Chuck Morris

Morris moved beyond Boulder in the early 1970s, when he began a long partnership with powerhouse Denver concert promoter Barry Fey.

Morris, Fey and Fey’s wife, Cindy, launched Ebbets Field, an intimate club named after the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers stadium. Though Ebbets lasted just a few years, it was regularly filled beyond capacity as Morris snagged then-burgeoning music superstars like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Little Feat and Herbie Hancock, plus rising comedians like Richard Pryor and Steve Martin. Morris joined Feyline Presents as senior VP of booking and promotion and helped facilitate the rise of that juggernaut concert company into one of the biggest in the country; he also helped turn Red Rocks Amphitheatre into the country’s most popular outdoor venue. In the 1980s, Morris and Fey collaborated on the Rainbow Music Hall, a 1,458-seat space in Denver that allowed Morris to lure bigger bands and established performers like AC/DC, Bob Dylan and Metallica, plus new artists U2, Blondie and Pat Benatar.

As the Front Range music scene grew, Morris turned his talents to artist management. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, Leftover Salmon and Lyle Lovett are among those who benefited from his guidance. In the late 1980s, Morris began a long and fruitful friendship with entrepreneur Philip Anschutz when Anschutz approached Morris about having the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band perform at the opening of Anschutz’s Western art collection exhibition in what was then the Soviet Union.

Ready to strike out on his own, Morris left Feyline Presents (while remaining a consultant for several years) and allied his promotion expertise with the company founded by the legendary Bill Graham. In the late 1990s, they purchased and redeveloped Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium, which shares its name with the storied San Francisco venue that Graham helped make famous. Bill Graham Presents/Chuck Morris Presents was eventually acquired by SFX Entertainment and ultimately became Live Nation, which Morris continued to run.