vocalist; actress
Personal Information
Born Beatrice Hill, October 29, 1945, in New York City; daughter of Melba Smith Hill (a singer) and Teddy Hill (a jazz saxophonist); married twice; daughter Charli.
Education: Bachelor's degree in musical education, Montclair State Teacher's College.
Career
Singer, actress; Broadway roles: Hair; Purlie, 1970; Timbuktu, 1978; Inacent Black, 1981; Les Miserables; Movie roles: Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970; Pigeons; Hair, 1979; Lost In The Stars; Flamingo Road; Television programs: The Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show, 1972; Ellis Island, 1984; Melba, 1986; Falcon Crest; The American Women: Portrayals of Courage. Record albums: What You're Doing To The Man, 1971; Peach Melba, 1975; This Is It, 1976; Melba, 1976; A Portrait of Melba, 1978; Dancin' with Melba Moore, 1979; Burn, 1979; What A Woman Needs, 1981; The Other Side of The Rainbow, 1982; Never Say Never, 1983; Read My Lips, 1985; A Lot of Love, 1987; I'm in Love, 1988; Solitary Journey, 1997.
Life's Work
The saga of Melba Moore is your typical rags-to-riches-to-rags story. After winning a Tony Award, getting her own network television program and becoming a household name in the early 1970s, her career went into a prolonged slump which did not let up until she was nearly destitute in the 1990s. But after reaching her rock bottom, Moore rebounded with a career renaissance which left her fans hoping she would still have a career in show business for years yet to come.
Grew Up in Musical Family
Moore, originally named Beatrice Hill, was born October 29, 1945, in New York City. Her mother, Melba (Bonnie) Smith, was a singer, and her father, Teddy Hill, was a jazz saxophonist. The union of her parents did not last, but Smith married pianist Clement Moorman while Moore was still young. The musical background could not help but rub off on young Melba. Moorman brought three of his own children, all musically inclined, into the new family, and Moore remembered to People Weekly, "Everyone would gather around the piano. My mother would have musicians come in, and we'd have parties."
Apart from music, the other major influence in Moore's early life was Harlem, the community in which she grew up. The rough environment contributed much to her pride in being black, but it also left scars which would take years to heal. As she told Newsweek, as related by Notable Black American Women, "Personally, I was protected. But I was surrounded by violence, by uncles in and out of jail, people cutting each other up. It was a world of the streets, of too many kids, a whole different code of living....I had never learned to talk to people. In Harlem they taught me not only not to be heard but not to be seen."
Moore found early that academics was a good venue in which to pursue her musical interests. She attended Waverly Avenue Elementary School and Cleveland Junior High School in Newark, New Jersey. She told Essence, "I went to Catholic school, and even that I liked. It was cold and mechanical --exactly what I knew and felt comfortable with....The only way I communicated was through music." Moore majored in music at Arts High School in Newark, then went to Montclair State Teacher's College with a major in music education. After graduation she went back to Newark Public Schools and taught music for a year at Pershine Avenue Elementary School, a job she found frustrating because of poor facilities and curriculum in the school system. "I taught in a black school and I enjoyed imparting my love for performing and music to the kids, but the more I performed, the less I liked teaching," she told Ebony.
While working at the school Moore began to perform on the side with a group called Voices, made up of school teachers interested in entertainment. When that arrangement ended she performed on the cocktail lounge circuit in the Catskills and occasionally did background vocals for recording sessions by such acts as Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra. A more lucrative sideline for her in those years was television commercials. Moore did not get rich or famous during this period, but she told Ebony she earned a reputation in the business: "By the time I left the mountains, I was pretty well-respected and they knew who Melba Moore was."
Became Famous by Doing Hair
It was an audition for a background vocals job that proved to be the break which would send Moore's career skyrocketing. In 1967 she showed up early for a recording session, and was asked by playwright Gerome Ragni if she'd like to do Hair. As she recalled to People Weekly, she bristled, "I didn't get a bachelor's degree in musical education to do nobody's hair." Ragni was referring to the musical production which had recently found its way to Broadway after its beginnings at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. Moore was initially uncomfortable with the play, which featured sex, drugs, rock and roll and nudity, but she took the plunge. "She was a bit inexperienced--not hip to the Broadway scene," play lyricist James Rado told People Weekly. "But her presence on stage and her voice electrified the audience," he added. Moore's stock with the production continued to rise until she was eventually given the lead female part. Moore apparently warmed up to the part over time. In 1973 she told Essence, "I cringed throughout the tryout. The fear was unrelenting....For me it was terror, except when I was singing." But in 1997 she told People Weekly, "It was a joyful, wild and crazy time. It was really about being confident and being African-American. That was revolutionary."
Moore stayed with the show for 18 months, then left to star in Purlie, a Broadway musical based on the stage play Purlie Victorious. She played Lutiebelle opposite Cleavon Little in the play, a love story set on a Georgia plantation and written by Ossie Davis. Moore received rave reviews for her performance, and it paid off with a Tony Award, a New York Drama Critics' Award, and a Drama Desk Award.
By now, Moore was a star, and it seemed she was free to do whatever she wanted. She responded by doing a bit of everything. In 1970 she appeared in a pair of movies: Cotton Comes to Harlem and Pigeons. In 1971 she released her first record album, What You're Doing to the Man. In 1972 she starred in The Melba Moore-Clifton Davis Show on CBS-TV, a summer replacement for The Carol Burnett Show. She filled in the gaps by touring, performing a wide variety of music in her live shows. "I use a lot of different voices and styles," she told Newsweek. "Why not? I'm a lot of different people inside. Aren't we all? I'm a child sometimes, and a woman, and angry or sad, and black and human."
Despite all her hard work, Moore found her career on hard times by the mid-1970s. Her managers had abandoned her, her last few projects had been less than successful, and there were not many new projects on the horizon. She put her trust for the future in promoter Charles Huggins, whom she married, bore a child, daughter Charli, and partnered a production company.
Regardless of how much credit goes to Huggins and how much to Moore, her career stayed above water for several more years. A contract with Buddah Records, and a subsequent one with Epic, allowed her to make several albums over the remainder of the decade, and she had a pair of minor hit singles with "This is It" in 1976 and "You Stepped Into My Life" in 1979. In 1978 she returned to Broadway, appearing as Mansinah in Timbuktu. In 1981 she appeared in another Broadway show, Inacent Black. In 1984 she had a featured role in the television miniseries Ellis Island.
Moore's success continued into the second half of the 1980s, as she was nominated for a Grammy for the second time for the 1985 album Read My Lips. In 1986 she was given her second television program, titled Melba. It seemed the project was doomed from the beginning: The night the sitcom premiered, January 28, 1986, was the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded. The program was then yanked from the schedule until August 2, and when it was aired for the second time on that date, CBS suffered the lowest-rated evening of prime-time programming in its entire history. The program stayed on the air until September, but was not renewed for the following season. Moore still found more TV work, however, portraying Harriet Tubman in the television special The American Women: Portrayals of Courage.
Career Began Downward Spiral
The 1990s started out well for Moore, as she recorded a hit version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" with Dionne Warwick, Anita Baker and others. But her fortunes took a turn for the worse in 1991, as Huggins filed for divorce. The divorce would be a particularly nasty one, and Moore found herself out of work, without career guidance, and, by 1993, broke. She was forced to file for welfare and food stamps when Huggins did not make his child support payments, and was even denied credit by a Manhattan supermarket.
Moore was willing to do whatever was necessary to revive her career, and she told People Weekly, "I don't mind proving myself." She started from scratch, joining a gospel bus tour of Mama, I'm Sorry. The work kept coming, as in 1996 she put together a one-woman show, appeared in Les Miserables and A Swell Party: The Cole Porter Songbook, and worked on a new album, Solitary Journey. A tour in 1997 drew a glowing review from the Los Angeles Times. She did a number of standards for her set, telling the newspaper, "Since God has resuscitated me, I decided I wasn't going to do anything new. So I picked old songs to re-new."
By the late 1990s, Melba Moore was back where she felt she belonged, reaching out and entertaining America through her acting, her singing and her comedy. She told the New York Times in 1981 she felt her role was to make America a better place: "The veils we wear have changed but underneath the situation is pretty much the same economically and racially....There is a melting pot, and eventually we're going to be more like one another, but there are still differences....The important thing is to be kind to each other....The rest will take care of itself."
Awards
Selected Awards: First black performer at Metro Opera House, 1977; Tony Award, Best Supporting Actress for Purlie, 1970; Drama Desk Award, Purlie, 1970; New York Drama Critics' Award, Purlie, 1970; two Grammy nominations.
Works
Selected Discography
- Albums
- What You're Doing To The Man, 1971.
- Solitary Journey, 1997.
- Singles
- "This Is It."
- "You Stepped Into My Life."
- "Lift Every Voice and Sing," with Dionne Warwick, Anita Baker and others.
Further Reading
Books
- Nite, Norm N. with Charles Crespo, Rock On: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock n' Roll, Volume Three, p. 221.
- The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Volume Four, edited by Colin Larkin, p. 2905.
- Notable Black American Women, edited by Jessie Carney Smith, p. 761.
Periodicals- Jet, December 27, 1993, p. 8.
- Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1997.
- People Weekly, December 1, 1997, p. 163.
— Mike Eggert
