Heroes and Icons with Greg Randolph and special guest Cory Morrow.
Cory Morrow is a legendary Texas country singer who has released 18 albums in his storied career, which spans nearly four decades. He has rebounded to new heights in his personal life, and even has plans for a forthcoming book, chronicling his newfound Faith in God and his trials and tribulations as a young guy that then catapulted him into the success that he has achieved to date. The following is an excerpt of an interview that Cory did when he sat down with our podcaster Greg Randolph on December 29, 2022 before a recent show in Tomball.
Click on the button to listen to Greg Randolph and Cory Morrow's interview.
GR: How are you? Great to see you. It’s been way too long. How’s your family?
CM: Good to see you as well. I'm not the one and only. Did you know there's a Cory Morrow, a hockey player. He spells his name wrong..
GR: Well, as, as far as we're concerned.
CM: As far as we're concerned, yes. As far as the music scene's concerned, yes. Well, I'm wonderful man. Thank you for having me. Congratulations on the podcast.
GR: Thank you.
CM: We are, I'm good man. My life is good. Music is good, family's good and God is good. And so we're here in Tomball, Texas. We're recording at the Main Street Crossing, which is one of my favorite venues in Texas. It's a very intimate, it's about 200 seat capacity and everybody sits down, it's a quiet room.
The owner, Matt Davis, tells everybody they gotta be quiet or he'll kick 'em out. And it's an amazing experience. And we typically play somewhere between two and three hours for our show, which is quite a bit longer than our normal shows. So you kind of have to, you have to bring your Red Bull with you for these. But we're good, man. Family's amazing. They're gonna be here tomorrow night or tonight, actually, for the show. So, we're gonna bring a couple of the kids up on stage to play some music and, you know, they tell you in the entertainment industry not to follow an animal actor or children's act. So I'm gonna bring both on stage tonight. So it's gonna be good.
GR: Excellent, excellent. Great to hear, man. So, let me dive right in and, and ask you about growing up in Houston. So what was your childhood like, and then what was your introduction to music and how were you first captivated by it?
CM: All right, my childhood. So I grew up, my parents divorced when I was about two or three. My father remarried and he moved out to San Antonio for several years and then divorced and remarried again a little bit later and has been married to his third wife now for 20 something, almost 30 years. But I grew up in Houston with my mom and my two older sisters. And my mom remarried when I was 11. So, I spent a good part of my, my youth and, and formative years kind of at home with a bunch of ladies in the house. But the music piece to it I was introduced to by a friend of my mom's. Her name is Jan Smith. And she picked me up from school one day and she had a harmonica in the backseat. And she was like, you know what, what is this? And she's like, a harmonica! You know, give it a shot. I’m like, how do you play that thing? And she's like, you just blow on it. So, I gave it a shot. And it was pretty awesome making all kinds of noises in the backseat. And that began a collection of harmonicas. And, every Christmas, everybody, somebody would, my grandfather, somebody would give me a harmonica. But my first guitar came when my stepdad and my mom, I guess I was about, I think I was around 14, maybe 12, somewhere in there. They went to Mexico, they went to a bordertown. They were going hunting and they'd, they'd go to the border towns to go shopping, and they saw guitar in a shop, and it, I think it was like $10. And, my stepdad's kind of crazy. He liked to drink and gamble and, and so he went in there and he said, I'll give you, you know, $5 for the guitar. Guy says no, it was, it was 20 bucks. It's 20 bucks for the guitar. And he says, I'll give you $10. And the guy's like, no, it's 20. And he says, okay, 15. And the guy says, no, it's 20. And my stepdad's like, well, you don't know how to do this, do you? And he says, are you gambling, man? He goes, I don't know. I don't know. My stepfather lays down $40 on the, on the table. And then he pulls out a quarter and he's like, you flip it, you call it, if it lands on what you call, you keep the $40 and the guitar. If it doesn't land on what you call, I keep the $40 and the guitar. And the guy was like, okay. So he flipped it, called heads, it landed on tails. My stepdad picked up the guitar and the money and walked out. And then he came back around the corner and laid down $10 on the table and said, that's what I wanted to pay for the guitar. So that was my first guitar. And they brought that home to me. They gave it to me for like a birthday present or Christmas or something. And they gave me guitar lessons to go along with it. And that kind of started it, man. I started learning stuff. I was listening to, I had a friend who was teaching me about Led Zeppelin and The Stones and Bob Seger. And so I was listening to a lot of classic rock and it all sort of culminated from there. The country aspect didn't happen until I got to college, but that was the beginning, man.
GR: Nice. So what was the first concert you went to? Did that have any influence on you?
CM: I think the very first concert I went to was Asia in San Antonio with my dad and my stepsister. And I just remember it was all on the floor, like the, there was the big stage and we were down on the floor of this, I think it was the, Hemisfair Arena something. Honestly, something like that was back when they were doing the wrestling in that same arena WWF on Friday nights with the Von Ericks versus the Free Birds. You remember those days?
GR: Oh yeah.
CM: So we're down on that floor and, I just remember it was a bunch of folding chairs and we're not far from the front of the stage man. And it's like these speakers are like 10 feet, 20 feet tall and they start playing and I was putting my fingers in my ears. It was so loud. And we were just right in front of a speaker. And I was so young, it was just, it was too much. But I remember it was really cool cuz they came out playing, you know, doing their hit and stuff. And everybody's going nuts and then, I think the next concert I kind of remember is going to the Rolling Stones. And I was somewhere around the same age, like 12 or 13, somewhere in there, and they were playing at the Houston Astrodome. And we were way in the back on the ground, but I just remember looking, and they had the, it was the honky tonk woman, and they had the, they were like these giant blow up dolls. And I see 'em inflating and getting taller and taller, you know, and so I thought that was kind of cool. But those are really my first real concerts.
