Keb' Mo'

Kevin Roosevelt Moore (born October 3, 1951), known as Keb' Mo', is an American blues musician and eight-time Grammy Award winner.

He is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, living in Nashville, Tennessee.

He has been described as "a living link to the seminal Delta blues that travelled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America."

His post-modern blues style is influenced by many eras and genres, including folk, rock, jazz, pop and country.

The moniker "Keb Mo" was coined by his original drummer, Quentin Dennard, and picked up by his record label as a "street talk" abbreviation of his given name.

From early on, Keb' Mo's parents, who were from Louisiana and Texas, instilled in him a great appreciation for the blues and gospel music.

By adolescence, he was an accomplished guitarist.

Keb' Mo' started his musical career playing the steel drums in a calypso band.

He moved on to play in a variety of blues and backup bands throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

He first started recording in the early 1970s with Jefferson Airplane violinist Papa John Creach through an R&B group.

Creach hired him when Moore was 21 years old and Moore appeared on four of Creach's albums: Filthy!, Playing My Fiddle for You, I'm the Fiddle Man and Rock Father.

Keb' Mo's first gold record was received for a song, "Git Fiddler", which he co-wrote with Creach on Jefferson Starship's Red Octopus.

Red Octopus hit number one on the Billboard 200 in 1975.

Moore was also a staff writer for A&M Records and arranged demos for Almo – Irving music.

Keb' Mo's debut, Rainmaker, was released on Chocolate City Records, a subsidiary of Casablanca Records, in 1980.

He was further immersed in the blues with his long stint in the Whodunit Band, headed by Bobby "Blue" Bland producer Monk Higgins.

Moore jammed with Albert Collins and Big Joe Turner and emerged as an inheritor of a guarded tradition and as a genuine original.

Keb' Mo' has appeared on stage (1990–1993) in several versions of the musical Spunk, by George C. Wolfe, an adaptation of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston.

His character, Guitar Man, learned while he was an understudy to "Chick Streetman", played all the actual music in the play while performing.

The character of Guitar Man is the foundation for his stage persona.

Keb' was the runner-up for Best New Blues Artist at The Long Beach Blues Festival, where he was spotted by Steve LaVere, who owns the publishing for the entire Robert Johnson song catalogue (1992–93).

Keb' Mo's self-titled album was released on Okeh Records, a vintage revival division of Sony Music.

In 1994, Keb' Mo' released his self-titled album, Keb' Mo', which featured two Robert Johnson classics, "Come On In My Kitchen" and "Kind Hearted Woman Blues".

In the Martin Scorsese miniseries The Blues, Keb' Mo' states that he was greatly influenced by Johnson.

In 1996, he released Just Like You, his second album, which featured 12 songs full of Delta rhythms.

He won his first Grammy Award for this album, which featured guest appearances from Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.

On June 10, 1997, Moore performed on the television program Sessions at West 54th.

He joined musicians Laval Belle on drums, Reggie McBride playing bass and Joellen Friedkin on keyboards to perform 14 songs, some from each of his albums.

Blues pianist Dr. John also made a guest appearance.

In 1998, Moore was involved in the multi-artist project "Begegnungen (Encounters)" by German rock musician Peter Maffay.

Slow Down, his next album, was released in 1998 and featured twelve songs.

It earned him a second Grammy Award.

The album begins with the song "Muddy Water", a tribute to Muddy Waters.

It also features a song entitled "Rainmaker", which had been released previously on his first album, eighteen years prior.

They performed together a new version of Mo's "Am I Wrong" on the album and some more songs in the 30 concerts at the arena tour later the same year, documented on the live album Begenungen Live, released in early 1999.

A further guest of Maffay at the Begegnungen album and tour was Sonny Landreth and many more artists from around the world.

This session (known as Sessions at West 54th: Recorded Live in New York) was shown on television but was not released as a DVD until late 2000.

His fourth album, The Door, was released in 2000.

The same year, Keb' Mo' released Big Wide Grin, a children's album featuring many songs from Moore's own childhood, along with some newer children's songs and some by Moore himself.

In 2001, he appeared on Sesame Street with Kermit the Frog, Grover, Elmo, and other muppets performing the song "Everybody Be Yo'self".