CYNTHIA "FIRST SISTER" MOORE - BMHOF CLASS OF 2019
Cynthia “First Sister” Moore does a wicked James Brown impression when she describes meeting the Godfather of Soul for the first time.
Moore and her friend, Lisa Rushton, had been invited by James Brown’s guitarist and backup announcer Ron Laster to come down to Augusta, Ga., to meet Brown, who was looking for backup singers as he got ready to return to the road after taking a career break for some incarceration.
The girls and bass player Tom Fluker, had sent demo tapes to Brown, but when the two women, Fluker and his cousin arrived in Augusta, the singer didn’t know about it.He was about to travel to Los Angeles to audition backup singers – and he didn’t want them hanging around at the band’s practice.
"Why they here?” Moore said in her raspy James Brown voice. “He tells them, ‘We got a closed rehearsal, we can’t have them here. … This is business, you don’t do nothing like this.”
They wound up sitting outside of practice for an hour or two, but then Brown summoned them in to meet him. They introduced themselves.
“So what’s the purpose of your visit?” Brown asked.
“I said, well, sir, we came to possibly audition for you. We didn’t mean to infringe on your rehearsal. … We were told by Mr. Laster that maybe if we came down, you might listen to us.”
“Ron don’t run nothin’ around here,” Brown responded. “But I understand. I’ll tell you what … Sing something.”
Moore sang “Home,” by Stephanie Mills, and Rushton did “Vision of Love,” by Mariah Carey.
Doing her Brown voice, Moore quotes the Godfather saying, “They know something. They know something! They hungry, ain’t they? … They came all the way down here?”
“You drove? All the way? That’s 16 hours? You drove? I can’t believe this … You sound fantastic! … You all drove, you didn’t know nothing. … I got to give it to you! You’re hungry!”“You got a passport? Get one yesterday!”
Needless to say, Brown didn’t need to do the L.A. auditions. Moore and Rushton became part of
the backing trio Brown named Bittersweet. Fluker also auditioned, but wasn’t needed at the time.
And so for the next 16 years – until Brown’s death in 2006 – Moore worked for Mr. Brown – he’s always “Mr. Brown” to her.
Moore became “First Sister,” indispensable on stage and a part of his inner circle. She became a part of his entourage as he traveled and helped take care of him when he faced illness.
She appeared with Brown on his “Living in America” pay-per-view concert in 1991 and performed with him at London’s Wembly Arena, at the 1999 Woodstock show in Rome, N.Y., and at the
Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Since Brown’s death, Moore has been the main singer for “The JB’s – the Original James Brown Band,” singing many of Brown’s vocal leads on songs such as “A Man’s World,” “Get Up Offa That Thing,” “Georgia” and “I Feel Good.”
The group tours internationally and released a new album, “We Came to Play.”
That’s a whole lot of places and a whole lot of music for a kid who grew up going to School 8 on East Utica and Masten, Woodlawn Junior High and Fosdick-Masten High School.
Moore has been singing as long as she can remember. She recalls singing along with gospel
songs on the radio with her mother as they were getting ready to go to Jerusalem Missionary
Baptist Church on Glenwood and Wohlers. Her mother would sing in the senior choir and Cynthia would sing in the junior choir.
She recalls singing in choirs at Woodlawn, where teacher Janet Barnes took the students to sing
at City Hall, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and other places around the city.
Outside of school and church, Moore was a sponge, listening to everything on the radio. She had
a transistor radio that only got the AM band, so she listened to soul greats like Lou Rawls and the Motown stars, but she also was a fan of pop stars such as Lulu , the Carpenters and even Gordon Lightfoot.
“I didn’t know at the time that black people can’t have blue eyes!” Moore said, laughing at a reference to the lyrics of the Carpenters “Close to You (They Long to Be).” “I couldn't say brown because it didn't match the song, you know, but I still sung it!”
After graduating, Moore started singing whenever she had a chance, doing open mics. She started to perform with the Unity Band (along with Fluker, who had grown up around the corner from her). Fluker saw her singing at the open mic at King George’s Lounge.
One of the best things to happen for Moore was the Unity Band’s part of the show dedicated to James Brown. She didn’t do the leads – she was doing the top 40 songs. Claude Kregg joined the Unity Band and did the James Brown songs but Moore did the backup parts – just as she would do later for the Godfather himself. All it took then was a drive to Augusta.
~ Bio Written By Elmer Ploetz
