Atlantic City’s always been known for its entertainment, and for more than seven decades, one man helped the beat go on. From the Jazz Age to the 1990s, Joseph Chris Columbus Morris was one of the music industry’s top drummers.

Born in 1902, Morris usually performed under the name Chris Columbo. When he moved here at the age of 9, Atlantic City was filled with hardship as well as opportunity; rampant racial segregation and low wages made the town a “slave market,” Columbo said in a 1978 interview for the Atlantic City Free Public Library’s Living History Project.  

After attending local schools including the Indiana Avenue School, Columbo worked odd jobs before finding full-time work as a drummer. He played his first gig on Steel Pier in 1921 with swing bandleader Fletcher Henderson. After that job, he never looked back.

Those were heady years in Atlantic City. Prohibition was in force, but rumrunners flouted the law. For musicians, work was plentiful in the city’s speakeasies and theaters.

Initially, Chris Columbo went by the name Joseph Morris, but promoters thought it lacked pizzazz. When he formed his own band, he called it the Crazy Chris Columbo Combo. It was catchy, and other musicians soon learned to respect his chops. He worked regularly at Truckson’s Hollywood Grill at Tennessee and Arctic avenues and the Torch Club on Central Avenue before leaving for New York City.

In the mid-1930s, Columbo helmed a house band at the Savoy Ballroom, Harlem’s “Home of Happy Feet” memorialized in the song “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” There he crossed paths with some of the best-known musicians of his day: Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Dorsey Brothers and Billie Holiday. Working with the top names in the business, he built a reputation as a spectacular drummer and bandleader.

Music took him around the world on a USO tour with pianist Eubie Blake. He performed with jazz superstars like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, saxophone legend Lester Young, and bop pioneers Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.    

But Columbo always came back home. For 30 years, from April to September, he lived in Atlantic City and played at the Club Harlem, then toured and recorded nationally the rest of the year. In 1968, he performed here with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and decided to stay for good.

Columbo continued to lead the Club Harlem house band until 1978, when it closed. For a time, he also hosted a radio show on WFBG, highlighting brilliant but underplayed artists like Woody Herman and Sarah Vaughan. He began each show by saying, “Good evening, ladies and gentleman. This is the captain of the swing ship, Chris Columbo. We’re here every afternoon at 5 o’clock with a cargo of my listeners’ requests.”

In the late 1980s, when the Showboat casino began offering live jazz in its New Orleans Square, Columbo signed on as drummer for the Dixieland band. In his 80s, he played six days a week and billed himself as the oldest working musician in town. Then a stroke left him partially paralyzed in 1993.

Columbo passed away in 2002 at the age of 100, having outlived all his contemporaries. In 2005, in recognition of his historic importance to the city, a section of Kentucky Avenue, home of Club Harlem, was renamed Chris Columbo Lane. His true memorial, though, might be in the dozens of recordings where music lovers can still hear Chris Columbo’s inspired drumming.

By David Schwartz

David G. Schwartz is the Director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a noted author, speaker and consultant. You can learn more about his work at http://www.dgschwartz.com.

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