Day of the DJ! Belle Moore ("Brown Sugar") Steppin' Out! Among the Many Lights and Voices of Volunteers on Community-Radio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Everywhere!

Maryse's and my, Bob Dylan's and Bobby Rush's friend Belle Moore, "Brown Sugar" as show-host on New Orleans' WWOZ for decades of R&B, passed away last Thursday night. Celebrate her and MANY More!

January 25, 2025

First, let’s hear the voice, BELLE MOORE (“BROWN SUGAR”) in 1988, as providentially recorded in a Harvey, Louisiana coffee-shop by a fan over the WWOZ airwaves. Thank YOU, too, ‘craigseuf’ on YouTube, for generously keeping the flame alive. You may hear how BOB DYLAN was ‘drawn in’ by that ‘big, thick, dreamy, oozing molasses voice.’ And the Track-Selections! So rich and raw-licking!

Over two years ago, October 20, 2022, MARYSE and I and Sticking Up For Children joined with the New Orleans City Council and sponsoring Council-Member OLIVER THOMAS to honor Community-Radio Stations in New Orleans.

WWOZ, WWNO, WTUL and WHIV were in that number. We printed a 4-Page booklet to go along with the Day.

We looked back, then, on several O-Z show-hosts who had passed recently—K. BALEWA, BILLY DELLE, “THE MIDNIGHT CREEPER”, RON PHILLIPS, SUZANNE CORLEY. Earlier in this century New Orleans has lost DON “MOOSE” JAMISON, JEFF DUPERSON, CLINTON SCOTT, and MARK HAWKINS.

And in the New Orleans’ City Hall City Council Chambers Bobby Rush’s greeting to his longtime friend, Belle Moore, “Brown Sugar”, was played.

Additonal THANKS went, of course, to MANY in October 2022.

We particularly noted, over on the stickingupforchildren.com Page, the very recent of loss of Maryse’s and WWOZ’s and WHIV’s colleague, NOELANI MUSICARO. Noelani was a person felicitous and outgoing and solicitous as her name’s onomatopeia implies—a brightly painted sail on the Sea.

Now Belle is passed—but far from gone—too. Those who give like Belle (and “Brown Sugar”) gave always last. Her close friend, Alena Stewart, one who has steered so much within the New Orleans City Council’s operations over her own beautful decades, wrote on Facebook: ‘Death is never easy.’

WWOZ and benefactors and boons to New Orleans’ culture such as AL KENNEDY posted their own memorials. WWOZ’s you can read HERE.

Again, please visit Sticking Up For Children’s ‘DAY of the DJ’ web-page to watch video of Bobby’s Rush’s “I love you” to Belle and my reading from Bob Dylan on “Brown Sugar” in his book, Chronicles.

What Sight-and-Sound stirs in my heart today is BELLE at the helm of her Cassette-Playing Sound-System, Saturday-night Parties for her or ANATOL’s Birthday … their house in a Sub-Division of far New Orleans East … Belle Queenly imperial at head of a crowded Dining Room table, a dozen-plus Chairs in the Dining-Room crowded with family and guests, the Couch and upholstered Chairs in the Living-Room crowded too—family and guests chatting, leaning, eating from plates of the Mac-and-Cheese and Sausage-and-Beans and Bread Pudding and drinking glasses of Wine and Whiskey … everyone, mostly, listening and even rocking and closing their eyes to the Ineffably Deep Rumbling Bass-Lines and Real Talk and Everyday Pathos and Sweet, Soaring Tones from Belle’s selection of ‘70s, 80s’, ‘90s, 21st-century Rhythm-and-Blues tunes … Heaven in Half-Hours and more … and Belle the Chef in control of our pleasure at head of the table looking over at Anatol every now and then.