| LOUIS T. BENEZET AWARD RECIPIENT 2008 |
 Max Morath '48
Max Morath was born decades after the heyday of ragtime music, but those syncopated rhythms hooked him anyway. He was in his still in his teens when he wrote, “I caught ragtime like you catch the flu, and I never got over it.”
Max is a natural entertainer. Born in Colorado Springs in 1926, he took piano lessons as a kid, then studied theory and composition privately with Robert Gross, a member of the music faculty at Colorado College. In 1944, a freshman at CC, Max also began work as a staff announcer at KVOR, at that time the only radio station in town. He had enrolled at CC as a physics and math major but ended up with a degree in English, continuing to work in radio through his college years and playing in local jazz clubs to help pay the bills. After graduation, he helped to establish the college’s own radio station, KRCC.
In 1952, following a summer at Stanford University studying a new thing called television, he became production manager for the Colorado Springs/Pueblo station KKTV Channel 11, the area’s first. A 1957 newspaper article observed: “If Max Morath became nationally famous for his singing and piano playing, his home folks would not at all be surprised.” Max himself, if asked, will downplay his skills at the piano, explaining, “I’ve been an entertainer who happened to play the piano, not a piano player who got into the entertainment business.”
Radio, TV, theater, and nightclub jobs followed in places like Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami. During 1959-1961, Max created two television series for PBS: “The Ragtime Era” and “Turn of the Century,” exploring American society through music and theater. Positive reviews led to a contract with Columbia Records and a nightclub debut at the fabled Blue Angel in New York. Next came a series of one-man theatricals, launched Off-Broadway prior to national tours. Max traveled with these shows, racking up around 5000 performances in theaters and nightclubs, colleges and conventions. Meanwhile, he worked frequently in New York with Arthur Godfrey on CBS Radio, and with his quartet toured two seasons with Dinah Shore. He has recorded dozens of albums, mainly for Vanguard, and with the team of William Bolcom and Joan Morris for RCA.
He quit performing three years ago. “I’d been on the road for 60 years. I’m done with that,” he says. But that doesn’t mean he’s retired. Later this year his biographical novel about the songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond will be published. Jacobs-Bond, best-known for the ballad “I Love You Truly,” was the subject of his master’s thesis at Columbia University.
Max now lives Minnesota with his wife, Diane Fay Skomars, a professional photographer and currently the Director of Development at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
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