Phil Moore was an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

, orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

l arranger, band leader, and recording artist.

Biography

Phil Moore was orphan

Orphan

An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

ed and placed in a county hospital in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

. He attended the Cornish School

Cornish College of the Arts

-Library:The library at Cornish College specializes in art, dance, design, music, performance production, and theatre. As of 2011 it holds 4700 CDs, 40,000 books, has 2,200 videos, and subscribes to 154 periodicals...

 and the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 in Seattle. When Moore was 13, he played piano at speakeasies and small venues of Portland. Later, he supported Lena Horne

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...

, Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

, Bobby Short

Bobby Short

Robert Waltrip "Bobby" Short was an American cabaret singer and pianist, best known for his interpretations of songs by popular composers of the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Noel Coward and George and Ira Gershwin.He...

, Marshal Royal, Irving Ashby

Irving Ashby

Irving C. Ashby was an American jazz guitarist.Ashby was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. After playing rhythm guitar in Lionel Hampton's orchestra, he played in the Nat King Cole Trio from 1947 to 1951...

, Julie Wilson

Julie Wilson

Julie Wilson is an American singer and actress.Born in Omaha, Nebraska and first finding a musical outlet with local musical group Hank's Hepcats, Wilson headed to New York City during World War II and found work in two of Manhattan's leading nightclubs, the Latin Quarter and the Copacabana...

, Gene Sedric

Gene Sedric

Gene Sedric was an American jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist. He acquired the nickname "Honey Bear" in the 1930s because of his large camelhair coat....

, Les Hite

Les Hite

Les Hite was an American jazz bandleader.Hite attended the University of Illinois and played saxophone with family members in a band in the 1920s. Following this, he played with Detroit Shannon and then the Helen Dewey Show, but when this group disbanded abruptly, Hite relocated to Los Angeles...

, and Helen Gallagher

Helen Gallagher

Helen Gallagher is an American actress, dancer, singer and makeup artist.-Early years:Born in Brooklyn, she was raised in Scarsdale, New York for several years until the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression, and her family moved to the Bronx. Her parents separated and she was...

. He arranged big-band music for the Tommy Dorsey

Tommy Dorsey

Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...

 and Harry James

Harry James

Henry Haag “Harry” James was a trumpeter who led a jazz swing band during the Big Band Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.-Biography:He was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a...

 orchestras.

In 1946, he played the role of a band leader in a short B-grade film, Stars on Parade. About this time, his relationship with Dorothy Dandridge

Dorothy Dandridge

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress...

 helped bring her success in a nightclub singing career.

Phil Moore worked at MGM and Paramount studios as an arranger. He worked on scores for over 30 films, although rarely receiving screen credit, presumably due to his race. These included Ziegfeld Girl

Ziegfeld Girl (film)

Ziegfeld Girl is a 1941 American film starring James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner, and co-starring Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper, Eve Arden, and Philip Dorn. Released by MGM, it was directed by Robert Z...

, Dumbo

Dumbo

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...

, Three Cheers for the Boys, Panama Hattie

Panama Hattie

Panama Hattie is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and book by Herbert Fields and B. G. DeSylva. It is also the title of a 1942 MGM musical based upon the play...

, Presenting Lily Mars

Presenting Lily Mars

Presenting Lily Mars is an American musical motion picture produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and released in 1943. The film starred Judy Garland and Van Heflin and was based on the novel by Booth Tarkington...

, Cabin in the Sky

Cabin in the Sky

Cabin in the Sky is a 1943 American musical film with music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by John La Touche, and a musical book by Lynn Root. The musical premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 25, 1940. It closed on March 8, 1941 after a total of 156 performances...

, the 1944 production of Kismet

Kismet (1944 film)

Kismet is a 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film in Technicolor starring Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, Joy Page, and Florence Bates. James Craig played the young Caliph of Baghdad, and Edward Arnold was the treacherous Grand Vizier...

, and This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire is a 1942 film noir, directed by Frank Tuttle and based on the novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene. The film stars Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd.-Plot:...

.

During the late 1940s Moore toured with his group, the Phil Moore Four (Marty Wilson, Jimmy Lyons

Jimmy Lyons

Jimmy Lyons was an alto saxophone player. He is best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit.-Biography:...

, Milt Hinton

Milt Hinton

Milton John "Milt" Hinton , "the dean of jazz bass players," was an American jazz double bassist and photographer. He was nicknamed "The Judge".-Biography:...

, and Johnny Letman

Johnny Letman

Johnny Letman was an American jazz trumpeter.Letman played early in his career in various Midwest bands, including those of Gerald Valentine, Scat Man Crothers, and Jimmy Raschelle...

). From the late 1950s until his death, he was active in teaching singing and stagecraft, and gained a wide reputation in the grooming and coaching of aspiring black and white singers; he started a school in New York named "For Singers Only".

In 1953, he recorded two bebop Christmas songs for RCA Victor: "Blink Before Christmas" and "Chinchy Old Scrooge". Created in the heyday of the "beat" era, these songs were thick with 1950s hipster lingo, in the style of jazz-based pre–rap songs. This recording has become a rare collector's item.

Discography

Moore's recordings include:

• Fantasy for Girl and Orchestra
• Moon Mist Blues, Discovery LP
• Portrait of Leda, Columbia LP
• Music for Moderns, Clef 635
• Polynesian Paradise, Strand SLS 1004
• Moore's Tour, MGM 3752
• New York Sweet, Mercury SR60763