Biography

Radio contact: Kevin Johnson
promo@delmark.com

Click Here for more Delmark Releases!

Aaron Moore
Boot ’Em Up!
Delmark DE-731

Aaron Moore's piano playing is dignified, rollicking and playful, and he sings his songs in high, poignant tones. He’s played behind the greatest including Tampa Red, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Little Milton and Howlin’ Wolf. Time has taken its toll on the crew of pianists who put the boogie-woogie in the classic blues of 1950’s Chicago. Gone are Sunnyland and Memphis Slim, Eddie Boyd and Roosevelt Sykes. Luckily, Aaron Moore remains as a living link to that golden era.

Aaron Moore, vocals, piano
James Wheeler, guitar
Bob Stroger, bass
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, drums

1. I Want My Baby Back 5:11
2. You Look So Good To Me 2:41
3. Boot ’Em Up! 3:23
4. I Thought Your Love Was True 4:21
5. Bedroom Invitation 3:15
6. Just Let Me Love You 3:51
7. My Love Is Out Of Control 3:52
8. I Can’t Stand To Be Alone 2:36
9. Hind Part Boogie 3:11
10. Made A Change In Your Love 4:21
11. Real Throw Down 3:14
12. Wading In Deep Water 4:40
13. You Came To Me In A Dream 4:10
14. Lonely Mood 5:07
15. Waiting On Your Love 4:10
16. Confusing World 4:13
17. Faithful Love 3:16

All songs written by Aaron Moore, Katie Music, BMI

Produced by Pete Nathan
Album Production and Supervision: Robert G. Koester
Recorded at Riverside Studio, Chicago by Steve Wagner on October 12-14, 1998

Photography: James Fraher
Design: Al Brandtner

Other Delmark Albums Of Interest:
Aaron Moore, Hello World (695) with James Wheeler
Brewer Phillips, Home Brew (686) with Aaron Moore
Ken Saydak, Foolish Man (725)
Memphis Slim, Memphis Slim U.S.A. (710) with Matt "Guitar" Murphy
Sunnyland Slim, House Rent Party (655) with Jimmy Rogers, Willie Mabon
Roosevelt Sykes, Raining In My Heart (642)
Feel Like Blowing My Horn (632) with Robert Lockwood Jr.
Gold Mine (616)
Hard Drivin’ Blues (607)
Curtis Jones, Lonesome Bedroom Blues (605)
Speckled Red, The Dirty Dozens (601)
Blues Piano Orgy (626) with Roosevelt Sykes, Sunnyland Slim, Otis Spann,
Curtis Jones, Memphis Slim, Little Brother Montgomery



Time has taken its toll on the crew of pianists who put the boogie-woogie in the classic blues of 1950’s Chicago. Gone are Sunnyland and Memphis Slim, Eddie Boyd and Roosevelt Sykes. Luckily, Aaron Moore remains as a living link to that musical golden era.

Moore’s sound conjures images of a time long past. His playing in the taverns of Chicago — the 708 Club, the Chandelier, the Hollywood Rendezvous, to name a few — well predates the birth of the young guitar slingers who now proliferate on Chicago’s North Side. Moore’s musicianship and demeanor are the other side of the blues’ coin. His piano playing is dignified, rollicking and playful, and he sings his songs of love lost and found in high, poignant tones.

Moore says he was born in Greenwood, Miss. on February 11, 1928. His wife, Katie, thinks he’s stretching the truth and may be 10 years older than he claims.

Moore was raised in Philipp, Miss., just a few miles up Highway 49 from Greenwood in a region of the state that gave the world dozens of great blues artists, among them Robert Johnson and B.B. King. In addition to being a doting mother, Moore’s mom was a piano teacher. She had thoroughly encouraged Moore on the instrument by the time he was seven.

"I had to play piano because I didn’t want to get a tannin’," he says with a laugh. "I've been playin’ just as far back as I can remember."

Moore’s parents were deeply religious and weren’t about to permit their son to hear of the hedonism often described in blues numbers.

"They didn’t go for the blues," Moore says of his family, adding that he had to wait until he arrived in Chicago to dig into the musical form to his satisfaction. When he couldn’t listen to blues as a youngster, Moore favored the jazz recordings of Count Basie, Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines. These early jazz leanings are evident in his playing today.

Moore escaped the agricultural rigors of the Mississippi Delta cotton fields in 1951 by hopping a bus out of Greenwood. He stepped off in Chicago, where he immediately found work at King’s Laundry on Madison Street and later the Wilson Packing Company stockyards.

On his weekends off, Moore immersed himself in the city’s thriving blues scene, playing piano behind the greatest names in blues history, including Tampa Red, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. He names Sykes and Memphis Slim as his major influences.

"After I left Greenwood and I came to Chicago, the blues was ravin’ then," Moore recalls one night after finishing his last set in a dark basement bar in downtown Milwaukee, the city he now calls home. "That’s what gave me the notion to play the blues. Everybody was listening to the blues. Muddy Waters, he was famous then, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf, all of them guys, they were havin’ their moment then. Everything was workin’ out good for them. So that gave me an idea to try my blues, to see if I could do anything with it."

Waters, Wolf and B.B. King liked Moore’s bright, intuitive backing style so much that they immediately implored him to leave his day job so he could tour with them, but Moore never did. With a growing family, he felt more comfortable earning the steady paycheck offered by a job he later took with the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. He retired from his city post in 1988, having reached the level of deputy commissioner.

Although Aaron Moore’s music is a living piece of blues history to many fans and scholars — as well as being an outright revelation to many new listeners — to him it seems simply an expression of life, something done as matter-of-factly as breathing.

"Blues means a whole lot to me," he says. "It plays a big part in my life. It goes all through my background, the way I came up and what I did to get where I am, where I went to school and where I started. I started out in the country and I took it step by step. The blues is great to me. The blues tells the truth."

Moore spent the late ’50s working steady gigs in Robbins, Illinois with legendary drummer Frances Clay. He also played with Clarence Anderson, better known around Chicago as Sonny Boy Williamson, Jr., in the 1980’s. He recalls working with B.B. King and Little Milton when the two toured through Chicago.

"I played every club there is in Chicago — north, south, east and west," Moore says. He can now be found occasionally working in Chicago at Lilly’s on Lincoln Avenue or B.L.U.E.S.

His working days behind him, Moore moved 90 minutes north of Chicago to Milwaukee permanently in 1996.

Around the time of the move, Moore was summoned to the Chicago studios of Delmark Records. Despite the fact that he had never recorded before and wasn’t playing much at the time, Moore was enlisted by old friend and former Hound Dog Taylor guitarist Brewer Phillips to play on Phillips first Delmark CD. Producer Pete Nathan, who knew nothing of Moore, was blown away when he heard him at the studio.

Upon completion of the session, Moore accepted Nathan’s invitation to record his own CD, appropriately titled "Hello World." The debut, full of original compositions, led quickly to international acclaim for Moore, including a favorable review in the March/April 1997 issue of Living Blues magazine, as well as a full-length feature article in Spring of this year (Living Blues #144).

"A bluesman with Aaron Moore’s talents, shouldn’t have gone unrecorded for so long," wrote Living Blues critic Jim DeKoster in his review of "Hello World." "Delmark must have realized it had a real find in Moore."

"Boot ’Em Up!" finds Moore accompanied by his longtime friends, bassist Bob Stroger and guitarist James Wheeler, two of the most respected sidemen in the business. Muddy Waters former drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith is also on the session, which was recorded in October, 1998 in Chicago.

So, with the ranks of the great boogie-woogie piano men thinned to a handful, "Boot ’Em Up!" is an especially welcome release. After you spin it, you’ll have to agree they just don’t make ’em like Aaron anymore.

Steven Sharp

Boot 'Em Up ALL MUSIC Review by Michael G. Nastos

At 71, blues pianist/singer Moore is only up to his second CD, but it's a very good one. He's definitely reminiscent of his main influence, Roosevelt Sykes, just not as bawdy. Traces of Jay McShann also creep in here and there. Moore wrote all 17 of these tracks, but you've heard them all under the guise of more familiar blues standards. The backup band is solid: guitarist James Wheeler is an expert at economical, sweet, tasty solos and fills, Bob Stroger knows the right basslines to lay down, and drummer Wilie "Big Eyes" Smith is a legend. When Moore gets on a roll, he stays there, as the majority of his tunes are easy shuffles with New Orleans flourishes. "I Want My Baby Back" is a lighter boogie with sexual overtones, "Hind Part Boogie" is much heavier and Sykes-like, "You Look so Good to Me" is in more of a Jimmy Reed style, while the title track is a jump-n-shout fire breather and "Faithful Love," with just Moore playing and singing, is similar to "Sunny Side of the Street." Not much soloing here, but there are traces of the influence of Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, and Earl Hines that come across in a compact approach that has no need for grandstanding. Slower ballads and shuffles such as the 12-bar "My Love Is Out of Control" and "Made a Change in Your Love" show Moore's tender side, but then he cranks it back up with "Real Throw Down," a down-home blues perfect for your next party. Moore's style is getting to be a lost art, and while a bit more diversity could make this fine pianist a true blues star, there's absolutely nothing wrong with what he's doing here. Recommended.