Arnold Dwight “Gatemouth” Moore was one of America’s most popular blues singers in the 1940s before becoming a renowned religious leader, radio announcer, and gospel singer. Born in Topeka, Kansas, on November 8, 1913, he was a descendant of emancipated slaves who emigrated to Kansas from Tennessee during the Exoduster movement of the late 1870s. He sang ballads and spirituals as a youngster, left with a traveling show in his teens, joined the Port Gibson-based Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and reached Clarksdale around 1934 before moving to Memphis and beginning a new career as a blues shouter. As he moved among Memphis, Kansas City, and Chicago, he toured with leading bands and wrote and recorded hits including “I Ain’t Mad at You Pretty Baby,” “Did You Ever Love a Woman,” and “Somebody’s Got to Go,” while influencing performers such as B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. One December night in 1948 at Chicago’s Club DeLisa, he lost his voice while trying to sing, then broke into the spiritual “Shine On Me,” after which he declared himself saved and soon entered the ministry. He served as pastor of several churches in Mississippi and Louisiana, including Bethel A.M.E. Church and Lintonia A.M.E. Church in Yazoo City, and carried his showmanship into gospel singing, broadcasting, community work, charities, education, and church leadership. He pastored both Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches, led the IBPOEW, served as president of the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team, emceed blues festivals and religious conventions, attained the rank of bishop, and in 1974 was assigned by the A.M.E. Church to Yazoo City, where he married Walterine Coleman. He received a brass note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame in 1996 and died in Yazoo City on May 19, 2004.