This is the fifth episode of a five-part series for The Colorado Dream: Happy Birthday! The stories in this series are part of the KUNC podcast The Colorado Dream, airing on Mondays beginning June 29. The podcast is available for download wherever you listen to podcasts and on KUNC.org.
On June 5, 1983, the up and coming band U2 performed at one of the world’s greatest outdoor amphitheaters. Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado.
“They had seen Red Rocks when they had come to town in two previous performances, vowed they'd perform there someday,” said G. Brown, director of Colorado Music Experience and a former music reporter for the Denver Post.
The band and its team planned to record the concert and release it as a film. They’d sunk a lot of money into the production - even flying in the producer from England.
“They had all sorts of special effects, bonfires on the rocks, not special effects like we know them now, lighting and pyrotechnics, but just making the place tricked out,” Brown said.
But Colorado’s weather is unpredictable - especially at Red Rocks. And the day of the show, there was freezing rain. But U2 couldn’t cancel. Bono and the band called every radio station in Denver imploring people to come to the show. It worked.
U2 embraced the dismal conditions and gave a legendary performance.
“It looked like a Scottish Moor, if you will, fog and the mist,” he said. “Bono, that iconic image of him waving a white flag during “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” put him on the map. Not just the band, but Red Rocks itself that got seen around the world.”
Red Rocks Amphitheater dates back to the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps. A federal relief program that put 3 million unemployed men to work. From 1933 to 1942, they worked on projects like restoring America’s forests and grasslands. They improved public lands, planted trees and built trails, roads and Red Rocks Amphitheater.
It opened in June of 1941.
“Historically, it's known as one of the world's only natural amphitheaters,” he said. “Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, they used to run what they called the dime test, where someone would stand on the stage area, drop a dime, and you could hear it hit the floor up at the very top of the amphitheater. Just perfect acoustics.”
Two decades later, on August 26, 1964, the Beatles hit the Red Rocks stage. The band’s performance ushered in the amphitheater’s modern age, said Brown.
Before this new era at Red Rocks, a musical phenomenon had been underway for decades just 25 miles east. Black musicians were making history in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood.
Harlem of the West
Five Points is one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods. It was founded in the late 1860s and grew in popularity after the city became a hub for the railroad industry. African Americans settled there to pursue opportunities and escape violence, racism and oppressive Jim Crow laws in the South.
“A lot of Black families moved into this neighborhood, but we had Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, other European nations, Jewish, Mexican American, and Native American,” said Terri Gentry, engagement manager for History Colorado’s Black Communities Department of Equity and Engagement.
By the 1920s, almost all of Denver’s Black population lived in Five Points and the adjacent Whittier neighborhood.
They created a bustling community with small businesses and white-collar professionals. Churches and restaurants. All while living in a segregated city which restricted where Black people could live.
At the center of it all was jazz music.
“We were called Harlem of the West,” Gentry said.
Music was everywhere in Five Points and there were over 50 bars and clubs in the neighborhood. It was the destination to hear jazz between St. Louis and Los Angeles. One of the premiere clubs was the lounge at the Rossonian Hotel.
“We had (an) amazing range of folks coming. Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald,” she said. “The list goes on and on with the folks that came to Colorado.”
These singers often stayed at the Rossonian too. They weren’t allowed to get rooms at the “white” hotels where they performed gigs.
One of the largest, and most luxurious, clubs was the Casino Cabaret. The two-story club had a balcony that sat a thousand people, a 40-foot bar and a big dance floor. Casino Cabaret was founded by George Morrison Sr., a music pioneer known as “Denver’s Godfather of Jazz.”
Morrison was born in Missouri to formerly enslaved parents. His mom played the piano, and his dad was a champion fiddle player. In 1891, the family moved to Boulder when he was a child. Morrison learned the guitar and was classically trained on the violin.
“Growing up, there was so much music around. He had an uncle, George Reeves, that had a band, and they played in the mining camps up around Boulder and up in the hills,” said Vicki Morrison, Morrison’s granddaughter. “He loved to entertain.”
After high school, Morrison married Willa May of Denver - whose family roots go back to territorial Colorado. Morrison dreamed of playing in a symphony but Black musicians weren’t allowed to. So he started a band: the George Morrison Jazz Orchestra.
“For those of you who know that Santa Claus does exist in some shape or form to make people happy and jolly, that was Big Daddy's personality. He would walk into a room and light it up,” said Trudi Morrison, Morrison’s granddaughter.
He mentored up-and-coming artists including a local woman named Hattie McDaniel. McDaniel sang in Morrison’s band before becoming the first Black performer to win an Oscar for “Gone with the Wind”.
Morrison and his wife were community pillars. They lived in the Whittier neighborhood and opened their home to visiting musicians. George also taught free music lessons there and at the neighborhood schools.
Trudi and Vicki Morrison affectionately call their grandparents “Big Daddy” and “Big Mommy.” In the ‘20s, the couple was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, said Trudi Morrison.
“The Klan burned Big Mommy and Big Daddy's house down to the foundation three times, and they had to rebuild, rebuild, rebuild,” she said.
George was the first Black artist signed to Columbia Records and his band performed throughout the U.S. As Vicki Morrison recalled, they even went to Europe.
“They played a command performance for King George and Queen Mary in England,” she said.
Five Points’ golden era of jazz ended in the 1960s. A decade later, in 1974, Morrison died at the age of 83. But his music and spirit live on. The Casino Cabaret is now the Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, and a Denver park is named after him. In 2023, he was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
Morrison Sr. was one of the first of many big time musicians and bands from Colorado. This includes OneRepublic, India.Arie, The Lumineers, Pretty Lights, DeVotchKa, Earth, Wind & Fire and bass guitarist and composer Kenny Passarelli.
First destination recording studio
Passarelli co-wrote the 1973 Joe Walsh song “Rocky Mountain Way” when he was a founding member of Barnstorm, Walsh’s band. The song was the first hit recorded at a little known studio in Boulder County called Caribou Ranch.
“The first destination studio in the world,” Passarelli said.
The Caribou Ranch Recording Studio was a creative retreat, at 8,600 feet in elevation. The ranch sits in a valley surrounded by forested hills, meadows, ponds and dramatic views of the Rocky Mountains.
James “Jim” Guercio, a Grammy Award-winning producer, songwriter and musician, bought the roughly 4,000 acre Arabian horse ranch in 1971. At that time, Guercio was producing the band Chicago.
“He was working in New York and LA, and the union rules are completely tight there. If he touches a knob on the mixing board, it's a union fine,” said Mark Brown, a retired teacher and former music critic at the Rocky Mountain News.
“He needed to get some place that was far away, enough away from cities, far enough away from cities that he could be immune to those rules,” said Brown. “Caribou was just the perfect amount of miles away from Denver where he could do that.”
Guercio turned the old cabins into luxury quarters for the artists and musicians. Each cabin was outfitted with cable TV, a piano and space to write. The barn was transformed into a state of the art recording studio.
“People could record 24/7, chefs on call 24/7,” he said. “You could do anything you want at any time.”
The musicians worked hard, but they could also relax and have fun. The barn had leather couches and a huge stone fireplace, a pool table and games. They could ride horses, ski at Eldora or go snowmobiling.
“There was no distractions, you know, you couldn't, you know, jump out and go to a club or whatever, you were there to work,” Passarelli said.
However, what made Caribou Ranch so special, Passarelli said, was the sound. It was the altitude. It can affect vocals, allowing some artists to sing higher, he said.
“Tom Dowd, extraordinary producer, engineer, physicist said it was the lack of oxygen,” he said. “Caused the frequencies to hit the tape in such a way that the frequencies were different, so Caribou had a unique style,”
Over 150 artists recorded at Caribou Ranch, like Elton John. He recorded three albums there including “Rock of the Westies” on which Passarelli played.
“(Elton John) did the Caribou record in ‘74, “Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” “Philadelphia Freedom”, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” He brought John Lennon up there,” Passarelli said. “(Chicago’s song) “If You Leave Me Now" was a worldwide hit. That was all recorded at Caribou, so the word was out.”
Caribou Ranch produced more than 45 top ten albums, 18 Grammy awards and 20 number-one Billboard hits. One of those hit songs was “Shining Star” by Earth, Wind & Fire.
One night, band members Maurice White and Philip Bailey went for a walk at the ranch and got inspired. The moon was so bright it looked like daytime, White recalled in a post on his blog.
“We were looking at the stars, and we could see the whole Milky Way. It felt like we were close enough to reach up and grab one. The atmosphere set the tone for a creative spark. The remaining melody and lyrics flew out of us,” reads the blog post, which contains an excerpt from My Life With Earth, Wind & Fire, by Maurice White with Herb Powell, 2016.
By the early 1980s, the music business was changing. Big budgets were slashed and record labels cut back on expenses. The digital age was starting.
“Suddenly (destination recording studios) were deemed a luxury that were just too extravagant,” Mark Brown said.
In March of 1985, there was a fire in the Caribou Ranch studio and Guercio decided not to rebuild. Over the years, he sold the land. Caribou Ranch was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2017.
“A sound that came out of the mountains of Colorado to this day lives on in the frequencies, you know some of the best music that was ever played,” Passarelli said. “And it's Colorado born.”
From the songs recorded at Caribou Ranch to Five Points’ jazz legacy and the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater, Colorado’s musical legacy lives on.
Credits
The Colorado Dream, Season 6: “Happy Birthday” is a production of KUNC News. This episode was written and reported by Stephanie Daniel. Editing by Sean Corcoran. The theme song was composed by Jason Paton. Michelle Redo sound designed and mixed the episode. Alex Murphy is the digital editor.
Special thanks to Ron Bostwick, Rachel Cohen, Kyle McKinnon, Leigh Paterson, Kim Rais, Emma VandenEinde, and History Colorado. Tammy Terwelp is KUNC’s president and CEO.
