Melba Moore

Melba Moore, born Beatrice Melba Smith on October 29, 1945, in New York City, is an American singer and actress whose Broadway career spans from 1968 to 2006. She was born to Gertrude Melba Smith, a singer who performed professionally as Bonnie Davis, and Teddy Hill, a big band leader. Moore spent her early childhood in the Harlem neighborhood of New York before her mother remarried jazz pianist Clement Leroy Moorman and the family moved to Newark, New Jersey. She attended Newark Arts High School, graduating in 1958, and later earned a Bachelor of Arts in music from Montclair State College in 1970.

Moore entered the performing world in 1967 as a member of the original cast of Hair, taking on the role of Dionne alongside Ronnie Dyson, Paul Jabara, and Diane Keaton. She subsequently replaced Keaton in the role of Sheila. Her next Broadway role proved to be a career-defining one: she originated the role of Lutiebelle in Purlie in 1970, a performance that earned her the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance, and a Theatre World Award, all in the same year. She later reprised the role of Lutiebelle in a 1981 Showtime television adaptation of the production.

Following the success of Purlie, Moore appeared in two feature films and released two albums, I Got Love and Look What You're Doing to the Man, both in 1970. She co-starred with Clifton Davis in a variety television series in 1972, which was cancelled after a brief run. After her managers and accountants departed in 1973, Moore returned to Newark and performed at benefit concerts. Her career regained momentum after she met Charles Huggins, a record manager and business promoter, following a performance at the Apollo Theater in 1974. Moore and Huggins married in September 1974 and divorced in 1991 after seventeen years of marriage.

Moore returned to Broadway in 1978, appearing as Marsinah opposite Eartha Kitt in Timbuktu!, though she departed the production after a few weeks and was replaced by Vanessa Shaw. She next appeared on Broadway in Inacent Black in 1981. In 1995, she returned to Broadway in Les Misérables, and in 2006 she performed in Roll On, a gospel musical she had originally opened with that same year, later reprising it in a Washington, D.C. production in 2022.

Moore's recording career began in 1967 with the track "Magic Touch," which remained unreleased until 1986 and later found an audience on the Northern soul scene, leading to a live performance at the Baltic Soul Weekender 3 in Germany in 2009. She signed with Buddah Records in 1975 and released the R&B album Peach Melba, which included the minor hit "I Am His Lady." The following year, the Van McCoy-penned "This Is It" reached the Billboard Hot 100, the top-20 position on the R&B chart, and the top ten on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the number one disco track in the United Kingdom that year. Her 1976 recording of "Lean on Me," originally recorded by Vivian Reed, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance — Female. She had previously received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 1971.

In 1982, Moore signed with Capitol Records and reached the top five on the R&B charts with "Love's Comin' at Ya," which also entered the top twenty in the United Kingdom. A series of R&B hits followed through the mid-1980s, including "Keepin' My Lover Satisfied," "Love Me Right," "Livin' For Your Love," and "Read My Lips," the last of which earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1986, making her the third Black artist after Donna Summer and Michael Jackson to receive a nomination in that category. In 1986, she reached number one on the R&B charts with both the Freddie Jackson duet "A Little Bit More" and the solo single "Falling." That same year, she headlined the CBS sitcom Melba, which debuted on the night of the Challenger explosion and was cancelled after five episodes aired that summer.

Moore appeared in the 1990 horror film Def by Temptation and in the 2003 film The Fighting Temptations, which starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé Knowles. Beginning in 1996, she performed a long-running one-woman show originally titled Sweet Songs of the Soul, later renamed I'm Still Standing. In 2007, she appeared in a production of Ain't Misbehavin'. Moore released a duet album with Phil Perry, The Gift of Love, in 2009, and her song "Love Is" debuted on the R&B charts in 2011 at number 87. She released the album Forever Moore in 2016 and The Day I Turned To You, an album of R&B gospel music, on December 13, 2019. In 2021, she collaborated with Stone Foundation on the track "Now That You Want Me Back."

Among her additional honors, Moore received the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival Theatre Legend Award in 2012 and was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 2015, in Detroit. On August 10, 2023, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Live Theatre/Live Performance category. Moore has one daughter and has described herself as a born-again Catholic.