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Deacon John Moore

I Am So Blessed to Be Alive and Still Performing. I Can’t Stop Now!

By Margo Cooper

Octogenarian and native New Orleanian Deacon John Moore has spent the last 70 years making music the New Orleans way. A gumbo of blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, funk, and early rock, Deacon John’s music has a pinch of it all. Since the late 1950s Moore has played with just about every New Orleans musician and is featured on countless recordings by producers like Dave Bartholomew, Wardell Quezergue, Allen Toussaint, and many others. In his first LB interview, Moore takes us back to the 1940s and walks forward through Crescent City music history and its many changes he has witnessed and experienced.

Omar Cunningham

The Hitmaker

By Christopher Klug

“Omar wrote this” is a common phrase heard at southern soul festivals. “Omar” is Omar Cunningham, the most successful and in-demand songwriter in the scene today. He has written hits for Willie Clayton, Vick Allen, Vickie Baker, O.B. Buchana, and many more. For the last 25 years Cunningham’s star has continued to rise as he has honed his craft as a songwriter and hitmaker, and as a top touring artist.

Jeannie Holliday

Expressing the Gift

By Mike Stephenson

Milwaukee-based vocalist Jeannie Holiday has been singing her entire life, from her earliest years in her grandmother’s evangelical church to R&B and blues in the 1970s. Over the years she has worked with dozens of artists and did a seven-year stint at B.B. King’s club in California. Over the last 20 years she has gone back and forth gigging in Milwaukee and Chicago, including a set at this year’s Chicago Blues Festival.

Let It Roll!: Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner

Chess Records, Memphis, March 5, 1951

By Jas Obrecht

On March 5, 1951, Jackie Brenston, Ike Turner, Raymond Hill, Willie Kizart, and Willie Sims drove 75 miles from Clarksdale to Memphis to record at the new Memphis Recording Service with Sam Phillips. The band recorded five sides that day but it was when Brenston stepped to the mic that history was made. The frenetic pace and drive of Rocket “88” took it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts and for decades it has been credited as the first rock ’n’ roll song or, at least as Ike described it, “the cause of rock and roll existing.”

Record Reviews