Yazoo City, Miss. ? Blues artist Arnold “Gatemouth” Moore, a Kansas native who was the first blues singer to sing at Carnegie Hall, died Wednesday at Kings Daughters Hospital in Yazoo City after a long illness. He was 90.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete. At the time of his death, Moore was pastor of the Lintonia A.M.E. Church in Yazoo City.

He was born Arnold Dwight Moore on Nov. 8, 1913, in Topeka, Kan. He claimed he earned the nickname “Gatemouth” because of his loud singing and speaking voice. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis in 1938.

At the age of 16, Moore moved to Kansas City, Mo., where he sang with the bands of Bennie Moten, Tommy Douglas and Walter Barnes. He was also one of the few survivors of a devastating 1940 fire at the Rhythm Club in Natchez, in which more than 150 died. Other members of his band died in the fire.

In 1941 he returned to Kansas City, where he made his first record and wrote such songs as “Somebody’s Got To Go,” “I Ain’t Mad at You Pretty Baby” and “Did You Ever Love A Woman?”, which was recorded by B.B. King and Rufus Thomas.

While performing in Chicago in 1949, he turned to gospel music and was ordained at the First Church of Deliverance in Chicago.

Moore was the first religious disc jockey at Memphis radio station WDIA, and he also worked for a religious station in Birmingham, Ala., before returning to Chicago in 1957 to work on gospel programs on television and radio.

He recorded gospel and blues albums into the 1970s, his last coming in 1977. It was a blues release that included a salute to his old stomping grounds on “Beale Street Ain’t Beale Street No More.”

Moore was also featured in Martin Scorsese’s Public Broadcasting Service blues series, singing that song as he strolled down the famous street.

Survivors include his wife, Walterine.