Arnold Dwight "Gatemouth" Moore (November 8, 1913 – May 19, 2004) was an American blues and gospel singer, songwriter, radio disc jockey, community leader and pastor, later known as Reverend Gatemouth Moore. During his career as a recording artist, Moore worked with Bennie Moten, Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes, and his songs were recorded by B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. He was noted for his mellow singing voice, much in the style of Billy Eckstine.
Moore was born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, where he sang ballads and spirituals in his youth. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis. Around 1930 he left home, joined F. S. Wolcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, and began performing with Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Bertha "Chippie" Hill. He toured widely but settled in Clarksdale, Mississippi, around 1934.
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| Rhythm Night Club |
In the 1930s he sang with the bands of Bennie Moten (with a young Count Basie on piano), Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes and his Royal Creoles. In 1940 he was with Barnes and his band for a performance at the Rhythm Night Club in Natchez, Mississippi, when a fire broke out, trapping most of those inside. Reports put the death toll at between 200 and 240 people. Moore was one of the few who survived, but Barnes and other members of the orchestra perished in the blaze.
He made his first recordings in 1941 for the Gay Paree record label in Kansas City, Missouri, and moved between residencies in Kansas City, Memphis and Chicago. He recorded for Damon Records and National Records and then for King Records in Cincinnati, Ohio. His songs, often improvised and based on actual incidents in his life, included "I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby", "Did You Ever Love a Woman", and "Somebody's Got to Go". Several of his compositions were recorded by other performers, including Louis Jordan, Lonnie Johnson, Johnny Otis, Rufus Thomas, Jimmy Witherspoon, and B. B. King, who regarded Moore as a major influence and as "one of the greatest blues singers ever". Moore re-recorded many of his songs for King in 1947. He was also responsible for recruiting the blues singer Wynonie Harris to the label.
According to some sources his nickname was derived from his loud speaking and singing voice, but Moore himself repeated a story that at a performance in Atlanta a drunken woman told him to "sing it, you gatemouth sonofabitch". Moore was reportedly the first blues singer to perform at the Apollo Theater and many other theaters around the country, including Carnegie Hall in New York City. In Chicago, he appeared regularly at the Rhumboogie and at the Club DeLisa.
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| Moore with Roosevelt Sykes |
He maintained his flair for showmanship
in his work as a minister and gospel singer, on one occasion delivering an
Easter sermon from a funeral casket with hearse and pallbearers, to raise money
for charity. On another occasion he arrived on the shore of the Mississippi in
a white suit and promised to walk across the water. He kept the crowd waiting
expectantly until he announced: "Children, the water is troubled today.
Reverend Moore cannot walk on troubled waters."
He recorded gospel music for Chess and Coral and became a DJ at radio stations in Memphis, Birmingham, and Chicago. He also became the pastor of several churches in Mississippi and Louisiana, including in later years Yazoo City, Mississippi.
According to his citation on the Mississippi Blues Trail, "His elegance and exuberance enabled him to easily cross social, racial, and religious lines, and though he devoted himself to the church, community work, charities, and education, he still enjoyed singing the blues on occasion." He became an MC at both blues festivals and religious conventions, president of the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team, and a leader of the "black Elks" (Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World).
He made his last recordings for Johnny Otis' Blues Spectrum label in 1977, including a new song, "Beale Street Ain't Beale Street No More". A brass note on Beale Street Walk of Fame was dedicated to Moore in 1996. He was also featured in the documentary film The Road to Memphis, directed and photographed by Richard Pearce, a part of the 2003 series The Blues, of which Martin Scorsese was the executive producer.
Moore's big, mellow voice could fill any room; B B King regarded him as "one of the greatest blues singers ever", a judgment with which Moore himself could only concur: "I can't wiggle and I can't dance," he once said, "but telling a story, I don't think them other boys are in my class."
