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All Music Guide:
Blues shouter and later gospel preacher, Gatemouth Moore got his start in Kansas City while still a teenager, singing for the bands of Bennie Moten and Walter Barnes. Graced with a smooth but powerful voice similar to Charles Brown, Moore spent the 1940s penning and recording songs, most notably "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," which would later be covered by B.B. King and the previously mentioned Charles Brown. Others would revisit Moore's songs, too, with Rufus Thomas covering Gatemouth's "Somebody's Got to Go" and Jimmy Witherspoon adopted "Christmas Blues." In 1949 Moore gave up secular singing for the gospel trail. He still sang and recorded -- but almost exclusively gospel material -- and spent most of the ensuing decades working in churches and promoting gospel music through radio programs that he hosted. In 2003, Moore appeared in director Richard Pearce's film Road to Memphis singing a latter-day song he wrote titled "Beale Street Ain't Beale Street No More." The following year, the singer dubbed Gatemouth because of his massive voice passed away from natural causes at the age of 90.
Wikipedia:
Arnold Dwight Moore (November 8, 1913, Topeka, Kansas – May 19, 2004, Yazoo City, Mississippi), better known as Gatemouth Moore and later Reverend Gatemouth Moore, was an American blues and gospel singer, songwriter and pastor. A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, he claimed to have earned his nickname as a result of his loud speaking and singing voice.
During his career as a recording artist, Moore worked with various jazz musicians, including Bennie Moten, Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes, and had songs recorded by B.B. King and Rufus Thomas.
His first billing in Chicago was as Gatemouth Moore at the Rhumboogie in early 1945 and later several times at the Club DeLisa (1946–1947 and 1948–1949), where suddenly, in the middle of singing his hit "I Ain't Mad at You Pretty Baby", he switched into a gospel song.
In 1949, Moore was ordained as a minister First Church of Deliverance in Chicago and went on to preach and perform, as Reverend Gatemouth Moore, as a gospel singer and DJ at several radio stations in Memphis, Birmingham and Chicago.
Moore holds distinctions as a survivor of the 1940 Natchez Rhythm Club Fire and as the first blues singer to perform at Carnegie Hall. A brass note on Beale Street Walk of Fame was dedicated to Moore in 1996. He was also featured in the The Road to Memphis segment (directed and photographed by Richard Pearce) of the Martin Scorsese executive produced 2003 documentary The Blues.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
