Although Moody was in at the start of bebop, he presented an acceptable face of the music to doubters: he sounded a little like Dexter Gordon, another bopper whose style really derives from an earlier matrix, and his jukebox hit Moody's Mood For Love (1949, and actually his first record on alto rather than his customary tenor) suggested a kinship with the swing masters in the way they'd treat a ballad. Before that, he'd worked in Dizzy Gillespie's big band in the mid-40s, then with Miles Davis in Europe, where he stayed until 1951. He ran a small band of his own in America throughout the 50s, but recorded comparatively little, and it wasn't until he signed with the small Argo label that he was busy in the studios. Although not very highly regarded (and seldom reissued), this sequence of albums has much to enjoy – such as the bluesy big-band charts of Last Train From Overbrook (1959) – and also demonstrates what a fine flute player Moody was as well. Some of his best-known work was with the Dizzy Gillespie small group that toured during the 60s, but after that he was somewhat hidden in low-profile gigs until – like so many others – he was rediscovered as an elder statesman in the 90s, and made a sequence of patchy but enjoyable records for Warner Bros. A droll stage demeanour has made him popular with audiences, and he always insists on being called 'Moody', never 'James'.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.