‘Local yokel’ Sonny Morgan receives international music award | George Strait, Ray Benson mentored singer

It’s never too late to follow your dream — and no one believes in that more than Granbury resident Sonny Morgan.

At 69 years old, Morgan recently achieved one of the biggest accomplishments an independent music artist can earn.

On Aug. 6, he was awarded the coveted Male Album of the Year award by the International Singer-Songwriter Association for his second album, “I’m Your Man,” at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center in Georgia.

“One day, I get a note from a lady that says you've been nominated for this award. She said ‘If you've ever seen the CMAs, this is an independent artist version of the CMAs,’” he said. “I didn't really think much about it, except for the fact when the nomination came up on that website and my name came up, I'm going ‘Geez, this is real.’”

In order for Morgan to get into the finals for the ISSA awards, he needed to get his fan base to vote for him. He made a post on his Facebook page, Sonny Morgan Music, detailing the nomination and ended up receiving a whopping 50,000 votes.

“Not everybody likes my music, and I don't expect everybody to hoo-ha over my music, but somebody does,” he said. “There are 50,000 people that like it.”

Morgan was also a finalist for Male Vocalist, Male Emerging Artist and Male Video of the Year. That video, of his song titled “Desperately,” included several scenes that were filmed at the Granbury downtown square and Granbury Live.

BACKGROUND

Although Morgan didn’t pursue music professionally until he was 62, he has always been a music lover, even from the early days of his childhood living in Dallas.

“I've sung all my life,” he said. “I sang in church choir at the First Baptist Church there. I played trumpet in high school. That was where I got my background in music, but I never really thought I was going to get into it like I'm in it now.”

However, music wasn’t his only passion.

Morgan grew up in a car dealership family. His dad owned a Dodge dealership, but decided he was going to sell the business when Morgan was a junior in college. From that day forward, Morgan made it his goal to follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I told him right then and there, ‘I'm going to be a dealer one of these days too,’” he said. “I worked my way up through the ranks, managing stores and running the dealerships. I built eight stores from scratch, putting a shovel in the ground.”

Morgan helped manage exotic car dealerships like Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin and Lotus.

In 2012, according to an article published by The Dallas Morning News, Morgan was recognized as being the top-selling Lotus dealer in North America.

Throughout the years, Morgan became extremely successful in the automobile business. In fact, it was because of his job as an exotic car salesman that he got the chance to meet several celebrities, including the late Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry, the late baseball player and musician Charley Pride, country singer Willie Nelson and perhaps the most famous country singer in the world — the “King of Country” — George Strait.

CELEBRITY MENTORS

“I had been selling to a guy by the name of George Strait. I don't know if you ever heard of him or not,” Morgan said, chuckling. “I sold him 10-12 cars, and he and I became real close friends. He was a super influence to me. The first time I met him I said ‘Hey, you know, I don't know but ‘Amarillo by Morning’ and ‘All My Exes’ — those are the only two songs I know.’ I told him the story when I sing them because on the way to Amarillo from Dallas is such a boring trip that a buddy of mine and I used to sing ‘Amarillo by Morning’ while riding on motorcycles over and over till we got to Amarillo, so he got a kick out of it. He said, ‘Well, we're gonna get along really well.’”

While preparing an event for the car dealership, Morgan called a friend by the name of Kat Edmonson — a jazz singer Morgan helped to land a big break with record producer Lyle Lovett — and asked if she would perform at the event. She asked if she could bring a friend to play guitar and sing harmonies with her, and Morgan obliged.

Unbeknownst to him, the “friend” Edmonson was talking about was none other than Ray Benson, the front man of the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

After the event, Morgan and Benson had a great conversation at the dealership and a friendship was formed.

It was during that time Morgan would “sneak out” to a karaoke bar on Sunday nights and sing for an hour while the bar was almost empty.

“I was trying to see if I could do it or not — sing in front of people,” Morgan said.

Since forming the friendship with Benson, Morgan called him one night and told him about his late-night Sunday routine.

“He said, ‘Why are you doing that?’ and I said, ‘Well, because I've never sung before, except church choir,’” Morgan said. “I told him I was thinking about country music and singing. He said, ‘Why don't you do it?’ I said, ‘Well, I guess I need to.’”

The night that Asleep at the Wheel was scheduled to perform at the Albert Dance Hall not far from Fredericksburg in the summer of 2017, Morgan picked up Benson in a Bentley so he wouldn’t have to ride there in his tour bus.

“I'm sitting there out in the audience listening to him and I hear, ‘Sonny Morgan come on stage,” Morgan said, reminiscing. “He's probably about three-quarters of the way through the show, and I thought he was gonna tell me ‘Get the car ready,’ and so he goes, ‘You know, our music, don't you?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Get up here and sing.’ That was really the boot that kicked me over the fence. I was not nervous; I sang perfect harmony with him and he couldn't believe it. He said, ‘Heck, you don't need any more singing lessons. You just need to do it, son. You're ready to go.’”

BLESSING IN DISGUISE

In August 2017, Morgan was in a bad car accident that resulted in damage to his arm, forcing him to give up several of his passions like his love of playing the guitar, riding motorcycles and playing golf.

"My brain keeps telling me that the arm is okay, so it tells me that I can lift things,” he said. “But I was at Whataburger the other day and I had a cup getting ice in it and I got about half full of Coke and it just dropped. I didn't have a grip on it. Every time something like that happens, I just get a tear in my eye because I used to play golf and I used to ride motorcycles, but I can’t do either anymore."

Since the accident, Morgan has been distraught about having to leave his Taylor guitar in the closet, but eventually Morgan realized that what was once a devastating blow to his career actually might turn into a blessing in disguise.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Since that night with Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, Morgan took up voice coaching from Kim Sandusky, the same woman who had coached Beyoncé, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney.

He has performed at various venues through manager Chuck Rhodes and his Nashville-based On the Rhodes Entertainment, LLC. He has released three country music albums: “It’s a Beautiful World,” (2018), “I’m Your Man” (2021) and “Some of My Best,” (2022) the latter of which is a compilation of some of Morgan’s biggest hits.

“Some of My Best” was just released on Aug. 26, and in only a week, the album received 10,800 streams.

Morgan has been on CBS Austin KEYE 42 TV, has sung at Ray Stevens “CabaRay” in Nashville and has recorded at Nashville’s famed Ocean Way Studios on Music Row and the famous Hilltop Studios in Nashville, according to his website. He’s been on the Texas Regional Top 100 Chart with 10 of his singles and on the World Country Chart with six songs at No. 1 and four at No. 2. He was nominated by the Academy of Western Artists for a Willie award and he’s had a No. 1 on the Nashville Independent Country Chart.

His music is mainly popular in other countries like Australia, Canada, Italy, Thailand, Norway and Iceland, but still considers himself to be "one of the guys."

“For me, I'm just what I call a local yokel," he said. “If I walked into a restaurant in Liechtenstein or Tasmania, a little island outside of Australia, I'd have people swarming me.”

One thing that means the world to Morgan is performing at local nursing homes in Granbury and Weatherford — a decision that he made in memory of his mother, who passed away in 2015.

In Granbury, he regularly performs at Lakestone Terrace, Harbor Lakes and the Hood County Senior Center.

"To see somebody that when you first meet them and they got a scowl on their face and they hardly talk, and then you start singing to them and they start smiling, singing with music and tapping their feet, it's everything to me," he said. "There was a song that I started singing and evidently was a song that hit a nerve with this woman because she grabbed her husband, picked him up and started dancing with him like they were in high school. It took everything I could to keep from just bawling."

Morgan has earned eight platinum and six gold record awards. He plans to release another EP by Christmas.

“I can't emphasize how big this ISSA award is. I want to say there was only three or four people from Texas (there). It's international; they're all over the world and I represented Granbury,” Morgan added. “But the big story, besides the fact that I won an award, is how old I am. I sold Willie Nelson and Charley Pride a bunch of cars back when I was in my 20s and I should have probably seen the proverbial writing on the wall that the Lord was trying to tell me, ‘You ought to start singing,' but I was so immersed in telling my dad I was gonna be a dealer someday, I just shut all that off. But I thank God that music popped up. It’s been fun. It’s beyond what I’d ever thought it would be.”

Morgan spends at least two hours a day singing in his home studio in Granbury, where he lives with his wife, Karin, and their rescued greyhounds.

His music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Pandora and iHeart Radio.

For more information, visit his website at sonnymorganmusic.com.