Richard Edwin Morrissey was a British jazz musician and composer. He played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and flute.

He was born in Horley, Surrey, England. Dick Morrissey emerged in the early 1960s in the wake of Tubby Hayes, Britain's pre-eminent sax player at the time. Self-taught, he started playing clarinet in his school band, The Delta City Jazzmen, at the age of sixteen with fellow pupils Robin Mayhew (trumpet), Eric Archer (trombone), Steve Pennells (banjo), Glyn Greenfield (drums), and young brother Chris on tea-chest bass. He then joined the Original Climax Jazz Band. Going on to join trumpeter Gus Galbraith's Septet, where alto-sax player Peter King introduced him to Charlie Parker's recordings, he began specialising on tenor saxophone shortly after.

Making his name as a hard bop player, he appeared regularly at the Marquee Club from August 1960,[6] and recorded his first solo album at the age of 21, It's Morrissey, Man! (1961) for Fontana, featuring Stan Jones on piano, Colin Barnes on drums, and The Jazz Couriers founding member Malcolm Cecil on bass. He spent most of 1962 in Calcutta, India as part of the Ashley Kozak Quartet, playing three two-hour sessions seven days a week, before returning to the UK and forming his quartet with Harry South – who had also been in the quartet in Calcutta – on piano. They were joined by former The Jazz Couriers bassist Phil Bates and variously, another ex-The Jazz Couriers member, Bill Eyden, Jackie Dougan or Phil Seamen on drums. The Dick Morrissey Quartet recorded three LPs, Have You Heard? (1963); the live recording Storm Warning! (1965) on Mercury; and Here and Now and Sounding Good! (1966). The quartet, played regular London gigs at The Bull's Head, Barnes and at Ronnie Scott's, whose manager, Pete King, once said that Ronnie's was kept going in those days due to the crowds Dick Morrissey pulled in. During this time he also played extensively in bands led by Ian Hamer and Harry South, including The Six Sounds, featuring Ken Wray and Dick Morrissey, a band which by 1966 had developed into the Ian Hamer Sextet featuring South, Dick Morrissey, Keith Christie, Kenny Napper and Bill Eyden, among other leading UK-based jazz musicians.

He also played briefly in Ted Heath's Big Band, which featured many name jazz musicians over the years, as well as appearing as a featured guest on the classic Johnny Dankworth and his Orchestra recording, What the Dickens! and the Harry South Big Band. Likewise, together with fellow tenors Stan Robinson and Al Gay, baritone sax Paul Carroll, and trumpets Ian Carr, Kenny Wheeler and Greg Brown, Dick Morrissey formed part of (Eric Burdon and) The Animals' Big Band that made its one-and-only public appearance at the 5th Annual British Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond (1965).

By the mid-1960s, he had over two consecutive years come in second place behind Hayes in the Melody Maker Jazz Poll (1966 & 1967). Many US musicians touring Britain during the Sixties and early Seventies recorded with him. They included Brother Jack McDuff, a live recording with Jimmy Witherspoon, two LPs with J. J. Jackson, and Sonny Stitt together with guitarist Ernest Ranglin (live at Ronnie Scott's).

Dick Morrissey performed regularly at the National Jazz Festival in the 1960s; his last appearance under his own name there was at the 6th festival held at Windsor (1966), although he would return to the festival with If in 1972 for their only appearance.

In 1969, Dick Morrissey, by then many-time winner and runner-up of the Melody Maker Jazz Poll, teamed up with another Melody Maker award-winner, guitarist Terry Smith, with whom he had worked in J. J. Jackson's Band, to form an early jazz-rock group, If.

Morrissey also toured and/or recorded with Charly Antolini, Alexis Korner (several albums), Hoagy Carmichael, participating on Hoagy's last album, In Hoagland (1981) featuring Georgie Fame and Annie Ross, with arrangements by Harry South, Mike Carr, Georgie Fame, Brian Auger, Dusty Springfield, Freddie Mack, Pete York, Paul McCartney, Orange Juice, Gary Numan (he appeared on a number of Numan's albums throughout the 1980s), Phil Carmen, Herbie Mann, Shakatak, Peter Gabriel (the solo in "Start" and several other tracks from his third album), Jon Anderson (and as a member of the New Life Band's The Song of Seven Tour in 1980), Demis Roussos, Jon & Vangelis and Vangelis, Gino Vanelli, as well as playing the haunting saxophone solo on the Vangelis composition "Love Theme" for the 1982 film Blade Runner.