Sam Moore, one half of the scorched-soul duo Sam & Dave – who produced such indelible hits as “Soulman”, “Hold On, I’m Comin'” and “I Thank You”. Known for – died Friday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 89 years old.
His death at the hospital following surgery was confirmed by his wife and longtime manager Joyce Moore. He said the real reason is not clear.
At their peak in the 1960s, Sam & Dave sang rhythm and blues hits rivaled by few other acts. While “Soulman” topped the R&B charts and reached No. 2 on the pop charts in 1967 (it also won a Grammy), its success opened the door for other black acts to connect with white audiences. Helped.
Sam & Dave’s live shows were so dynamic – they were known as the Sultans of Sweet and Double Dynamite – that even charismatic acts like Otis Redding were reluctant to join them on the bill, for fear of being upstaged. from Mr. Moore once spoke of the need to “liquefy” his audience before he considered his show a success.
“The strength of Sam & Dave,” he said, “is that we’ll do anything to please the audience.”
Mr. Moore and Dave Prater, a baritone, met at an amateur night at the King of Hearts, a Miami nightclub, in the early 1960s. The two non-Polish young singers accidentally wound up on stage together — Mr. Prater was having trouble remembering the lyrics, and Mr. Moore fed them — but they clicked with the audience immediately.
Both men began singing in church, and developed a call-and-response style with a stirring gospel that became their trademark. They signed with a local record label, Marlin, and then moved to Roulette Records in New York. But their early records failed to chart, and they withdrew from King of Hearts.
One night in 1964, Ahmed Ertagne, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd of Atlantic Records came to see him perform. Impressed, they offered the two a contract. The company commissioned Memphis soul label Stax Records to produce its records, which would later be released and distributed by Atlantic.
In his autobiography, ”Rhythm and the Blues,” Mr. Wexler wrote, ”I put Sam in the beloved tradition of Sam Cooke or Solomon Burke, while Dave’s four-tops had the full voice of Levi Stubbs, which was hell. was a preacher who promised fire.
Lending them to Stax turned out to be an inspired move. In Memphis, Sam and Dave became part of a remarkable musical family that was fierce competition for Barry Gordy’s humming hit factory at Motown.
Working with producers and songwriters Isaac Hayes and David Porter, house band Booker T. & MG’s and the crisp horns of Mar-keys, Sam & Dave were soon enjoying the perks of stardom, including their own A tour bus and plane, plus an entourage of ladies and hangers-on. Both of them also became addicted to heroin.
Samuel David Moore’s life can be divided into three almost unbelievably neat works. Act I begins with his birth in Miami on October 12, 1935. His mother, Louise Robinson, was a teacher, and she described his father, John Richard Hicks, as “a street hustler”, whose son was soon to follow. at his feet. (The boy took his stepfather’s name when his mother married a man named Charlie Moore.)
While still in high school, Sam is shot in the leg by the jealous husband of a married woman he was seeing. He later served 18 months in prison for procuring prostitutes. But the music lifted him. He sang at a Baptist church in Miami, then with an a cappella group called the Majestic and a gospel group called the Millionaires, before working with Mr. Prater.
Act II opens with Sam and Dave’s first breakup in 1970, as their popularity declines. When their solo careers failed to take off, they reunited and broke up several times. The two were never close in person.
“It was a duo,” Mr. Moore said in the 1998 book “Sam and Dave: An Oral History,” edited by Dave Marsh. “But it wasn’t a partnership.”
Sam and Dave toured America, Europe and Turkey, but their drug use had begun to take its toll. Their downward spiral was briefly slowed when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, as the Blues Brothers, recorded a hit version of “Soulman” in 1978, bringing renewed attention to the original. was brought
Sam Moore and Dave Prater last performed together on New Year’s Eve 1981 in San Francisco. After walking offstage, they never spoke to each other again.
Mr. Prater recruited a new partner, Sam Daniels, and they worked together on what became known as the Sam & Dave or New Sam & Dave Review – over Mr. Moore’s objections – until Mr. Prater died in a car accident in 1988.
Act III opens a year after that final show, when Mr. Moore marries Joyce McRae, a self-described “upper-middle-class Jewish girl from Chicago” who first saw him perform in 1967. . Managing his career and guiding him through a fruitful professional twilight.
Sam and Dave were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2019.
Information about his next of kin, other than his wife, was not immediately available.
Mr. Moore’s solo album, “Plenty Good Lovein’,” which he recorded in 1970 but which Atlantic refused to release for various reasons, finally received critical acclaim in 2002. Tweety, Lou Reed and other singers. He also worked to secure long-overdue copyrights and royalties from other artists and songwriters.
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride, but mostly good,” Joyce Moore said in a 2014 interview. “The most painful part is realizing how abused and mistreated Sam and his peers were – and still are. Most of them never got their due. But bless us. has gone.”
Hank Sanders Cooperation reporting.