He Could Boogie With the Best

Merrill Moore, 73, pulls a bench up to the piano at Mr. A’s, a popular dining room and lounge where he has been a fixture for years. He stretches his big, beefy hands and knits his brow and proceeds through a series of standards, show tunes and jazz. The crowd applauds politely; Moore beams back a warm smile.

But this mannerly, well-dressed audience is largely oblivious to the fact that many years ago--in another lifetime, really--the courtly gentleman who now entertains them was briefly in the national spotlight, pitching boogie-woogie with untold reserves of sweat, grease and passion.

“This may sound ridiculous, but I’d put Merrill in that same bag as Elvis,” says Cliffie Stone, whose “Hometown Jamboree,” on which Moore appeared in the ‘50s, was considered the West Coast’s answer to the Grand Ole Opry.

“He was as fine a player as anyone out there,” says Lou Curtiss, a musicologist who runs a rare record shop in San Diego. “It’s an injustice that he isn’t better known nationally, and it’s an injustice that he isn’t better known in San Diego.”

“There’s a few young people who have caught on to what I used to be, but 90% of the people who come into Mr. A’s don’t even know that other world existed,” Moore says. “They don’t even know I had a band.

“Many, many nights, I’ve wondered how I ever got to this point. But the music business is a young man’s game. It changes with the years.”

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Moore was born on a livestock farm in Algona, Iowa, took piano lessons from age 6 and was playing semipro by age 12. Almost from the start, he was drawn to the sound of boogie-woogie, enraptured by the records of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. Moore met boogie titan Freddie Slack during World War II when they were in the Navy.

Moore came to San Diego with his wife, Doris, in 1948. He put together the Saddle, Rock & Rhythm Boys with a bassist (Monty Gibson), drummer (John Stokes) and steel guitarist (Dave Carpenter), a combo driven by Moore’s powerful piano and joyous singing.

“It looked like a country band, [but] it didn’t sound like one,” wrote Nick Tosches in “Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in which Moore is included alongside the likes of Louis Prima, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Big Joe Turner and Amos Milburn.

Moore signed with manager Jimmy Kennedy, owner of 11 clubs. Soon, the Saddle, Rock & Rhythm Boys were playing six nights a week; a record deal followed, resulting in a series of singles with names like “Big Bug Boogie” and “Red Light.” In 1953, the Boys recorded a version of Slack’s “House of Blue Lights” that shot up in the national charts.

As Moore tells it, Kennedy refused to let the band go on the road, and that spelled eventual disaster.

“Merrill Moore was held down,” Curtiss says. “He was tied down to San Diego all through the ‘50s, and by the time he got out from under that, his time had passed.”

Undaunted, Moore continued to record. Still, despite acceptance from fellow musicians--including Jerry Lee Lewis--his sales never again approached promise. But Moore did appear on Stone’s TV and radio show.

“I’ll tell you a story,” Stone says. “I got a call one day from my boss at Channel 13 and he said, ‘I’ve got a piano player who we think has something and I want to see him on television. Will you put him on the show?’ I said, ‘Sure, what’s his name?’ And he said, ‘Liberace.’ I said, ‘Liberace?! What kind of name is that?’ So he had Liberace come out to the show, and Merrill was there playing piano. And Liberace came up to me and he said, ‘I don’t think I can compare with this guy.’ ”

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After endless hours of backup for popular singers, Moore lost his record contract. He tried working for another company, but the record company failed.

Moore tried jazz and classical music. Before long, such celebrities as Frankie Carle, Tony Curtis and Helen O’Connell were stopping by Mr. A’s.

And one day in the 1989, the members of Squeeze, a British rock band, showed up at his doorstep. In Europe, if not in the States, Moore was being recognized as a rockabilly pioneer. In 1990, Bear Family Records, a German label, released a boxed set of Moore’s Capitol sides. The following year he embarked on a tour of Europe at $5,000 per show.

He still gets the occasional call from “roots bands” asking him to record with them, but these days he turns them down. “The money’s terrible, and they don’t play the music right anyway. I don’t think you can do anything twice. I don’t think any music has ever been done as good the second time around as it was the first time. The kids nowadays, the feeling’s gone, they can’t play it right. It’s a different world.”

Although virtually everyone with whom Moore used to play has passed on, he looks 20 years younger than his age.

Listening to his old records, he doesn’t think about a career that might have been. Instead, “I can tell you exactly how I felt at the time. I’m almost sittin’ right there again. I can tell you exactly what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what was on my mind. I guess that never leaves you.”