Arnold “Gatemouth” Moore
Mable Osemwegie
Tennessee State University

Arnold Dwight “Gatemouth” Moore was one of America’s most popular blues singers in the
1940s before becoming a renowned religious leader, radio announcer, and gospel singer. Moore was born in Topeka, Kansas on November 8, 1913. He sang ballads and spirituals as a youngster in his hometown and as a teen, he left with a traveling show called the Port Gibson-based Rabbit Foot Minstrels. When the traveling show ended, he ended up in Clarksdale around 1934. A year or so later he caught a ride to
Memphis and launched a new career as a blues shouter. At a show in Atlanta an intoxicated woman gave him his nickname, he recalled “I opened my mouth and she looked up and hollered, ‘Ah, sing it, you gate mouth S.O.B.”. Moving between Memphis,
Kansas City, and Chicago, he toured with some of the country’s top bands, wrote and recorded hits such as “I Ain’t Mad at You Pretty Baby,” “Did You Ever Love a Woman,” and “Somebody’s Got to
Go”. Both B.B. King and Rufus Thomas considered Moore a major influence and remained close friends with him through the years.
Moore was ranked in the top rung of vocalists in national polls by the Defender when he felt the calling to preach. He carried his flair for showmanship with him into the ministry, as a gospel singer, recording artist, as the host of radio and television programs, and as a raconteur whose tales could stretch the limits of belief. His elegance and exuberance enabled him to easily cross social, racial, and religious lines. Though he devoted himself to the church, community work, charities, and education, he still enjoyed singing the blues on occasion. A pastor of both Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches, a leader of the “black Elks” (IBPOEW), president of the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team, and an emcee at both blues festivals and religious conventions, Moore once delivered a eulogy for the closing of the Club DeLisa and preached one famous sermon from a casket and another from a cross.
In 1974 the A.M.E. Church assigned him to Yazoo City, where he married high school counselor
Walterine Coleman. While living there, Moore received a brass note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame in
1996. Moore died in Yazoo City on May 19, 2004 and his widow was presented with a resolution in his honor by the Mississippi Senate in 2004.