Lattie Moore

Lattie Moore was a country and hillbilly singer/guitarist, an admirer of Gene Autry and Hank Williams whose early high-energy numbers anticipated rock & roll in everything but name. Lattie Harrison Moore was born in 1924 in Scottsville, Kentucky, to Dora and Homer Leo Moore -- his father was a tobacco farmer-turned-preacher. The young Moore had an interest in music at an early age and, as a boy, learned to play the guitar, mandolin, and upright bass. His first job out of school was as a projectionist at the local movie theater in Scottsville. As a teenager, he was an especially big fan of Gene Autry and the latter's country & western songs, and he also admired the work of Roy Acuff, Hank Snow, and others he heard on the Grand Ole Opry -- and a bit later, he added another name to that list who came ahead of all of the others: Hank Williams. At age 19, he headed to Indianapolis, hitchhiking his way to the city where he felt he had a shot at making a living as a musician. He was drafted into the United States Navy around this time but didn't stay in the service very long, and Moore was back in Indiana by the end of 1944, playing small clubs and other minor venues. He was also married around this time, and later hosted a local radio show as well as working on the musical side of an act put together by aging cowboy movie star Lash LaRue. In 1951, at age 26, Moore made his recording debut on the Arrow label with the single "Hideaway Heart" b/w "Married Troubles," which quickly disappeared without a trace. By then he was also broadcasting on the Mid-Western Jamboree on radio from WIBC in Indianapolis as the show's emcee, and he later performed a similar function on television from Bloomington, IN. Moore got another chance at recording in 1952, in Nashville, on the Speed label,...