On-the-Air with Debb Moore, Atlanta's Pride and Personality
 
 
 

By Rachelle A. Jones
 

ATLANTA -- Radio DJ Debb Moore has it all -- the sexy alto voice, a keen knowledge of the jazz music and artists she plays, and a faithful crew of fans.

"You know, she’s got that radio voice, God bless her," said Wendy Zimmerman, who has been tuning in to WCLK 91.9 for 27 years. Zimmerman, an Atlanta schoolteacher, has followed Moore’s Midday Renaissance program for its eight-year span, and is an unabashed fan.
Surprising Zimmerman, who was in the station to pick up a prize pack and concert tickets, Moore greeted her in the station’s lobby.

"Your voice," Zimmerman said as Moore introduced herself, "It just really comes through."

And Moore, who pressed her hands together as in prayer, said, "God gifted me."

But Moore’s story is one of personal transformation.  "When I first started I didn’t know what I wanted to be," Moore said.  "I never knew what my gift was.  All I had really was this wonderful personality, but I never thought I could make money with a personality."

The transformation is marked by the variations in her on-air name.  When she graduated from Clark College here with a degree in journalism, Moore flitted through various jobs before settling in as a legal aide at City Hall.

A station manager from WCLK -- the official station of historically-black Clark-Atlanta University -- hearing her sultry alto voice at the Hall, approached her "out of the blue," and, Moore said, he asked, "Do you think you’re ready?  Some announcer didn’t come in and from then on, the overnights were mine."
 
 

The irrepressible Moore, at home behind the mike

In 1992, Moore debuted on the station as the host of Mood Swings in its graveyard time slot. The program featured light jazz and soft R&B tunes perfect for late night listening.  Beginning as on air personality "Deborah," Moore called Mood Swings "An opportunity to really explore who I was."

Her modest start as Deborah, which she deemed too formal quickly switched to Debbie, a name that she would then deem too "cutesy" for radio. Her voice is naturally low and soothing, an attribute that male listeners find sexy.  Colleagues often come to her with stories of fans asking what Moore looks like, whether the voice is attached to a beautiful black woman.  But Moore said, "I didn’t want to be a sex pot."  And indeed Moore is attractive -- her dark brown skin and long black hair play against her short stature and hourglass figure quite well.

"There’s something very powerful about being on radio, power of the media.  It really does play an intense psychological game on peoples minds," Moore said.

Moore holds a special place in Atlanta’s radio history.  She’s one of the first female radio disc jockeys to be heard across the city’s radio waves.

But throughout the 90s, then "Debbie" said she felt anything but powerful.  She walks at night with friends to keep her figure.  She admits that hers is a sometimes-lonely life because most men seem intimidated by her, or assume she is already committed to someone.   "People automatically assume that your world is rosy."

In actuality, her mother died from breast cancer shortly after Moore scored the job with Mood Swings. "My mom passed right when I started radio," Moore said. "You get the opportunity to do what you really want to do, and then your mom dies. At such a sensitive time in your life when a primary parent dies, girl I was schizophrenic.

"I think she heard me one time," Moore said of her mother, who died in 1993. "She said, ‘Oh, I like that Gloria Lynn you played.’"  To this day, Moore says she still has trouble playing "Lend Me Yesterday," the song that her mother heard and the validation that she had indeed made her dreams come true.

It is a dream that could have gone in two directions, both fully supported by a mother who believed in her, she said.  "I knew that I wanted to do radio or television -- whatever came first," Moore said.
 
 

"I Can Do That, Right Mom?"
 
 

Inspiration came at a young age in the form of a local news anchor in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  "Michelle Holden.  She spoke well, was attractive and intelligent," Moore said.  "I thought to myself ‘I can do that.’ She was a woman -- a black woman.  An image that I recognized ‘cause when I looked in the mirror, that’s what I saw."

And her mother, always supportive, always optimistic, served her daughter the conformation and faith she needed to pursue that goal. "I said, ‘I can do that, right mom?’ and she said, ‘You can do anything you want to do."

When Moore entered college at then Clark College, "Debb was this little bitty person who had energy to spare," said Joan Williams (J.W.) Lewis, Moore’s journalism professor at Clark College who now teaches at Clark Atlanta University. And Moore, the self-described optimistic and ambitious teen, dabbled in everything the school had to offer.

"What I’m most proud of is she became focused," said Lewis.

Focused.  For Moore, this means studying the history behind the artists and musicians she plays for her listeners, of understanding and living the jazz that she sends across the airwaves.  Her efforts were rewarded in 1994 when she claimed the Midday Renaissance show’s prime hours of 10am to 2pm in a city where jazz is immensely popular.

Lewis, while passing her former student in the hall said, "You have learned the music. There’s more to being a DJ than music. It’s about actually dealing with the music. I have watched her develop the show with a lot of care.  Its not just another show, its her own show."

Lewis, who tells all of her students at Clark-Atlanta "do not be mediocre," says that Moore’s recent recognition as the host of various arts festivals around Atlanta shows just how far she’s come. "That’s the kind of student that you sit back and say ‘something I said got through.’"

Somewhere between her beginnings in 1992 and today, Moore changed her name a third time at the suggestion of a friend.  She became "Deb" -- the friendly, personable DJ who really knew her stuff.  The switch to "Debb" with the extra consonant marks her 10-year anniversary in radio, and a career that has really flourished.

Promptly at 2pm Moore packs up her albums and heads out the door.  "I’ve been hearing all these rhythms - - I go to Brazil, Africa, all these places," she said. "After I’ve finished being fabulous, brilliant, I’m pooped."

Hers is a radio station inside a Mass Communication department.  There are no windows in the studio, the space is small and "tight."   But for Moore, the job and all its quirks and shortstops is fine for her right now. Moore considers herself a "public server" -- playing the soulful sounds of  jazz’s greats and educating her listeners about the music’s vast history.  She said, "You’ve got to serve up to the best of people not play to their incredulous side."

"I’ve never been a proponent of the poor girls motif," she admits, as she acknowledged the increase in pay were she to make the jump into commercial radio. And although she says friends and colleagues have suggested a move out of public radio, Moore is skeptical of the format change.  "I could never play rap.  I could never play some of the other music I hear on commercial stations."

Her taste, she said, is more for pop and classic R&B.  The kind of music that allows people to live out her motto: "Ride on, be free."