An introduction and a little history

Hello. I’m Ashley Morgan. Jazz trumpet player.

Since 1991 I’ve been a full time professional trumpet player. I’ve had the pleasure of working in many genres and with many distinguished musicians.

However, despite being a typical working musician, making the majority of my income through freelance recording engagements and the resulting ever dependable stream of royalty payments, my jazz quintet, The Ashley Morgan Quintet, was and always will be my main artistic focus.

My career structure was simple. My quintet allowed me to be artistically creative and my freelance work allowed me to make money. Although my quintet gave me a platform to display my best work it didn’t generate a viable income. I was able to pay the other musicians so that we could all make a profit on the gigs we did but we were all in the same situation. Whilst our skills as musicians paid the bills, our art didn’t.

Of course, my ultimate goal was to generate 100% of my income from my work with my quintet. The work that I loved and considered to be my art. Ultimately, my head had to rule my heart. I had seen many jazz musicians, more talented than me, struggle to make a living because they didn’t want to play the gigs that made the money.  

They just wanted to be artists. They didn’t want to be professional musicians. And that was cool. I could understand that, even envy it in some ways.

The reality of the situation was different for me. I never wanted to struggle financially. And a steady stream of freelance recordings meant that I wouldn’t have to just as long as I was willing and able to make studios my second home.

I took control of every aspect of my career. I used blogs to promote my projects and taught myself the basics of photography, design and typography so that I could better market myself as a trumpet player.

Armed with my Monette and my Powerbook, aided by a digital SLR and a handful of expensive fonts, my professional career was stable and solely under my control.  

Summing up all those years in such a small number of words can never do them justice. But, in a nutshell, that is what happened between 1991 and 2006.  I’m sure that at some point I will go into those years, and those that followed, in meticulous detail, but for now, this brief precis will suffice.

In April 2006 my life was turned upside down by tragedy.

Three months later, in July 2006, everything began to turn back the right way.

And in April 2007 my life changed in a way that simply cannot be described. 

I won’t go into more detail about those events just yet. However, if you are mathematically minded in any way you should be able to figure out what happened to prompt the second and third of those statements.

I was no longer willing to spend as much time as I had previously in recording studios. Although I knew that I would probably never cut my ties with that part of the industry I also knew that my priorities had changed dramatically.

Prompted by this change, motivated by the financial challenges which now lay ahead and after having spent some time successfully dabbling in the art of blogging, I decided to buy Upstart Blogger.

The price I paid, since it is one of the questions I get asked the most often, was $14,500.

It was seen by many of my colleagues as a bold move. And it was seen by some of them, particularly the ones to whom blogging was still something of a mystery, as an incomprehensible one.

But I knew I had done the right thing. Upstart Blogger would give me the opportunity to develop and grow an online business. More than that, it would allow me to grow a platform from which to launch other projects.

If everything went to plan it would allow me to spend more time at home, growing an income from blogging as my income from recording inevitably decreased as I freed myself from all but the most profitable aspects of the studio merry go round.

In 2008, by applying the blogging and design skills acquired in my music career, I grew Upstart Blogger to the point where it was attracting almost 200,000 page views every month and generating a monthly income of over $7,000. This success led to the creation of The Inner Circle, an exclusive blog network with formidable traffic and even more formidable potential.

At that point it became apparent that blogging was now a major part of my career. That sort of money, and more importantly, that sort of traffic, cannot be ignored. By the end of 2008 I was definitely a professional trumpet player and a professional blogger.

And so here we are at the all new ashleymorgan.com. An opportunity for me to refocus my trumpet career using the new, blog powered, infrastructure that is now in place.

Interested in hearing more about were this is all headed? Read the Manifesto or jump straight in and get involved.