John Malveaux: NPR.org: From Football To Opera: Singer Morris Robinson Takes Center Stage

             Morris Robinson in the Los Angeles Opera's 2009 production of The Magic Flute. (Los Angeles Opera)              

John Malveaux of 

www.MusicUNTOLD.com 

writes:

Football to opera-Morris Robinson. Please see 

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/03/465387373/from-football-to-opera-singer-morris-robinson-takes-center-stage

John

National Public Radio

Karen Grigsby Bates

February 3, 2016

Morris Robinson has the kind of bass voice that reverberates so strongly, you feel it in your concert seat. Listening to it, you assume he's been singing all of his life. And he has — but not opera.

Robinson grew up in Atlanta, the son of a Baptist minister and a mother who spent a lot of time making sure her children played musical instruments and did well in school. His earliest memory of singing was being "in the kiddie choir," standing on a chair in church and singing the hymn "Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus." He got a lot of applause. "Then I realized I wanted to play the drums, which is a lot more exciting than singing. So I ended up being the church drummer."

For a long time as a youth, Morris Robinson says, "singing was just something to do. Nobody thought of it as a viable profession."

Aiming For One Goal ...

What he really wanted to do was play football. And he did, but soon he grew too big to play in his division in the youth leagues, so reluctantly, he turned to music.

He sang in the Atlanta Boys' Choir and in the chorus at his performing arts high school, where he also played football.

"When you're a big black guy down south in Georgia," he grins, "you play ball. It's like a rite of passage."

Chorus was fun, but football was cool. And cool counts a lot in high school.

His prowess on the field got him to the Citadel, the military college in Charleston, S.C., where he played ball and soloed in the schools' venerated Christmas concert with an "O Holy Night" people still remember. An offensive lineman, Robinson was voted All-American three times — but it wasn't enough to get him a much hoped-for spot with the NFL.

He was, ironically, too small. "At 6 feet 2 1/2 inches, 290 pounds, I'd be blocking someone 6 feet 6 inches, 300 pounds," he says. "Would somebody pay me millions of dollars to protect their quarterback? Probably not."