Cowboy Jimmy Moore

JAM said:
YES, YES, YES. This reference link is VERY HELPFUL! Thanks! :)

JAM
Mike Haines and I interviewed Jimmy back in 1980. The interview ran a bit under 30 minutes. It is a 26 meg MP3 file that I could send on a CD if you are interested. (2-3 minutes of the taped interview were barely audible.)
 
As an aside, I was fascinated to learn more about Ralph Greenleaf in recent times. Poring through some of the older pool mags, I discovered this, edited a little by me:

He was one of the first three members inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 1966.

Greenleaf married Amelia Ruth Parker a vaudeville actress known as "Princess Nai Tai" or "The Oriental Nightingale." When he wasn't dazzling audiences and competitors in pool tournaments and exhibition matches, he would tour the Orpheum circuit with his actress wife. This Eurasian beauty would sing, having a charisma of her own, and Greenleaf, tall and slender, handsome, articulate, with a kind of naturally aristocratic manner, would give the audience their money's worth, demonstrating trick shots on a table set under huge mirrors, so everyone in the theater could see the whole playing surface.

In a pool championship match, Greenleaf was a fierce competitor, winning his first world title in 1919, as well as others, off and on, through 1937. His only unbeatable enemy was considered the bottle, though even his worst bouts rarely seemed to interfere with his performance. In 1942, he came in third place, behind Hoppe and Cochran in a world championship three-cusion match.

During this era, the press used euphemisms like "playboy" for sports idols and other public figures who, like Greenleaf, suffered from severe alcoholism. In 1935, the media reported that Greenleaf "fell off the wagon" when he vanished just before a crucial tournament in New York and woke up in Oklahoma under arrest as a vagrant. In order for him to be released, he had to prove to the constable his identity, who he was, by walking across the street to a pool hall located in front of the jailhouse in Okmulgee by running 87 balls consecutively.

Greenleaf had a hobby that he took seriously which was raising turkeys and chickens at his farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, in which he made a profit. His last championship title was in 1937 when he defeated Irving Crane by a score of 125 to minus one.

He died suddenly at the age of 50 from acute internal hemorrhage in the waiting room of a hospital in Philadelphia. He had been ill for several days, but had refused to seek treatment by going to a hospital because of an upcoming match he was to have played in New York, scheduled several days after he passed.


JAM
 
BillPorter said:
Mike Haines and I interviewed Jimmy back in 1980. The interview ran a bit under 30 minutes. It is a 26 meg MP3 file that I could send on a CD if you are interested. (2-3 minutes of the taped interview were barely audible.)

Yes, I would love to have that. In fact, I can transcribe the complete interview and provide you a Word-formatted document of it for your records, if you would like! :)

I will PM you my postal address.

JAM
 
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JAM said:
Yes, I would love to have that. In fact, I cant transcribe the complete interview and provide you a Word-formatted document of it for your records, if you would like! :)

I will PM you my postal address.

JAM
I'll just send you the DVD Mike and I have that has all of our old pool pics as well as 16 interviews from the 1980 Rocky Moutain 9-Ball Open (including the Jimmy Moore interview). Keith was at the tournament, but sadly we never got around to doing an interview with him. Maybe you can use some of the photos for that book you are working on. All we ask is photo credit for our pics.:)
 
BillPorter said:
I'll just send you the DVD Mike and I have that has all of our old pool pics as well as 16 interviews from the 1980 Rocky Moutain 9-Ball Open (including the Jimmy Moore interview). Keith was at the tournament, but sadly we never got around to doing an interview with him. Maybe you can use some of the photos for that book you are working on. All we ask is photo credit for our pics.:)

That would be splendid. The "book" is beginning to look like an encylopedia of American pool. I have a kazillion files consisting of various snippets of pool happenings, and it looks like helter skelter. The draft is now 800-plus pages, 22 lines per page, utilizing the Courier 12-New font, and will be in need of MAJOR copy-editing to make it flow with consistency, so that it will be a comprehensive read, especially for the non-pool-playing public.

I am still accumulating more data, which is difficult since there doesn't seem to be a good resource or record of American pool players during Keith's era as a younger player. Finding the dates, name spellings, and putting it all in correct chronological order is time consuming. Keith can remember the exact pool shot he executed in the third game of the seventh round of a major pool tournament, but dates, places, and name spellings are not his forte. :o

JAM
 
Nice thread here about one of Pool's great champions. Jimmy did get the label of "Bridesmaid" for all his runner-up finishes in major events. Not so bad a record though, considering he was in fields FULL of champions. He just had trouble winning the critical match to put him over the top.

He did have one of the stranger strokes I ever saw. As soneone else said, he "cued" down on the cloth, almost off the cue ball entirely. But when he followed thru, he could hit anywhere he wanted on the ball. Strange but effective. I suspect it came from a career as a hustler. It would have been a good move to show that stroke to his opponents.

Meanwhile, his stroke was one of the sweetest in the game. Jimmy had an exaggerated slip stroke and he could do wondrous things with the cue ball. A couple I remember included drawing the cue ball three rails, when he started out about one inch from the object ball. Try that sometime! And he had that shot down where you shoot a ball in the side pocket and force follow the cue ball forward and down table. This is done from an off angle. Does that make sense?

In his day, his stroke was the most powerful in the game, kind of the Mike Massey of his era. Jimmy was a super friendly guy too, and once he met you, he never forgot you. He was soft spoken and a real gentleman. He had a nice soft drawl and liked to laugh a lot. I always enjoyed being around him. In my lifetime, he was the best older player I ever saw. Still playing high level pool well into his 70's. And gambling too. I heard he could still run 100 balls when he was over 80 years old. I don't doubt it.

Oh and one last thing. I WENT TO JAIL WITH JIMMY! Yes, you heard right! Jimmy was in L.A. for one of Fred Whalen's big tourneys in the early 70's and someone challenged him to a Snooker match. I think it was that Harry Cohen guy. Jimmy played jam up Snooker too by the way. So they went to a poolroom nearby that had a snooker table, and start to play for $50 a game with six red balls. I'm sweating the game along with quite a few others when someone says to me. "Aren't you one of the refs at the tournament?" Sure I say and pretty soon this guy is asking me how I play Pool. SWEET!

Make a long story short, pretty soon we are in action at $5 9-Ball on the next table over. We're paying off every two games ($10) and I've got the guy stuck like $40 or $50, when all Hell breaks loose. It's the cops coming in en masse, and there are a couple of plain clothes guys already inside. They immediately "bust" Jimmy and his opponent and then one of the plain clothes cops says those guys over there were gambling too, pointing to us.
SHIT!

Sure enough a couple of cops approach our table and one pulls the last Ten dollar bill out of the corner pocket. I had just gotten paid. Double shit! Now we are taken outside with Jimmy and the other guy and handcuffed. I'm keeping real quiet, cause you don't want to mess with the L.A. cops in those days. The kid I had been playing is mouthing off big time though, calling the cops names etc. They put me and him in the back seat of a patrol car, and the kid won't shut up. I tell him to quiet down. I'm scared. The cop in the front seat turns around and slaps the kid on the face HARD! That shut him up, and scared me shitless. I'm sitting right next to him remember, handcuffed behind my back. Helpless in other words.

We get to the police station and while we are waiting the kid pipes up again. The same cop comes over and slams his head face first against the wall. He's bleeding from his nose, but finally shuts up for good. Jimmy is standing nearby and tells me not to worry. He asks me if I have any money and I say sure. He says we will probably be able to bail out, and sure enough after an hour or so in a holding cell, they give us the option of bailing out for $52.

After Jimmy and I bail out (the kid got taken to the drunk tank, and didn't get to make bail, I think they held him for the entire weekend), we get outside and Jimmy tells me to just forget about it. It's a misdemeanor and if you don't show up in court, they will forfeit your bail and that's the end of it. They gave us back our money, except for the "evidence" from the last game. I lost $10 and Jimmy $50. Jimmy had won a couple hundred before the bust so he was cool.

We took a cab back to Hollywood and I saw him in the tournament the next night, as if nothing had happened, although everyone there was talking about it. I guess it went with the territory when you were a pool hustler, but it was a new experience for me. Thank God I got busted with Jimmy, because he helped me out that night. We laughed about it a few times over the years when I saw him again. TRUE STORY!!!!
 
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It's great to see this thread about Jimmy Moore. I was just thinking about him yesterday when I saw the thread about past players and how they couldn't compete with today's players. I'd put Jimmy Moore at 70 against a lot of today's young guns.
 
JLW said:
It's great to see this thread about Jimmy Moore. I was just thinking about him yesterday when I saw the thread about past players and how they couldn't compete with today's players. I'd put Jimmy Moore at 70 against a lot of today's young guns.


JLW, I agree with you!

JAM - just FTR, when I asked Jimmy about playing Keith on the bar-box - he always referenced that one time he "finally beat that damned McCready!" (EXACT QUOTE!) :p

He was very proud of that accomplishment - and he should have been!
 
Well, in the bridesmaid category do you remember who Jimmy beat in the finals of that tournament in El Paso?

I do, because I was in half with him... LOL

Jerry Cordova
 
McKinneyMiner said:
Well, in the bridesmaid category do you remember who Jimmy beat in the finals of that tournament in El Paso?

I do, because I was in half with him... LOL

Jerry Cordova


Jeff,
I do remember that!

Do you remember who beat Cowboy Jimmy Moore - sending him into the loser's bracket?

The Snowman, Kenny Snow!


BTW... heard from Jerry lately? I haven't seen him in about 4-5 years. Is he still up in Ruidoso?
 
I saw Jerry at the BCA Nationals this year. He was playing on a strong team out of Alamagordo that finished in the top 20 of the Open.

He is living with his girlfriend Terry in Las Cruces.
 
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