Minnie Mouse would sound.]
WB: It’s often good—when you’ve done a song, and you want to change the interpretation, and you are stuck with the old one—to use this blitz tactic and decide that you are just going to become a large rubber ducky.
JM: Who speaks in Martian.
WB: [Laughs.] These are ways to blow yourself out of interpretations that may feel like they have become a habit.
Have there been moments when your individual musical engagements have required you to be away from one another for significant periods of time?
JM: More recently, with the operas, Bill has had to travel. I’ve stayed at home, and right now, I want to see this class through [“Writing Musical Theatre”]. I’m flying back a couple of times this semester. I told the dean I was going to have to miss four classes for Bill’s premieres, which I would have very much liked to have been at, and he said no. He said I had to have faculty-level people stand in for me, and you know, getting people to do one class for you is hard enough. So we rearranged our schedules to make it work.
Is the back and forth of travel another element of stress for you?
JM: Oh, of course it is! There is really no way to make that easy—and if you travel you know yourself how awful it is.
WB: It’s getting worse, and worse, and worse!
JM: I once forgot and took my toiletry kit [through security]. Everything in it was thrown away. I lost so much stuff. It’s just annoying but you have to accept that they are doing their job.
When you are apart, do you call each other often?
JM: Oh, always. I miss having him around. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I think about something I forgot to tell him that day. We spend a fortune on phone calls when we are apart.
WB: Phone cards are great! Phone cards have made it all possible. You do have a cell phone, but you only use it to call out, and you keep it in your purse. You know, we may get into the iPhone. I could see some use for that. We also have a secretary who works part-time for us, Carol Wargelin, who used to be with the University Musical Society.
JM: We were lucky to find her out here.
An assistant really helps to lighten the work load?
WB: Oh yes! We’ve been with her for 16 years. I don’t know how we existed without her.
JM: We were with the agencies for a while and they would send you the itinerary, which helped. Still, there are a lot of details she handles for us.
WB: She takes care of all the other details, the nuts and the bolts. . . .
You mentioned early that you didn’t have any children. Was that by choice?
WB: It wasn’t a choice. It just kind of happened.
JM: At any point we would have been delighted, but it just didn’t happen. I remember one of Bill’s friends said to him, “You know it doesn’t happen to everyone.” On the other hand, we have all of these wonderful students we follow.
WB: And they follow us. You know, if you are touring as much as we are, there are crucial times in your child’s development [when] you are away. So, if you aren’t there minding the store at the right time, there can be very serious repercussions. Many of my friends have had to put their children through drug treatments, psychiatric help, and things like that, simply because they weren’t there at crucial times. I really wouldn’t have minded [having children] because I’m sure we could have found some way to do it, but it certainly would have been a juggle.
What would you say have been the advantages and disadvantages being married to a musician?
JM: Perfect pitch. I have pretty good pitch but if I’m not well or something I’ll be a little flat, and that’s excruciating for Bill—but that, thankfully, [she knocks the wood desk] doesn’t happen often.
WB: It really doesn’t. You’ve always had excellent intonation!
JM: Also, because of my background, I have very deep insecurities about music. I had only two years of college before I decided it was time to go to New York.
WB: Well, you hadn’t really been trained as a musician as a young person. Some singers find out—and it’s not uncommon—when they are 17 and 18 years old that they really have a voice. Suddenly, they have to pick up all the rudiments [of music] and it is much harder.
JM: Well the good part about him being a composer is that I can’t help with that. I have nothing to do with that stage of his work. That means I have time for my own pursuits. I can do my reading, do my background work, or just lounge about playing solitaire.
WB: Had we been in exactly the same Fach, had we both been singers, I don’t know, it may have been a different world entirely.
JM: Or if I were a composer.
What have been the more important factors in your collaboration as husband and wife?
WB: Gosh, I don’t know where to begin this, but first of all, I feel like we’re a two-headed, four-armed, four-legged beast sometimes. Not in every way, but certainly when we’re up there on stage. Of course, we have different points of view. I mean, I’m male and she’s female. I have different desires and needs in life and so does she.
JM: And I’ve seen you accompany other singers, and I’m very appreciative of the same things you do for me. Also, he’s seen me perform in other situations.
So it’s great to go out and support each other.
WB: Yeah! I love being outside and in the audience, seeing her from the front for a change! Of course, she has also seen me through a lot of my premieres and performances.
You have managed to tour together and remain happily married for a long time. Is there a secret to your marriage’s success?
WB: Oh, I think it is the same as it would be with any other couple of people [in love]. One thing I made sure of, something that I actually got from my mom. She said, “Don’t let any sun go down with an argument. Try and work it out before you-all go to bed. Don’t let it sit and fester.”
JM: It drove me nuts sometimes! I’d walk into the backyard or the basement or try to do something to get rid of you but you would follow me and say, “Let’s get to the bottom of this.” But in the end it really was good. It defused it early on because I really would tend to stew about things. So I had to give that up.
I remember I was talking to Kay Swift [the Broadway composer] one day, complaining about things, and she said, “Some things you just outgrow. I hate to tell you, it’s just time.”
WB: And it’s very important for a couple to give each other enough space to be alone on their own side, each one. Joan has her own world. She has her own studio. I have my own studio. When she is ready to work on a song, then we get together, but we don’t do it until she is ready.
Many performers have found difficulty balancing both a successful musical career and family life. Have you experienced moments of challenge?
WB: I don’t think so. We’ve had very few arguments in the years we’ve been together, and they have always been productive—they always seem to work out something.
JM: Bill really was very careful. If it was something I had to work out on my own, he wouldn’t mess with any track I needed to follow through to the end. I felt free enough to do what I needed to do professionally.
You both are on the music staff here at the University of Michigan. What led you to these teaching positions and how have they factored into your relationship?
WB: I was at Tanglewood in the summer of 1966 and met William Albright, who was here on the faculty for a number of years, and we became great friends. Next thing you know, I was brought out quite often to Ann Arbor to have pieces done and I thought, “This is a great place.” I loved the feeling of it. I loved the fact that it was a very congenial department and that it was such an excellent school. Also, they were very open to performing new works.
Finally in 1973, they offered me the job that I took. I had just met Joan the year before and I thought it was so courageous of her to pick up and come out here
with me.
JM: They formed the beginnings of a Music Theatre department in 1981, headed by Louis Patterson, and they needed someone to teach a course in the history of popular song. So he asked if I could do something like that, and I said yes. It was a bit of a different format when I first started teaching it. I used to do a lot more of the 19th century material, but I found that wasn’t useful to the students. Far from a historical overview, they wanted material that they could use right now for auditions and such. So I eventually changed the course to “Cabaret Performance.”
So having a home base here has been helpful to your relationship?
WB: It isn’t just helpful to our relationship, but to our general sanity. It’s nice to just come home! I love being places but traveling has become hell. Having a home base is really very grounding.
JM: At the very beginning we kept our apartment in New York. When we were first out here I did miss the city and I would go back to see my voice teacher. But then our career took off.
WB: Once you are touring, it doesn’t matter very much where you live. A couple of younger singers I know in New York said they keep their apartment there but touring takes them out of the city anyway.
What advice do you have to offer to young musicians in love?
WB: Young musicians in love [giggles].
JM: Give each other plenty of room. Learn to get a dialogue going that is positive and in ways that you can communicate even when you are tired and angry at each other. Have respect. We all act like dopes at times. We all do very dumb things and you just look back and feel kind of ashamed. But so what? That’s a given.
WB: You know, what I think helps is that you tend to forgive me for my behavior faster than I’ll forgive myself. We do that for each other.
JM: It helps to have the other person say, “Listen, I know you were tired,” or “I know what you are going through,” or “I know what that person is putting you through.” Like sometimes, people will get Bill’s goat and I’ll have to say, “Listen, you are familiar with that, that’s happened before.”
Just having another person there to say that is helpful.
WB: You know that there is someone there that you can really trust, and that makes all the difference. I don’t know how a competitive group of people who were in love would do—there are all different kinds of love—but I don’t think we ever looked at ourselves as big competitors to the rest of the world, and certainly not to each other. We did it because we could do it well, because we loved it, and because people came to expect us to do it well.
I guess we found a particular niche that was ours and we were very comfortable with it, maybe sometimes too comfortable, but it’s been a nice ride. I’ve enjoyed this a whole lot.
