Sam Moore, who as half of the ’60s R&B duo Sam & Dave sang gritty however hook-filled hits together with “Soul Man” and “Wait, I’m coming,” died Friday in Coral Gables, Florida. He was 89 years outdated.
His demise was confirmed by his publicist, Jeremy Westby, who mentioned the trigger was issues from an unspecified surgical procedure. Dave Prater, Moore’s accomplice in Sam & Dave, died in a automotive accident on the age of fifty in 1988.
With Moore as tenor and Prater as baritone, Sam & Dave have been one of many signature acts of Memphis’ Stax Records, providing a more durable, plodding different to the extra refined R&B sound that Detroit’s Motown had became pop gold.
Yet Sam and Dave have been no strangers to the charts: In 1965, they started a four-year run by which they reached the highest 40 on Billboard’s R&B chart a dozen instances and reached No. 2 on the all-genre Hot 100 with “Soul Man “, written and produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter and that includes backing from Stax’s crackerjack home band, Booker T. & the MG’s. “Soul Man” received a Grammy Award in 1968, beating out “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and “I Second That Emotion” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, changing into one of the best R&B efficiency by a duo or group. with the voice.
Sam & Dave’s different hits included “I Thank You,” “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” “Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Everyone,” “Something Is Wrong with My Baby” and “You Got Me Hummin'”. “, which a teenage Billy Joel later coated along with his group, the Hassles.
“Most bands…may get away with doing a nasty model of a Sam & Dave file and nonetheless get an unimaginable response,” Joel mentioned when inducting the duo into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. “But you all undergo once you examine them to the unique.”
For all they achieved within the studio, Sam and Dave have been maybe greatest appreciated as an explosive dwell band, often called each Double Dynamite and Sultans of Sweat.
Samuel David Moore was born in Miami on October 12, 1935 and grew up singing in church. He met Prater on the King of Hearts nightclub in Miami within the early Sixties, when Prater carried out at an beginner night time hosted by Moore. The two shaped Sam & Dave and labored largely in obscurity till Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd – the inventive thoughts behind Atlantic Records – noticed their act and signed the duo to a deal that may see them file for Stax, which Atlantic was distributing.
Moore and Prater, whose relationship was all the time extra skilled than pleasant, broke up in 1970 however reunited after each’s solo careers failed. In 1978, the Blues Brothers – comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd – launched a canopy of “Soul Man” that went to quantity 14 on the Hot 100; the renewed consideration carried Sam and Dave for just a few extra years till they performed their final live performance collectively in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve 1981. (To Moore’s disappointment, Prater later toured as Sam & Dave with a distinct singer , Sam Daniels.)
In 1982, Moore married Joyce McRae, who additionally started managing his profession and helped him overcome his heroin habit. He went on to sing on albums by Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen and acquired a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in 2019. Moore’s survivors embody his spouse, their daughter and two grandchildren.
