Discography

As leader

  • Swing Guitars with Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow (Norgran, 1955)

  • Presenting Oscar Moore with Leroy Vinnegar (Omegatape 1956)

  • Galivantin' Guitar (Tampa, 1956)

  • In Guitar (Charlie Parker, 1962)

  • We'll Remember You, Nat (Surrey, 1966)

  • Oscar Moore (VSOP/Tampa/Skylark, 1986)

As sideman

Oscar Frederic Moore

December 25, 1916 – October 8, 1981

Oscar Moore was an American jazz guitarist with the Nat King Cole Trio.

The son of a blacksmith, Moore was born in Austin, Texas. The Moore family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, during his teen years where he began performing with his older brother Johnny, who played both trombone and guitar. After moving to Los Angeles, he participated in his first recording session for Decca as part of the Jones Boys Sing Band led and arranged by Leon René. The group attracted local attention on radio and two short films for MGM directed by Buster Keaton. Soon after, Moore accompanied pianist Nat King Cole at the Swanee Inn in North La Brea, Hollywood. He spent ten years with Cole in the piano-guitar-bass trio format that influenced Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal.  

Moore placed or topped polls in DownBeat, Metronome, and Esquire magazines from 1943 through 1948. Art Tatum professed his admiration for Moore in a 1944 magazine interview. 

Oscar Moore left the King Cole Trio in October 1947 after Cole’s new wife, Maria, convinced the singer to pay the other two members as sidemen instead of splitting the money evenly, as they’d been doing.  That ended up being a bad move for a proud and bitter Oscar, who didn’t have much success on his own. He joined his brother in Johnny Moore's Three Blazers as a member of that group into the early 1950s. 

Moore formed his own trio in 1952 and was active in Los Angeles. He recorded sessions as a leader and as a sideman throughout the 1950s but left the industry at the end of the decade. He returned to the recording studio in 1965 to record a tribute to Cole and again in the 1970s, briefly backing Helen Humes. 

Moore died of a heart attack in Clark, Nevada, in 1981, at age 65.  Remember though:  you hear his guitar every time someone plays “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole.