About
Deacon John Moore has spent more than a half century as one of the Crescent City’s most talented, adaptive, and beloved performers and bandleaders. Yet this New Orleans institution hasn’t ventured far beyond the Big Easy. NPR’s Scott Simon dubbed him “one of New Orleans’s best-kept musical secrets.” Moore performs everything from classic rhythm and blues and rock and roll to jazz and gospel. His great love is jump blues—an up-tempo, hard-swinging music prominently featuring a horn section that presaged R&B and rock and roll.
Moore grew up in New Orleans’s 8th Ward; his mother played piano and a grandfather played banjo. His twelve brothers and sisters played guitar, drums, trombone and viola. Church was music, but singing came from home. “My mother taught me how to sing because she said I had the loudest voice when I cried,” Deacon recalls. “She took me under a fig tree and cut my nails when I was an infant. According to Creole tradition, if you cut a baby’s nails under a fig tree, the child will grow up to become a singer.”
Deacon started singing with an R&B band in the seventh grade. In high school, he learned guitar by ear and started playing professionally. Later, Moore played in the house band of the legendary Dew Drop Inn, and then as a session guitarist in Cosimo Matassa’s storied French Quarter studio, working with celebrated producer Allen Toussaint. Deacon backed some of the major R&B stars of the day.
Today Moore fronts his own band, Deacon John & the Ivories. He was recently inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, and was the first African American elected president of the New Orleans Musicians Union, Local #174-496.
“I never had a hit record,” Deacon John recently told NPR, “and I never been on tour…. I’m just one of the guys who stayed around here and made a living playing music.”
Videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNfD1GCw4U
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqGa1fqrkc4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeTorvIReI8
NPR story:
www.npr.org/2015/02/14/385555440/a-hero-at-home-deacon-john-moore-is-new-orleans-best-kept-secret