Moody joined the
US Army Air Corps in 1943 and played in the "negro band" at the segregated
Greensboro Training Center. According to Moody, Following his discharge from the military in 1946, he played
bebop with
Dizzy Gillespie for two years. Moody later played with Gillespie in 1964, where his colleagues in the Gillespie group, pianist
Kenny Barron and guitarist
Les Spann, would be musical collaborators in the coming decades. In 1948, Moody recorded for
Blue Note, his first session in a long recording career playing both saxophone and flute. That same year, he relocated to Europe, where he stayed for three years, saying he had been "scarred by
racism" in the U.S. saw him add the
alto saxophone to his repertoire and helped to establish him as recording artist in his own right, and formed part of the growth of European jazz. Then in 1952, he returned to the U.S. to a recording career with
Prestige Records and others, playing
flute and saxophone in bands that included musicians such as
Pee Wee Moore and others. Even up to recording "Moody's Mood for Love", Moody was still an ear player. It was not until he returned to the U.S. and toured with The
Brook Benton Revue (with The James Moody Orchestra) that he became acquainted with music theory, crediting
Tom McIntosh with explaining to him chord changes. In the 1960s, Moody rejoined Dizzy Gillespie and later also worked with
Mike Longo. From 1974 into the 1980s, Moody found steady work playing in Las Vegas show bands. He was part of the
Gene Harris-led Phillip Morris Super Band which toured the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1997, Moody appeared as William Glover, a
law-firm porter, in
Clint Eastwood's
movie adaptation of
John Berendt's novel
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. He walked Patrick, an invisible dog, in the movie. During the dog's lifetime, Glover was paid $10 by its owner, attorney John Bouhan, to walk Patrick. After the death of both Bouhan and his dog, a judge agreed that Glover should continue to receive $10 for walking Patrick. In a 1998 interview with Bob Bernotas, Moody stated that he believed
jazz has definite
spiritual resonance. The James Moody Quartet (with pianist
Renee Rosnes, bassist
Todd Coolman, and drummer
Adam Nussbaum) was Moody's vehicle later in his career. Moody played regularly with Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band and also often collaborated with former Gillespie alumnus, the trumpeter-composer-conductor
Jon Faddis; Faddis and Moody worked in 2007 with the
WDR Big Band in
Cologne, Germany under the direction of Michael Abene. And along with Faddis, toured in 1986 with the Philip Morris Superband hosting artists like Hammond organist
Jimmy Smith,
Kenny Burrell,
Grady Tate and
Barbara Morrison. Included in this line-up were
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen,
Jimmy Heath,
Kenny Washington,
Slide Hampton and
Monty Alexander on a four-country, 14-city one-month tour of 18 concerts, notably in Australia, Canada, Japan and the Philippines, starting on September 3, 1986, with its first concert in
Perth, Australia. The Philip Morris Superband concept started a year previous in 1985. ==Awards and honors==