Tracy Jamal Morgan born November 10, [ 1 ] is an American stand-up comedian and actor. His father named him Tracy in honor of a platoon mate and friend who shipped off to Vietnam with him and was killed in action days later.
Morgan married his girlfriend Sabina that year and dropped out of high school just four credits short of his diploma to care for his ailing father. He said in "He would say to me, 'Yo, Tracy, man, you should be doing comedy. And that for me, that was like my Vietnam. I had my survival guilt when I started to achieve success.
Why I made it out and some guys didn't. Morgan embarked on a stand-up comedy career, successfully enough that he "finally moved to a nice community in [The Bronx neighborhood of] Riverdale , from a run-down apartment next to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Morgan made his screen debut playing Hustle Man on the television show Martin. The character sold various items from the "hood", always greeting people with his trademark "What's happ'n, chief? Later, in the Chris Rock film Head of State , Morgan appeared as a man watching television, often questioning why they are not watching Martin.
Morgan was also a regular cast member on Uptown Comedy Club , a sketch-comedy show filmed in Harlem that aired for two seasons, from to Morgan joined the cast of the comedy series Saturday Night Live in , and performed as a regular until Producer Lorne Michaels chose him over Stephen Colbert in the final round of auditions.
Morgan's regular characters included the kindly but deluded vagrant Woodrow; outspoken apartment maintenance man Dominican Lou; lusty Astronaut Jones whose shorts skits ended with blunt sexual propositions towards beautiful extraterrestrial ladies; and Safari Planet host Brian Fellow who was enthusiastic but deeply ignorant about animals.
