I realise that the lengthy piece which follows concerns a pianist rather than a guitarist but stick with it because he has some interesting things to say about the Dallas blues community. (from Jazz Beat April 1965 p. 14-15)
WHISTLING ALEX MOORE
by CHRIS ROBY
"I have been a lone piano player most of my life. I like blues, boogie and popular music ? it is my heart." Whistling Alex Moore, the Dallas blues singer and pianist who was recorded by Chris Strachwitz and Paul Oliver in July 1960, is fairly typical of a whole generation of Texas musicians. For the past forty odd years; his boogie-based piano and husky, good-humoured vocals have been a part of Dallas nightlife. The titles on Arhoolie F 1008 (issued in this country on 77 LA 12/7) give a new dimension to the phrase "bar-room piano". The session was cut in one and a half hours, without rehearsal, and Alex had not been playing for two months previously. Nevertheless, the album remains an essential for anyone interested in the more primitive forms of boogie woogie and blues piano.
Alexander Herman Moore was born on Hall Street in North Dallas, Texas, on 22nd November 1899. Hall Street, in his own words, was "the heart of North Dallas, where all of the Negroes congregated for dancing, taverns, good times, also the State Theatre, Smith's Drug Store, Papa Dad's Barbecue, the Apex Barber Shop and the North Dallas Club". Today he lives within five blocks of the street where he was born. His father, Jesse S. Moore was a candy maker and in 1905 the family moved to El Paso, returning to Dallas in 1907 where Alex went to school. One of his earliest memories of Dallas is of the disastrous flood in 1908 when the Trinity River rose over its banks, an event that has been commemorated in more than one blues. Alex's father died in 1910 and Alex was forced to leave school, where he had reached the sixth grade, and take a delivery job with a neighbourhood grocery store to support his mother and his younger sister and brother. At the age of 17 he enlisted in the U.S. Army but was sent no further than San Antonio, Texas. He was discharged in 1918 and returned to Dallas to work for the same grocery store. He also began to take a more serious interest in music as a possible means of earning a living.
Like about seventy per cent of Dallas' blues artists, Alex was self taught. At fifteen years of age he had begun to hold two bones between his fingers and rattle them. Next he turned to the harmonica and was soon good enough to play over WRR radio station. He was also proficient as a tap dancer but he became increasingly interested in the piano. In 1917 he arranged to take music lessons but after only one lesson his music teacher left for a trip to Oklahoma. By the time she returned, Alex had learned to play a little by ear and was not in the mood for any more lessons, at least not from a teacher. All his spare time was spent in clubs and bars, 'anywhere where there was a piano listening to anything other pianists and at every opportunity pounding away himself. "I almost drove many a person nuts" he recalls happily of those early days. Suffering customers would tell him "I'll sure be glad when you get off that piano!" Soon, however, Alex had worked out some tunes of his own and before long people were saying "Don't stop, play some more" or "We're going on to a party now, you come with us."
By 1920 Alex was much in demand at house parties and joints around Dallas. His first job, at twelve dollars a week, was for a Mr. Ed "Scorchy" Jones at the Idlewild Social Club on Elm Street. Jones later became a minister but the job led to other engagements at such Dallas nightspots as the Arabian Lounge, the Alpine Club and the Zombie Bar. Alex at this time was known as "Papa Chitlings" and for one spell during the twenties he played four nights a week at the Gay Nineties on Maple Avenue where the weekend attraction was Buster Smith and his Heat Waves. Smith, an excellent alto player and a good friend of Alex's later moved to Kansas City where his band included Charlie Parker. He has since returned to Dallas where he is still active as a bandleader. Apart from the local musicians, Dallas also had visits in the early twenties from Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds and from the Erskine Hawkins band. Working the Dallas clubs, Alex met many of the blues artists of the day, including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Norris McHenry and Curtis Jones. Jones, who left Texas in 1929 and reached Chicago by way of Kansas City, now lives in Europe, but still hears from Alex occasionally although the two have not met for some thirty five years.
In 1928 Alex and Blind Norris McHenry went on a trip to Chicago where they recorded for Decca Records and also appeared together at several nightclubs. The titles Alex cut were "Hard Headed Woman", "Bull Corn Blues", "Come Back Baby", "Whistling Blues", "West Texas Woman" and "Blue Bloomer Blues". He also recorded some tracks for the Columbia 14000 series the same year. This trip to Chicago was the only occasion on which Alex has been out of Texas. Until the Arhoolie session, his recording opportunities have been almost nil. He remembers playing piano on a record by the late Smokey Hogg for Ripples Music Co. in the thirties. An avid record collector he has a number of Smokey Hogg's records, also some by fellow Texans Norris McHenry and T Bone Walker and by the boogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pine Top Smith.
From 1947 to 1950 Alex played nightly at the Southern Steak House on Lemon Avenue for Walter E. Wilder. It was a good steady job and Alex wrote a number of tunes there which came to him as he was playing the piano, including "The Southern House Blues" which was used as a commercial for the restaurant:
Southern fried chicken, T-Bone steak,
Look out boy, don't you make me late.
I got a brand new date and no time to lose.
I got them Southern House Blues.
I ain't been there but I've been told
The Southern House is the place to go.
You may not know which you like the most
But just take another bite of that garlic toast.
Old Alexander, playing at the piano,
Knocking it out in a boogie woogie manner.
When you read the menu, yes it will send you.
I'll send you with the tune of the Southern House Blues."
Walter Wilder later moved to Houston, where he opened the Safari Restaurant and featured Alex there for two months in 1962. Through the fifties and sixties Alex has continued to work the clubs around Dallas with occasional bookings in Houston or Palestine. Generally he works as a single but if a larger group is called for he uses a quartet comprising himself on piano, "Sweet Daddy" on saxophone, Frank Demings, guitar and vocals, and George Washington on drums. He gave up tap-dancing in 1959 after a final appearance at the Kenny Morris Steak House with Bill Robertson II. He writes all his own material and copyrighted another song, "If You Don't Apologise", only recently.
Today Alex seems a remarkably contented man, if not exactly a rich one. A great-grandfather at sixty five, his eldest daughter, who lives in Los Angeles, is 48 and his youngest son, Alexander Moore Junior, is five. His mother, Mrs. Lula Moore, died in 1957. Arhoolie Records deserve a special vote of thanks for preserving a recent example of the work of this talented and very likeable artist.
WHISTLING ALEX MOORE
by CHRIS ROBY
"I have been a lone piano player most of my life. I like blues, boogie and popular music ? it is my heart." Whistling Alex Moore, the Dallas blues singer and pianist who was recorded by Chris Strachwitz and Paul Oliver in July 1960, is fairly typical of a whole generation of Texas musicians. For the past forty odd years; his boogie-based piano and husky, good-humoured vocals have been a part of Dallas nightlife. The titles on Arhoolie F 1008 (issued in this country on 77 LA 12/7) give a new dimension to the phrase "bar-room piano". The session was cut in one and a half hours, without rehearsal, and Alex had not been playing for two months previously. Nevertheless, the album remains an essential for anyone interested in the more primitive forms of boogie woogie and blues piano.
Alexander Herman Moore was born on Hall Street in North Dallas, Texas, on 22nd November 1899. Hall Street, in his own words, was "the heart of North Dallas, where all of the Negroes congregated for dancing, taverns, good times, also the State Theatre, Smith's Drug Store, Papa Dad's Barbecue, the Apex Barber Shop and the North Dallas Club". Today he lives within five blocks of the street where he was born. His father, Jesse S. Moore was a candy maker and in 1905 the family moved to El Paso, returning to Dallas in 1907 where Alex went to school. One of his earliest memories of Dallas is of the disastrous flood in 1908 when the Trinity River rose over its banks, an event that has been commemorated in more than one blues. Alex's father died in 1910 and Alex was forced to leave school, where he had reached the sixth grade, and take a delivery job with a neighbourhood grocery store to support his mother and his younger sister and brother. At the age of 17 he enlisted in the U.S. Army but was sent no further than San Antonio, Texas. He was discharged in 1918 and returned to Dallas to work for the same grocery store. He also began to take a more serious interest in music as a possible means of earning a living.
Like about seventy per cent of Dallas' blues artists, Alex was self taught. At fifteen years of age he had begun to hold two bones between his fingers and rattle them. Next he turned to the harmonica and was soon good enough to play over WRR radio station. He was also proficient as a tap dancer but he became increasingly interested in the piano. In 1917 he arranged to take music lessons but after only one lesson his music teacher left for a trip to Oklahoma. By the time she returned, Alex had learned to play a little by ear and was not in the mood for any more lessons, at least not from a teacher. All his spare time was spent in clubs and bars, 'anywhere where there was a piano listening to anything other pianists and at every opportunity pounding away himself. "I almost drove many a person nuts" he recalls happily of those early days. Suffering customers would tell him "I'll sure be glad when you get off that piano!" Soon, however, Alex had worked out some tunes of his own and before long people were saying "Don't stop, play some more" or "We're going on to a party now, you come with us."
By 1920 Alex was much in demand at house parties and joints around Dallas. His first job, at twelve dollars a week, was for a Mr. Ed "Scorchy" Jones at the Idlewild Social Club on Elm Street. Jones later became a minister but the job led to other engagements at such Dallas nightspots as the Arabian Lounge, the Alpine Club and the Zombie Bar. Alex at this time was known as "Papa Chitlings" and for one spell during the twenties he played four nights a week at the Gay Nineties on Maple Avenue where the weekend attraction was Buster Smith and his Heat Waves. Smith, an excellent alto player and a good friend of Alex's later moved to Kansas City where his band included Charlie Parker. He has since returned to Dallas where he is still active as a bandleader. Apart from the local musicians, Dallas also had visits in the early twenties from Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds and from the Erskine Hawkins band. Working the Dallas clubs, Alex met many of the blues artists of the day, including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Norris McHenry and Curtis Jones. Jones, who left Texas in 1929 and reached Chicago by way of Kansas City, now lives in Europe, but still hears from Alex occasionally although the two have not met for some thirty five years.
In 1928 Alex and Blind Norris McHenry went on a trip to Chicago where they recorded for Decca Records and also appeared together at several nightclubs. The titles Alex cut were "Hard Headed Woman", "Bull Corn Blues", "Come Back Baby", "Whistling Blues", "West Texas Woman" and "Blue Bloomer Blues". He also recorded some tracks for the Columbia 14000 series the same year. This trip to Chicago was the only occasion on which Alex has been out of Texas. Until the Arhoolie session, his recording opportunities have been almost nil. He remembers playing piano on a record by the late Smokey Hogg for Ripples Music Co. in the thirties. An avid record collector he has a number of Smokey Hogg's records, also some by fellow Texans Norris McHenry and T Bone Walker and by the boogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Pine Top Smith.
From 1947 to 1950 Alex played nightly at the Southern Steak House on Lemon Avenue for Walter E. Wilder. It was a good steady job and Alex wrote a number of tunes there which came to him as he was playing the piano, including "The Southern House Blues" which was used as a commercial for the restaurant:
Southern fried chicken, T-Bone steak,
Look out boy, don't you make me late.
I got a brand new date and no time to lose.
I got them Southern House Blues.
I ain't been there but I've been told
The Southern House is the place to go.
You may not know which you like the most
But just take another bite of that garlic toast.
Old Alexander, playing at the piano,
Knocking it out in a boogie woogie manner.
When you read the menu, yes it will send you.
I'll send you with the tune of the Southern House Blues."
Walter Wilder later moved to Houston, where he opened the Safari Restaurant and featured Alex there for two months in 1962. Through the fifties and sixties Alex has continued to work the clubs around Dallas with occasional bookings in Houston or Palestine. Generally he works as a single but if a larger group is called for he uses a quartet comprising himself on piano, "Sweet Daddy" on saxophone, Frank Demings, guitar and vocals, and George Washington on drums. He gave up tap-dancing in 1959 after a final appearance at the Kenny Morris Steak House with Bill Robertson II. He writes all his own material and copyrighted another song, "If You Don't Apologise", only recently.
Today Alex seems a remarkably contented man, if not exactly a rich one. A great-grandfather at sixty five, his eldest daughter, who lives in Los Angeles, is 48 and his youngest son, Alexander Moore Junior, is five. His mother, Mrs. Lula Moore, died in 1957. Arhoolie Records deserve a special vote of thanks for preserving a recent example of the work of this talented and very likeable artist.