Morris Day kicked off TV One’s new season of “Unsung.” The feature on one of R&B’s legends, former frontman of the funk group The Time and one-time Prince collaborator, was a lesson in style, musicianship and cool.
In the Unsung episode, Day, known for tunes like “Jungle Love,” “Cool,” and “The Bird,” recalls growing up in the projects in an abusive home with a stepfather who mistreated his mother and her children. That didn’t stop him from dreaming big, however. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs who didn’t have much but had many styles that he wanted to emulate, Day learned to dress “cool” from his uncles and grandfather.
That style was present in Day’s music as well. And the local band competition was stiff in Minneapolis when he was coming up. As part of the band Grand Central with Prince and Andre Cymone, Day cut his teeth as a drummer on the competition scene. Their primary rival was a band called FlyteTyme that included Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jellybean Johnson and Monte Moir, all of whom would later form, The Time with Day as lead singer.
When Prince left Grand Central and got his own record contract, he quickly formed The Time and gave the singer one direction as leader of that band– to be cool.
It wasn’t long before his group was outperforming Prince’s group, The Revolution, night after night on tour, Day recalled in Unsung with laughter.
Jill Jones, who starred with Day in “Purple Rain” and “Graffiti Bridge” and was on the “Triple Threat Tour” as part of Prince’s band, told Sister 2 Sister that Day had a “charisma” factor on stage. “Morris’s stellar performance nightly helped to raise the bar on Prince’s shows. Some nights Morris even won. The Time dusted Prince and The Revolution some nights.”
Prince and the leader of “The Time” eventually parted ways, with Day buying himself out of his contract with the “Beautiful Ones” singer for $300,000.
On the precipice of a solo career, the “7779311” singer found himself with a new problem– drugs, specifically, crack cocaine. It took a family intervention to pull him from addiction and forge a new path that led him back into his music.
Day collaborated with artists like Snoop, and in 2020 before the pandemic was able to release new music and do some touring, he hopes to resume once the pandemic is over and it is safe to start performing live again. Day also wrote a memoir released in 2020 titled “On Time, A Princely Life in Funk.”
Before Prince passed away, Day was invited to the Purple One’s home and music facility, Paisley Park, to perform. Day describes meeting Prince in a hallway where he was given some applause by the man he called his “brother,” a hug and was told, “I love you.” That was the last time they spoke.
Today, Day is a family man and channels a lot of energy into raising his younger sons.
