Alice Moore CD cover
In a couple of weeks, St. Louis will celebrate its 250th birthday, so I call that a good excuse to spend a month highlighting songs from St. Louis musicians. We’ll start by reaching back to the Great Depression, a time when the music scene in St. Louis was arguably the best in the country. St. Louis had its own form of the blues, one that developed independently and not because some musicians migrated here from the Delta. (Don’t take my word for it, read Kevin Belford’s excellent book Devil at the Confluence.) These were homegrown urban blues from musicians who were well-known in their day, even if we’ve neglected their legacies.
One of those early blues artists was Alice Moore, who recorded some three dozen songs from 1929 to 1937 but about whom not much is really known. In 1934 she cut Riverside Blues, a lament about being separated from her lover. You can read more about Moore here.
More Songs of the Day here.
