SINGER AIMS TO SHOW ‘REAL’ GARY MORRIS IN TV SPECIAL

Singer Gary Morris is a multi-talented performer whose career has blossomed in the last five years from country hit maker to opera performer and television actor.

That’s why the tall, bearded Texan recently agreed to do a cable TV special titled “Gary Morris: A Portrait,” which the Nashville Network taped last week at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana.

Morris insisted on an active role in the show’s concept, which he hopes will “let viewers get to know the real Gary Morris. Then they can decide whether they like what they see. It should be a unique kind of special. It won’t be real glitzy or glamorous because I’m not real glitzy or glamorous.”

After making his mark in country music through such hits as “The Wind Beneath My Wings” and “Why Lady Why,” Morris’ pure ringing tenor won him the lead opposite Linda Ronstadt in a 1984 New York Shakespeare Festival production of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.” And since 1985, he’s been seen weekly by millions of viewers on ABC-TV’s “The Colbys,” in which he plays blind singer Wayne Masterson.

“There’s a dichotomy between Wayne Masterson and Gary Morris. I’m more laid back, down-to-earth than the character on the show. That’s what I want to get across in the special,” he said.

Relaxing before the taping in his hotel room near the Crazy Horse, Morris explained why he chose the Santa Ana club, where he winds up a two-night stand tonight, as the site for his first special.

“I could have gone anywhere, but I chose this club because I really like it,” Morris said, lighting a cigarette between sips of Diet Coke. “It’s real intimate, and at the same time it seems like we always get a real good performance and the audience gets really involved.”

That evening his contention proved true, as an enthusiastic crowd gave him a thunderous standing ovation after only one song. The ovation, however, had been requested by the show’s producer, who explained that Morris’ first song of the evening would actually be used for the finale of the show, which will be shown next April to the Nashville Network’s 28.1 million subscribers.

If the ovation was somewhat orchestrated, the audience itself had also been handpicked. The 275-seat club was filled not with typical country music fans, but with conventioneers who were in town last week for the Western Cable Show at Anaheim Convention Center and were invited to the taping as guests of the Nashville Network. (At the last minute, however, a few members of the public were allowed in to the invitation-only event.)

Though the show was ostensibly designed to show the real Gary Morris, the image he projected was slightly enhanced for television: his graying beard appeared noticeably darker for the taping than it had that afternoon during an interview.

The 90-minute concert, built around songs from his current “Plain Brown Wrapper” LP, was interrupted several times to allow the makeup technician to mop perspiration from Morris’ brow and powder the shine off his face. Not exactly standard procedure at your run-of-the-mill honky-tonk.

And toward the end of the set, Morris had to start his version of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” three times before the director was satisfied. So much for spontaneity.

Yet Morris did avoid the audience-milking devices typical in such specials, and he kept between-song chatter to a minimum. Also, the format allowed him to bypass cliched greetings like “How ya doin’ Santa Ana?”

The one unscripted moment of the evening came as Morris introduced an aria from “La Boheme” and explained that he portrayed Rodolfo, a young poet “who falls in love with Linda Ronstadt,” who played the seamstress Mimi.

When an overzealous fan shouted out “Yes!” Morris retorted, “First time being in an audience, right?”

Fending off hecklers--now that’s realism.