From: Dik de Heer 
Date: Mon Oct 20, 2003 1:18am
Subject: Born To Be With You : Johnny Moore (Three Blazers)
 
JOHNNY MOORE (By Dave Penny)

Born John Dudley Moore, 20 October 1906, Austin, Texas
Died 6 January 1969, Los Angeles, California

Older brother of jazz guitarist Oscar Moore, the Moore family moved to 
Phoenix, Arizona, where Johnny and Oscar were raised and where they 
formed their own string band. In the mid 1930s, like thousands of other 
Texans and Okies, the Moore brothers relocated to Los Angeles, where 
Oscar joined the King Cole Trio and Johnny, after several false starts, 
would hook up with fellow Texans Eddie Williams (born St Augustine 
1912) and Charles Brown (born Texas City 1922). The Three Blazers began 
winning amateur talent contests with alarming regularity, however their 
first recording deal was almost entirely due to the reputation of Oscar 
Moore: Robert Scherman of Atlas Records had recently lost Nat "King" 
Cole to Capitol and was eager to record another rhythm trio in a 
similar style, when Oscar told him of his brother's unrecorded group, 
so Scherman agreed to record the Blazers if Oscar would play with them. 
The records were subsequently released as by "Oscar Moore with The 
Three Blazers" which upset Johnny terribly, and so the boys were soon 
looking for another record deal! 


Johnny Moore was fiercely independent and notoriously distrusting of 
the recording business - he reportedly never once signed an exclusive 
contract for him or his band - and in retrospect this may have held the 
group back; even when, by 1946, it was clear that the trio's 
selling-point was the handsome young man at the piano, he refused to 
change the group's billing and insisted it remained "Johnny Moore's 
Three Blazers". The fact that Charles Brown was the group's main asset 
became obvious from the recordings made in 1945 for Leon Rene's 
Exclusive label and the Mesner brothers' fledgling Philo/Aladdin 
Records which began to garner big local sales, culminating with 
"Drifting Blues" a #2 Billboard R&B hit in 1946. Moore's 
"non-exclusive" policy resulted in the trio hopping between Modern and 
Exclusive from 1946 to 1948, and enjoying an unending chart presence in 
the Billboard Top 10 with hits such as "Sunny Road" (#4), "So Long" 
(#4), "New Orleans Blues" (#4), "Changeable Woman Blues" (#5), "Groovy 
Movie Blues" (#10), "More Than You Know" (#4), and particularly the 
perennial "Merry Christmas Baby" (#3 1947, #8 1948 and #9 1949). All of 
these hits, were sung by and often written by Charles, but he wasn't 
reaping any financial benefits because Johnny Moore was calling all the 
shots and often usurping the writer credits, and so the inevitable 
split came in 1948 with Charles signing an exclusive contract with 
Aladdin Records (and, tellingly, recording "Get Yourself Another 
Fool"!), while the remaining two Blazers continued with a succession of 
Charles Brown sound-alikes; Lee Barnes and Billy Valentine were used on 
the trio's RCA Victor recordings during 1949-50, Floyd Dixon covered 
the Aladdin and Combo sessions, and Frankie Ervin sang on the Modern, 
Blaze and Hollywood recordings from 1953 to 1955. During the 1950s, 
Moore's main squeeze Mari Jones was also utilized on sessions for the 
Aladdin, Modern, R&B, Recorded In Hollywood, Money, Blaze and Hollywood 
labels. Moore also continued to hit the Billboard R&B chart, albeit not 
nearly as frequently as his ex-employee, and scored with "Where Can I 
Find My Baby" (#8 1949), "Walkin' Blues" (#7 1949), "I'll Miss You" 
(#15 1949), "Dragnet Blues" (#8 1953) and "Johnny Ace's Last Letter" 
(#15 1955).

During the rock 'n' roll revolution, like many of his contemporaries, 
Moore was out of favour and the recording deals were few and far 
between; for old times sake, Charles Brown had Johnny and Eddie 
Williams accompany him on a couple of his sessions during 1953/54 and, 
for the same reason, Leon Rene recorded him again for a solitary 
Rendezvous 45 in 1959, while during the 1960s, odd releases came out on 
tiny labels like Lilly and Cenco.


Recommended Listening:
"Charles Brown: The Classic Earliest Recordings" (JSP CD 7707)

"Driftin' & Dreamin'" (Ace CDCHD 589)
"The Cocktail Combos" (EMI/Capitol 52042)
"Los Angeles Blues: The Complete RCA Recordings 1949-50" (Westside WESD 
217)