Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: The Travels Of Gatemouth Moore

A Blue Ribbon winner at the American Film & Video Festival, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is the story of a man who got the religious calling in a rather strange place. As interviewee B.B. King says, Gatemouth Moore was "one of the greatest blues singers ever" and during the 1940s the flashy-dressing, Cadillac-driving, golden-throated Moore was singing to sellout audiences across the U.S. One night in 1949 in a Chicago nightclub, Gatemouth went onstage to sing but what came out of his mouth was not one of his hits like "Did You Ever Love a Woman?" but a spiritual number. Needless to say Gatemouth Moore's career switched overnight and he went from the top of the blues world to the backwater traveling preacher circuit. Producer/director Louis Guida's lovely portrait takes viewers along with Gatemouth Moore as he travels down the memory lane of his mind and the actual Beale St. of today which bears little resemblance to the Beale St. of the 1930s and 1940s. We also see the good Reverend Moore paired with gospel star Reverend A1 Green in a bring-down-the-church footstompin' revival music extravaganza. And Moore visits a nightclub where R&B veteran Rufus Thomas manages to cajole his old friend onto the stage to sing a few bars of "Did You Ever Love a Woman?" Called a "storyteller" by his music peers, Moore's mesmerizing voice is just as fascinating when he's speaking as when he's singing, and we are swept up in his colorful reminiscences of days gone by (his story about his dislike of preachers is great: as a boy his mother often invited preachers over for dinner; inevitably, the preachers always took the best parts of the main meat dish and young Arthur Moore went without). A wonderful film which is also very affordably priced for public libraries. Highly recommended. (Available from: California Newsreel, 149 Ninth St/420, San Francisco, CA 94103; (415) 621-6196.)