Signature Study - JimMorrison

Thanks for the invite Bradford. Glad to be part of the group. I am a huge Doors/JDM collector of posters, handbills, tickets, photography, etc. and am very fortunate to own 2 Jim signed bank checks. I am far from an expert, but have been studying his signature and handwriting for a long time and am still learning.

In my opinion his autograph is heavily forged as it has a sort of sloppiness to it and resembles the handwriting of a 5th grader. The doors were only around for about 5 years and his signature was fairly consistent throughout this time versus someone like Paul McCartney for instance who's been signing for 50 years and there has to be thousands of them and changed many many times. I personally have only 102 "known" authentic JDM sigs in my files. I'm sure there are more out there somewhere that just haven't surfaced yet but not many i'm sure.

The following 3 are probably his earliest examples signed in 61' which are from his senior yearbook in high school. Notice it is one continuous sig with no breaks and has a dotted "i".The next known example was a christmas present he gave to his college roommate in 63'. His "J" is almost identical to the highlighted sig in one of the yearbooks, but notice the sig has started to have separations in it and is starting to resemble the style he always uses.I believe this next one to be his earliest sig as a Door in 66'.All the examples from this point forward as a Door were most commonly signed "JMorrison". He very rarely signed "Jim Morrison" for which there are less than 10 known or so and "James Douglas Morrison" has i believe 3 known give or take as does "James Morrison" or "James D. Morrison". Here are just some of them.

There are a few more of those uncommon ones but wanted to show what i consider "textbook" JDM sigs signed JMorrison. These are tough to date precisely unless they are on a bank check or on one of his poetry books. As you can see it didn't matter what it was, whether a check, book,contract, will,letter, etc. "JMorrison" was the most common by far and separated as JM - ORR - I - SON.

I believe PSA/DNA has him as the 6th most dangerous signature when it comes to forgeries. There are many things to look for in his sig to determine if it's real or fake, just like with any sig, but i'll show 2 of the more important things to look for when spotting a real one.

First, he almost 95% of the time tucks his first "O" into itself as shown.Second thing i look for is the transition from the second "O" to the "N" which never has a downstroke. It is upward or has a mini horizontal line into the "N".

A few times he just signed "Jim".I am new to the group and hope this wasn't too long. I hope this helps to someone not so familiar with his style.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on April 27, 2016 at 5:31pm

Nice job, Jack. This is said to be Jim's first poem. He was 10 years old when he wrote it.

Permalink Reply by JackGotLucky on April 27, 2016 at 5:48pm

Thanks Mark, I was hoping you would stop by for I knew you would add whatever I missed here and there
Best, Jack...

Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on April 27, 2016 at 6:54pm

Here's a contract signature from 1966 that predates the check endorsement:

Permalink Reply by JackGotLucky on April 27, 2016 at 7:04pm

Thanks Mark, I knew there had to be that early Doors contract when they first formed and i didn't have this one. Glad to add it to my exemplar file. Jack...

Permalink Reply by Bradford on April 29, 2016 at 8:49am

Thanks for sharing, Ballroom. Lots of good stuff here.

Permalink Reply by JackGotLucky on April 28, 2016 at 3:55am

Here is a nice full James Douglas Morrison i should have included. Jack...

Permalink Reply by Bradford on April 29, 2016 at 8:48am

This is incredible info, Jack! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this incredibly insightful information. It is exactly what I hoped to accomplish with such a group.

Permalink Reply by JackGotLucky on May 1, 2016 at 9:51am

Your very welcome Bradford, but i can't go without mentioning that a lot of credit also goes to Ballroom, as he has advised and helped educate me on many things regarding JDM over the years. In my opinion, he is one of the best there is when it comes to Jim's sig and handwriting. I value and put his opinion on the same level as some of the top authenticators in the business.

Jack...

Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 1, 2016 at 10:05am

Permalink Reply by Shaggy67 on May 10, 2022 at 8:50pm

Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on May 1, 2016 at 10:38am

It's my pleasure. Thanks very much.

Permalink Reply by JackGotLucky on May 1, 2016 at 10:47am

I wanted to show a 3rd thing i look for when trying to spot a real JDM. Once again, it's something he didn't do all the time, but when it is done on some few select sigs, to me, it helps significantly in differentiating real/fake.

Take a look at the following sig and notice how the last loop of the "M" in "Jim" looks like an "N", which is how Jim actually wrote his "N's".Here it is the last loop of the "M" blown up.In this one below also, look at the last loop of the "M" and see how much the above and below resemble the "N" in JMorrison in the sig below.Now, take a look at that last loop to the "M" again in Morrison on the beer garden ad and in the copy of AAP Notice how much the end of the "M" looks like how Jim writes his second "R" shown below.Now take another look at that last loop of the "M" in Morrison below.
Look how much it resembles the second "R' in the next 2 examples.
I know some would say, "oh, you're dissecting the signature too much". Once again this is something that JDM occasionally does that the forgers never are able to do or duplicate that is a huge tell that the sig is genuine. Best, Jack...