UPDATED: Maurice Day, the frontman of Prince Time’s funk band for more than 40 years, has settled on the estate of his late benefactor, which he claims told him he could no longer work as Morris Day. & the Time.
“I gave 40 years of my life to create a name and a legacy that Prince and I invented,” he wrote in a social media post. “A name I had no problem using while he was alive. I literally put my blood, sweat and tears to bring value to this name. In fact, he booked me for a few tours and many full nights at Paisley Park, under the name Morris Day & The Time. He never once told me that I could not use this name configuration.
“However, now that Prince is no longer with us, suddenly the people who control his multimillion-dollar estate want to rewrite history by taking away my name, thus influencing the way I feed my family,” he continued. he. “So at the moment, according to the prince’s legacy, [I] can no longer use Morris Day & The Time in any capacity. “
A spokesman for the Prince’s mansion told Variety on Thursday: “Given Prince’s long history with Maurice Day and what Estate considered friendly discussions, The Prince Estate was surprised and disappointed to see his recent publication. The mansion is open to working proactively with Morris to resolve this issue. However, the information he shared is not entirely accurate. “
However, a letter from a lawyer representing the inheritance, addressed to Day’s lawyer Richard Jefferson, dated 13 December 2021 and provided to Variety, does state that Day “is not entitled to use or register [the name] TIME in any form ”- which probably includes concerts and recordings – and refers to a 1982 contract in which Day acknowledged that PRN Music Corporation, a legal entity wholly owned by Prince at the time, is “the sole and exclusive owner of all rights in and of TIME.”
The current dispute stems from Day’s attempt the name Morris Day and the Time, the Day spokesman told Variety.
The letter proposes that the matter be settled by mutual agreement and that Day’s name be resolved. Instead of filing a petition for annulment, Estate would prefer to discuss this with you and resolve it through an agreement that recognizes Estates’ rights to the THE TIME trademark and licenses Mr. Day to use the MORRIS DAY AND THE TIME trademark with the services identified in the existing trademark registration and goods related to such services as music sound recordings and music video recordings, “it said. It is assumed that further exchanges followed, without a decision.
Day and Prince met for the first time in their early teens and later played together in a band called Grand Central with Day as drummer. The couple formed Time in 1980 as a funk-based group for prolific Prince songwriting, with Day as frontman; while recruiting top musicians for the band – especially pianist Jimmy Jam and bassist Terry Lewis, who would later become one of the most successful production teams of the last 35 years – the music on their albums was performed almost entirely by Prince and Day .
The band created something of a glamorous gangster image, dressed in 1940s-style costumes and fedora, and opened two major tours for Prince in the early 1980s. They became such a hot combination that they often got a better response from the Prince headliner and were sometimes removed from the big markets. This rivalry formed the plot line in the 1984 film Purple Rain, which elevated Prince to superstar and was willing to do the same for Weather, but Day left after a financial dispute with Prince and began a solo career.
The two were estranged for several years, but patched up their friendship, and the reunited Time has traveled frequently over the years, including the occasional opening of Prince slots.
Day wrote tenderly and touchingly about his story and relationship with Prince in his 2019 autobiography, Time: A Princely Life in Funk.
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