by Howard Campbell
[ATLANTA] – Denroy Morgan was a journeyman singer in early 1981 when “I’ll do Anything For You“, the song that transformed his career, was released.
The horn-hooked dance single was the jam that summer, making the 35 year-old Jamaican a star.
According to Morgan, patriarch of Grammy-winning band Morgan Heritage, “I’ll do Anything For You give me a name in the American music industry.”
Written and produced by Bert Reid — an American of Jamaican heritage — I’ll do Anything For You entered Billboard Magazine’s pop chart, peaking in the 30s. It went Top 10 in the publication’s R&B table and topped its Dance chart.
The song remains the biggest hit for Morgan, who left Jamaica’s Clarendon parish in 1965 and settled in Florida. He moved to New York City late that decade where he made a name as a singer with the Black Eagles Band.
One of his neighbors in the Cornelius Street area of Brooklyn was Reid, a singer/saxophonist with the Crown Heights Affair, a jazz/funk band that had success with songs such as Dreaming A Dream and Dancin’.
They became fast friends in the mid-1970s with Reid writing the song Sweet Tender Love for Morgan but it did not fare well. Unfazed, he came up with another track that had the Big Apple jumping.
Morgan recalls recording I’ll do Anything For You at Right Track studio in Manhattan with mainly American session musicians. Released in March, it did not gain momentum until June thanks to constant play in The Garage, a popular nightclub.
When top disc jockey Frankie Crocker heard I’ll do Anything For You in The Garage, he gave it power-play on his show on WBLS.
“Him tek it an’ dat was it. Di rest was history,” said Morgan, who went on to tour the United States with Evelyn “Champagne” King, Frankie Beverly and Maze and Slave.
He eventually recorded an album of the same name for RCA Records.
Morgan, now 75 and living in Atlanta, helped nurture the successful careers of his children, some of whom comprised Morgan Heritage and LMS.
Bert Reid, with whom he remained close, died in 2004 from cancer at age 48.
