I heard this song by a songwriter that I’ve enjoyed for years the other day.

” Don’t Judge a Life (by its end)” John Gorka

Here’s some live John Gorka that I found….

The songwriter who wrote the first song that John Gorka sings in this video was Bill Morrissey.

Bill Morrissey died in a motel room in Georgia a while back while on tour.

He was making his way back up North after playing a couple of gigs.

John Gorka and Bill Morrissey were friends.

“Don’t Judge a Life” is for Bill Morrissey.

Here’s a link to an article about Bill Morrissey that was written by  David Hoekstra that appeared in a blog he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Here’s a bit of the article….

His 1990 record “Standing Eight” (Rounder Records) got it’s title from a boxing count that permits a referee to call a knockdown on a spent fighter who has yet to hit the canvas.
“I just like the idea of a guy taking a beating and not going down,” Morrissey told me in 1990. He said a lot of characters in that batch of songs were cut from that cloth. There was a truck driver carting toxic waste through the New Hampshire backroad, hard times on the Canadian Pacific line and the brittle rebound from a busted marriage–his own, which caught him off guard.

I loved that John Gorka song…..and I’ve always enjoyed Bill Morrissey’s music.

He was a good, good writer.