This week on the program, Thomas, Matt, and jD welcome back Darin Patterson to the show. You can find his work at SNL Nerds where ever you get your podcasts.

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[0:42 ] Thank you so much, Doug DeNance. It is a thrill to be back here with you on the SNL Hall of Fame podcast. Before you come inside, if you would do me a favor, please wipe your feet. The SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair where each episode we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest, or writer, and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Consideration once the nominees have been announced we turn to you the listener to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity inside the hall and that is how we play the game it's just that simple a little 411 for you we have a new email address it is the snl hall of fame at gmail.com that's the snl hall of fame at gmail.com shoot Shoot us an email if you have any questions about the show or would like to guest on this show or the SNL Hall of Fame Water Cooler with Joe and Shari.

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[1:43 ] So there's that. This week we are joined by our friend Darren Patterson of the SNL Nerds podcast. You can check that out wherever you find your quality podcasts. Podcasts and uh darren has quite the track record of uh nominating people in episodes he joined us for the first time on season two where he nominated tom hanks who got in then in season three he kicked off the season by nominating dana carvey who also got in that year uh he took the year off in season four and didn't visit us in season five either but this year he's back and uh i'm excited about this episode so there's that.

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[2:32 ] Here we go with an original not ready for prime time player it is the often overlooked garrett morris matt what do you have to say about garrett morris wow uh garrett uh he five foot eight born february 1st 1937 in new orleans uh he is uh an incredible talent he studied drama at the hb studio and attended juilliard he's a triple threat raised by a baptist minister grandfather he got his first taste of performance in the church choir uh with 116 acting credits six soundtrack credits and one writer credit it, he worked as a soloist and arranger for Harry Belafonte.

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[3:22 ] Yeah, so he was part of Belafonte's band. During his time as a singer for Harry Belafonte, he was performing in Los Angeles and decided to go for a walk. Police cuffed him and dragged them to jail when he tried to show his hotel keys to prove where he's staying. After a background check, it came back clean. And then they checked the itinerary in his pocket and saw that he was part of Harry Belafonte's band. And all of a sudden they were like oh i'm sorry i'm sorry mr garrett morris i mr morris like we're so he's he that kind of uh changed his life um he became very active uh he joined the black arts repertory theater and school a cornerstone of the black arts movement um um, in New York and ended up being surveilled by the FBI during that time. Yeah.

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[4:23 ] So he has a file. Um, but you know, he's also done things like he released an album called South African Freedom Songs with Pete Seeger and Guy Carowan. Uh, he appeared in broadway in hallelujah baby and ain't supposed to die a natural death and uh he.

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[4:44 ] Wrote a play called the secret place daddy piku and stagger lee uh which he penned for the brooklyn uh school kids as part of a new york program uh to write a play for school kids in their in your home borough and on top of all of that he released a comedy album called saturday night sweet um which has some pure disco tracks on there it is it is incredible um he survived a brush with death having been shot in the chest and arm while being mugged uh and got to be kidding me yeah like he's that was.

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[5:28 ] In 1994 so not even that long ago did not go well for the shooter because there were some garrett morris fans in prison and let's just say he didn't leave the prison uh so yeah that got that you don't mess with a good with great comedians you know people don't like that so yeah so garrett morris garrett morris in a in a wrapped in a bow by our friend matt ardell and now we're going to check in with our other friend Thomas Senna as he digs in on Garrett Morris.

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[6:31 ] Jamie and Matt, thank you so much. Welcome to another episode of the SNL Hall of Fame. Today we have a Heritage nominee from Season 1, an original Not Ready for Primetime player. So I'm really excited to talk about Mr. Garrett Morris.

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[6:52 ] And with me to talk about Garrett and his time at SNL is Darren Patterson from the SNL Nerds podcast. Somebody who I haven't had on in like two or three seasons. It was long overdue. I knew I needed to get Darren back for Season 6 of the SNL Hall of Fame. Darren, how's it going, man? It's going well, Thomas. It's going well. Yeah, it's been a minute. I haven't been around these parts in quite some time. I love what you've done with the place. yeah well thank you tied it up a little bit before before you stepped into the hall we make sure to dust and we make sure to everything is in its right place for special guests like yourself so from one snl podcaster to another i gotta make sure that my space is presentable for for you guys especially for other snl podcasters so it's wonderful to have you man i think you were on uh for a roundtable an end of season roundtable i think that's last time we checked in on you yeah yeah it was that was that was a lot of fun that was a that was a blast if i recall correctly yeah yeah no we had a blast talking uh talking about the different nominees from that season of the snl hall of fame uh i love chatting with fellow snl podcasters like we both were chatting beforehand that this is such a really neat community of snl podcasters like both buddies with john schneider from the saturday night network the guys gary and brad from the not Not Ready for Primetime podcast. Andrew Dick's doing his thing.

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[8:19 ] So, yeah. So, it's just really fun to have a fellow SNL podcaster on. Why don't you tell us what's going on lately over at SNL Nerds? The listeners can go and listen to our 300th episode, which we just recorded. We hit the big 3-double-0. Wow. It's bonkers. Yeah, yeah.

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[8:38 ] It's an episode we did with Mike Diva, SNL film unit director. The man who directed such hits as I'm Just Pete, the Pete Davidson pre-tape, the Waffle House pre-tape for the Jenna Ortega episode, Mario Kart in the Pedro Pascal episode, the Christmas Carol pre-tape on the Steve Martin, Martin Short episode. Yeah, this dude's done it all. So, guys, go check that out, our 300th episode. That's awesome. We got it. Yeah, yeah. It was a pretty big milestone for us. We were like, oh wow, we've been... We've been really doing this for a while. You know, most podcasters don't even get to five episodes. Really? Yeah, I think I read that somewhere. I think five episodes is like the average, if that. So people start a podcast, they bail after like one or two episodes. So 300 is amazing, man. Yeah, that makes us 60 times better than the average podcast. And you could fill it with you and John Trumbull, your co-host. Yes, yes. Yes. Me and my coach, John Trumbull, we're two guys in New Jersey who are obsessed with SNL, so we during the summer since they've been off, we've just been kind of talking about SNL quote-unquote related movies. Just because we've done all the directly connected to SNL movies, so now we're just like, we just had an episode of Throw Mama from the Train and Billy Crystal's in it. I think that's SNL adjacent. I don't know.

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[10:07 ] As long as the cast member's on, I think that definitely qualifies. Yeah like as long as we can find one cast member in the cast or for something more produced we kind of shrug and be like all right that works like our next episode we're gonna do a league of their own one of my favorites john lovitz is in that so i was like all right that counts yeah that's one of my favorite things about your podcast is is you you've carved out your own niche in that like you're exploring like snl related movies which which i love so so 300 hundred congratulations darren congratulations john huge milestone go check out uh snl nerds follow them on social media and listen to their pod it's an awesome one so today we are chatting about mr garrett morris so uh garrett had a somewhat different path to snl compared to the rest of the cast he wasn't a groundling didn't come from second city uh garrett was a dramatic actor singer playwright so Lauren was looking for a playwright landed on Garrett who then obviously became a cast member of course part of the original cast so Darren like as an SNL nerd what does Garrett overall kind of mean to you, Oh, God, what does it mean to me? I mean, of course, right off the top, he was the first African-American cast member in SNL. I mean, that's a huge thing right there.

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[11:30 ] I mean, and also when I think of Gary, I kind of also think of almost like what could have been a little bit just because it's like you said, like Gary really didn't come up with the rest of the cast members through the improv channels. Channels he just kind of he was like a theater kid basically he worked in the theater and playwrights and whatnot so he was he was i i always felt like he that's one of the things that's kind of separated him from the rest uh well i mean i think there was like a few things actually the fact that he well first you know african-american uh the rest of the other cast was uh white uh all the writers were whi