GATEMOUTH MOORE

Does he purposefully place himself in the path of his heart's destruction, in order that he may feel unto the depths of his being the pain and suffering of which he reveals in song? Is there some Christ-like social contract which states that he was sent down to Earth, where he must suffer on our behalf, crucified for our sins upon the Calvary of Love?

When he poses the question,    
Did you ever love a woman, and love her with all your might When all the time you knew she wasn't treating you right?

We instantly know that we are not alone in having experienced that veryconundrum. The song's remaining words are superfluous, mere filler to take up the three minutes until the music ends. But these two lines, brought forth from the imagination of Arnold Dwight "Gatemouth" Moore, like all great poetry, live on to haunt, to remind, to equalize all men, great and small.

Gatemouth's words live because the basic nature and weakness of Man does not change with the passing of eons, however he may evolve in other ways. For beginning with Adam and ending only when the last man is left standing on a dying planet, Man will throw out all common sense, accept any abuse, deny any and all reality and ignore the very advice he would dispense unto his fellowman, all in order to foster the illusion that he possesses "his" woman.

The pursuit of love, or of coitus--the line between the two can be blurry--will render a strong man weak, an honorable man a liar, cheat or thief, drive a gentle soul to murder or turn a genius into a fool.

Consider that genius Arthur Miller at the hands of Marilyn Monroe. What is After The Fall if not the blues of Arthur the fool? Did not the great DiMaggio arrange to have flowers placed each day at the grave of his ex-wife, whose pathetic insecurity, confusion and self-absorption led her to lay with the likes of Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers and others whom the rest of us would deem unworthy of her unsurpassable charms?

Just as Arthur and Joe would have understood, to the depths of their suffering souls, the answer to Gatemouth's timeless query, so could a lone 1945 black man, sitting at his neighborhood bar, listening to the juke box and nursing a scotch and milk (to coat and soothe his ulcerated stomach lining while still providing alcohol's numbing effects), as he takes in and ponders those very words, "Did you ever love a woman?"

"Yes, oh, yes!" says he, in recognition and resignation to no one in particular, "I, too, have loved a woman!" Did not Jesus of Nazareth Himself love the strumpet Magdalene? Did He not absolve the whore, declaring "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"

The Negro knocks his knuckles twice on the dark brown mahogany, signaling the bartender, who, with the smooth and singular motion of the consummate professional, pours him another, even as he scoops up the price of forgetfulness, before moving down the line to dispense to the next customer more of that magic elixir which clears the mind of all wretched recollection.

Yet, in "the wee, small hours of the morning," or "in the hours between midnight and day"--it's been said a thousand and one ways--the man can't escape the memory of her, even in the haze of his whiskey-soaked dreams. She, who others might see as no more than a lowlife floozie, a worthless waste of molecules, smelling of cheap perfume, her face painted with too much dime store make-up, her body dressed in the obvious, flesh-baring, fuck-me fashions of the trollop. In his delusion, high upon the pedestal on which he has placed her, she is Perfection, she remains the one who might have loved him---forever.

Why she of such imagined perfection did not, would not, could not love him, is a question he never asks of himself, and certainly never asks of anyone whomight give him a sound answer. To know would force a conscious acknowledgmentof too many things. Things too terrible to contemplate. Things unknowable and unspeakable.

Did you ever love a woman, and love her with all your might When all the time you knew she wasn't treating you right?

Who was this poet, this troubadour, this dispenser of two eternal lines ofundeniable and inescapable wisdom and truth, a question which contains it's own answer? And how did he come to posses that wisdom and truth which lay behind his riddle?

Arnold Dwight Moore was born in Topeka, Kansas on November 8, 1913. His mother, Georgia Moore, suffered the embarrassment of having her water break in church for all to see. The text of the sermon that day is lost to history, but we do know that Georgia gave birth to little Arnold in the wagon which transported her home.

Unknown also to Arnold Dwight Moore was the name of his father, who his mother claimed had left her because of her Baptist fervor. She told the boy his daddy's name was Jesus.

As did many a black and unmarried mother of her time, Georgia Moore kept house for a well-to-do white family, in her case, the Spauldings of Topeka. Arnold and his two sisters lived with her in the Spaulding home and he later attributed his clear and articulate manner of speech to this proximity to his benefactors.

From an early age, his mother's employers encouraged Arnold's singing, entering him in contests and booking engagements for him throughout the state and beyond. It is notable that the songs he chose to sing were not blues, but the sentimental ballads of the day.

By age seventeen, he was working in Kansas City, having run away from home to pursue his dreams of stardom. The next few years saw him singing with the band of Bennie Moten, whose pianist at the time was Count Basie, as well as a singing quartet named the Four Sharps and the minstrel shows and touring revues of Porkchop Chapman, Sammie Green, Sam Dale and Ida Cox. In Cox's Darktown Scandals, he performed as the show's interlocutor, thanks to his clean enunciation and sharp suits.

While appearing with the Cox group at Atlanta's Club 81, a female audience member inadvertently gave him his nom-du-stage. "I was singing Stardust,' he recalled, "and there was a little black woman, short and fat, coming down the aisle, rocking with me as I'm singing. I opened my mouth and she looked up and hollered, "Ah, sing it, you gatemouth son of a bitch."

Arnold-now-Gatemouth traveled the South, still singing his pop tunes, until 1940, when, while with the band of Doug Jenkins, he came to see the fiscal wisdom of adding a few blues to his repertoire.

One year later, he returned to Kansas City to work at the Chez Paree, owned by one, Mrs. Quincy C. Gilmore, wife of the business manager of the Negro Leagues Kansas City Monarchs, the baseball team which gave the world Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson. To cash in on Gatemouth's local popularity, Mrs. Gilmore recorded him on her own label singing his songs, "I Ain't Mad At You Pretty Baby," "Did You Ever Love A Woman" and two others.

"I Ain't Mad At You Pretty Baby" came about after Moore observed a saxophonist and his wife in a drunken tiff. As the woman repeatedly struck the man's face with her high-heeled shoe, even as she was being dragged away by the local police, the bleeding man cried out those immortal words of a fool's forgiveness which would inspire the song's title.

Gatemouth and his songs came to the attention of National Records and Herb Abramson, who felt that, with National's nationwide distribution, they could become hits. At his first session in Chicago on May 10, 1945, Moore, backed by Dallas Bartley & his Small-town Boys, recorded "I Ain't Mad." Bartley, who would later play bass and write songs for Louis Jordan, Roy Milton and T-Bone Walker, had the horns play the lead Gatemouth Moore by Billy Vera from Count Basie's famous "Jumpin' At The Woodside" behind Gatemouth's vocal.

The resulting record amassed considerable juke box play but did not chart. National owner, Al Green, was a big man in the mob-controlled St. Louis painter's union, so National's placement in Midwestern juke boxes was a forgone conclusion.

Abramson next recorded Moore in New York with top sidemen Dick Vance (trumpet),Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet and tenor sax), Harry Carney (baritone sax), Sammy Benskin (piano), Al Hall (bass) and J. C. Heard (drums), under the leadership of Budd Johnson, who wrote a be-bop influenced arrangement and contributed a blistering tenor solo. Out of this two-day November session came Gatemouth's masterpiece, "Did You Ever Love A Woman," that for which he will be remembered, although it, too, never found its way to the Billboard or Cashbox charts.

Moore's final National session, from October 25, 1946, finds him in the company of the Tiny Grimes Swingtet, featuring the leader's guitar and John Hardee's fine tenor sax. Despite some nice material, nothing clicked commercially and Gatemouth moved on to King Records of Cincinnati, where he, unsuccessfully, cut 27 sides, all issued last year on a CD on the British label West Side. After King, his secular music days were effectively over.

Onstage at Chicago's Club DeLisa one night in January, 1949, Gatemouth opened his mouth and not one sound emerged. He took this as a heavenly sign and quit blues singing for a different kind of show biz, reinventing himself as the Reverend Dwight Moore, under which moniker he's been working the pews ever since and now resides in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

Billy Vera,
2003
 

The Travels Of Gatemouth Moore