Sailor’s Love Letters Inspire Second Hit Song After Viral TikTok Clip (Exclusive)

For the second time in recent years, 86-year-old Morton Block and his grandson Matthew are finding success with music inspired by his life.

Mort has been composing since he was a teenager. Seven years ago, Matt Block, the 34-year-old co-founder of La Reserve Records, found an old song his grandfather had written stashed in a drawer.

They recorded it and posted “My Love” on TikTok in March 2022, overlayed with video of Mort and his wife, Susan, on their honeymoon in Miami Beach, Fla. The clip got 1.6 million views.

This summer, a second song Mort composed decades ago while serving in the U.S. Navy — also based on his love story — proved to be another hit as part of the release for Mort and Matt’s second album, The Lonely Sea. (Their first album, 2022’s Strange Harbors, has received more than 20 million streams.)

“It’s a lot of storytelling across 70 years, but we went back further for this one,” says Matt of their follow-up. “Some of the first songs he ever wrote are on this record.”

After the first album’s success, Matt asked his grandfather if he had any other music he wrote while serving in the Navy in the 1950s.

Indeed, Mort and Susan Block saved all the letters they wrote each other.

“Looking through those, I found an envelope that had the words to a song that was a letter I started for her,” Mort says.

That song, the title track of their new album, has received more than 4.5 million streams. It’s “more serious” than their 2022 hit, which was upbeat and Sinatra-esque.

But, Mort explains, it has a different meaning: “My feelings were deeper.”

With his social media-fueled musical success, he is adjusting to the internet fame. Within months, Mort went from about 700 followers on Instagram to nearly 60,000.

“It just blew up,” he says.

Matt has been making music with his grandpa since he first picked up Mort’s trumpet when he was just 3 years old. Mort taught him how to play and for the last few years they’ve been co-writing music and talking nearly every day.

“He’s my best friend,” Mort says. “Music is the bond between us.”

Mort first joined the Navy in 1956. Two years later, on Labor Day weekend in 1958, he was on leave when he met his now wife, Susan.

“The first glance took my breath away,” he says.

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About two weeks after they met, while standing watch on the USS Hazelwood in December 1958, the sea and air rescue swimmer wrote the lyrics to “My Love.”

 “I waited until I was back home to sing it to her,” he says.

Over the years, he regularly played the song for her privately but never released it commercially. “I heard it all the time,” Susan previously told PEOPLE. “It was a beautiful song.”

The couple wed on June 12, 1960. (Their nephew Neil Vogel is the CEO of PEOPLE’s parent company.)

“I’m married to the most incredible woman,” Mort says. “Thank goodness we’re both still here.”

Mort, now a retired kitchen and bath designer, still swims every day and volunteers as an assistant director at a high school jazz band near his home in Kennett Square, Pa.

He plays his trumpet every day, too, and he regularly talks to his grandson as they compose new music together.

“Since I retired, I don’t know what I would do without music,” Mort says. “It’s what keeps me going.”

Their new album is filled with more songs about love and heartbreak.

“We’re still making music that we want to hear ourselves,” Matt says. “It’s just very easy. It’s very seamless, and it’s just us sharing stories that we want to share and then making it sound the way that we just want to hear.”

Next up? A third album, of course.

And in June, Matt got married to Yena Kang — and his grandfather officiated the wedding.

“It was unbelievable,” Mort says. “It’s a blessing that they’re together. I was thrilled.”