Kevin Roosevelt Moore was born in South Los Angeles in October 1951 to parents from Louisiana and Texas, grew up steeped in blues and gospel, and spent two decades as a respected but largely invisible working musician: a steel drummer in a calypso band, a sideman for Papa John Creach, a co-writer of Git Fiddler on Jefferson Starship’s number one album Red Octopus, a staff writer at A&M Records and a jam partner of Albert Collins and Big Joe Turner. His 1980 debut Rainmaker came and went. This episode explores how he finally found his voice in his 40s by playing a character called Guitar Man in the stage play Spunk, adapted from Zora Neale Hurston stories, and emerged as Keb’ Mo’.

We follow the 1994 self-titled breakthrough on OKeh Records with its Robert Johnson covers, the endorsement from Robert Johnson catalog owner Steve LaVere, and a run of Grammy wins including Just Like You, Slow Down, Keep It Simple and TajMo with Taj Mahal. We also cover his appearances on Sesame Street, The West Wing and Mike and Molly, his political and charitable work, his love of red guitars, the instruments he lost in the 2010 Nashville flood, and the recent crucible of open-heart surgery and a pending divorce that produced his August 2026 album The Breakdown.

• Why playing steel drums in a calypso band kept him from becoming a blues purist
• How the persona of Guitar Man and a drummer’s nickname gave Kevin Moore the freedom to become Keb’ Mo’
• The pop, folk and gospel arrangement skills that let him make the Delta blues smile for mainstream audiences
• The modified red Fender Stratocaster and the thicker, warmer tone that became his signature
• A leaking heart valve, an aortic aneurysm and an album born from living the blues rather than performing them