Music / Sports
Wild Bill Moore
1918–1983 · R&B and jazz tenor saxophonist
Detroit tenor saxophonist and former Golden Gloves champion whose 1947 "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll" is counted among the first rock and roll records.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 65- Birth name
- William M. Moore
- Detroit years
- 1918–1945, 1947–1970s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Before music, Bill Moore was a boxer: he won Michigan's Golden Gloves light-heavyweight title in 1937 and briefly turned professional. By the early 1940s he had switched to the tenor saxophone, inspired by Chu Berry and Illinois Jacquet, and in 1944 he made his first record, backing Christine Chatman for Decca. From 1945 to 1947 he worked in Los Angeles with Slim Gaillard, Jack McVea, Big Joe Turner and Dexter Gordon and played on Helen Humes's hit "Be-Baba-Leba." In 1947 he came back to Detroit and formed his own band with baritone saxophonist Paul Williams, soon famous for "The Hucklebuck." That December he recorded "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll" for Savoy, a modest R&B hit with battling saxophones that Alan Freed played on his early Moondog shows and that historians list among candidates for the first rock and roll record. He kept working Detroit clubs, recorded jazz albums for Jazzland, and in 1971 played on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, including "Mercy Mercy Me."
Highlights
- Michigan Golden Gloves light-heavyweight champion (1937)
- "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll" (Savoy, 1947)
- Band with baritone saxophonist Paul Williams in Detroit
- Jazz albums for Jazzland in the early 1960s
- Saxophone on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971)