#sam moore

[musickickztoo]

RIP Sam Moore 

October 12, 1935 – January 10, 2025

[saywhat-politics]

Moore was best known as half of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame soul duo behind "Soul Man" & "Hold On, I'm Coming."

Sam Moore, half of the seminal duo Sam & Dave, died Friday (Jan. 10) in Coral Gables, Fla. The cause of death was complications from surgery. He was 89.

Moore, who was revered by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Garth Brooks and Jon Bon Jovi, had an instantly recognizable tenor, first heard on such call-and-response classics as Sam & Dave's 1960s hits "Hold On, I'm Coming" and the Grammy-winning "Soul Man," both of which reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B Singles chart, as well as "I Thank You" and "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby." The duo, who performed at Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial concert at Madison Square Garden following his assassination in 1968, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 by Billy Joel.

[holysoul]

Rest in Power, Sam.

[grooveland]

RIP Sam Moore of Sam & Dave

[lamardeuse]

Rest in power, Mr. Moore.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sam Moore w/ Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band "Hold On, I'm Comin'/Soul Man" | 25th Anniversary

Sam Moore (October 12, 1935 - January 10, 2025)

[justforbooks]

Sam Moore

American singer and half of the duo Sam & Dave best known for their 1967 hit Soul Man

In their 20-year career, the duo of Sam Moore, who has died aged 89, and Dave Prater recorded several of the most memorable records in the history of soul and R&B music. Sam & Dave’s biggest hit was Soul Man (1967), which topped the US R&B chart and reached No 2 on the pop chart. Its funky, driving beat, powerful horns and vocal interplay between Moore’s high tenor voice and Prater’s gritty baritone made it a soul and gospel classic.

Its writers, Isaac Hayes and David Porter, had drawn inspiration from the US civil rights movement, seeing the song as “a story about one man’s struggle to rise above his present conditions”.

The song won a Grammy in 1968, and in 1999 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It achieved further immortality in 1978 when the version by the Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, reached the charts. Moore reflected on how the song “turned out to be an anthem, sort of like Blowin’ in the Wind or one of those”.

Also unforgettable were Sam & Dave’s fiery Hold On, I’m Comin’ (1965), the Top 10 pop hit I Thank You (1968), which was covered by a list of artists including ZZ Top, Bonnie Raitt, Bon Jovi and Tom Jones, and the exquisite soul ballad When Something Is Wrong With My Baby (1967). In 1980, Elvis Costello had a No 4 hit in Britain with his version of Sam & Dave’s I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down.

In 2022, Bruce Springsteen recalled how “Sam & Dave were gigantic in my musical development,” and described Moore as “a great guy and probably our greatest living soul singer”. He recruited Moore to sing on his album Human Touch (1992) and his album of soul cover versions, Only the Strong Survive (2022).

Sam was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Louise Robinson, a teacher, and John Richard Hicks. He described his father as a “street hustler”, and he was mostly raised by his mother in the city’s Overtown district. When his mother married, Sam took the surname of his stepfather, Charlie Moore.

He attended Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar elementary schools, and was also a pupil for a time at Dillard high school in Fort Lauderdale, where he lived with an aunt. While there, he took saxophone lessons with Cannonball Adderley, the band director at Dillard. In 1955 he graduated from Overtown’s Booker T Washington senior high. In later years, Moore and his wife, Joyce, founded music education programmes at the Wheatley and Dunbar schools.

Moore fathered his first child when he was 16. He later estimated that he had as many as 20 children, most of whom he had never met. While he was still at school, he was shot in the leg by the enraged husband of one of his partners. He also earned money as a pimp. “Women like you? Let them pay you,” he said. “That’s how things were done on my side of the street.”

Meanwhile he also sang gospel music in church, something he had in common with Prater. They first met in the early 1960s at an amateur night at a Miami nightclub, the King of Hearts, when Moore helped out a very nervous Prater who could not remember the lyrics to a Jackie Wilson song. Their impromptu call-and-response performance thrilled the audience, and became the template for the fledgling Sam & Dave stage act.

After unsuccessful signings to the Marlin and Roulette Records labels, they were spotted by the Atlantic Records crew of Ahmet Ertegun, Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler. The duo struck a deal whereby they would record for the Memphis-based Stax label and have their records distributed by Atlantic. In Memphis, they were taken under the wing of the production and songwriting team of Hayes and Porter, and nobody could ever have wished for a finer in-house band than Booker T & the MGs, along with the horn section, the Mar-Keys.

The combination made for a tough and muscular sound, distinct from the smoother, more pop-orientated records coming out of Motown in Detroit. Acccording to the Miami Herald pop critic Leonard Pitts Jr: “It was the rawest, roughest stuff on the radio for a while in the late 60s and early 70s and Sam was the avatar of that.”

However, the Sam & Dave story proved to be a rocky ride. Moore had battled addictions to heroin and cocaine since he moved to New York in the mid-60s. In 1968, the pair’s relationship was badly damaged after Prater shot his wife during an argument, prompting Moore to say that, while he would still sing with Prater, “I’ll never talk to you again, ever.”

They split up in 1970, but Moore’s effort at a solo career stalled when his planned solo album was shelved after its producer, King Curtis, was fatally stabbed. This prompted him to reunite with Prater, largely because his drug habit meant he could not afford not to. As Moore observed: “For 12 years we worked together, but our lives were completely separate.” The solo album, Plenty Good Lovin’, was belatedly released in 2002.

Sam & Dave split again in 1981, though Prater recruited another singer, Sam Daniels, to create a new Sam & Dave. Prater was killed in a car accident in 1988.

In 1982 Moore married Joyce McRae, who became his manager and helped him find work with soul revue tours. Moore and Prater were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

Moore sang for six US presidents over the years – Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr and George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In 1996 he recorded a version of Soul Man renamed I’m a Dole Man, in support of the Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, but the publishing rights-holders prohibited its use.

In 2002, Moore featured in the Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker soul music documentary Only the Strong Survive, and in 2006 he released the solo album Overnight Sensational, on which he was joined by a host of guest stars including Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey, Sting and Steve Winwood.

He is survived by Joyce.

🔔 Sam Moore (Samuel David Hicks), singer, born 12 October 1935; died 10 January 2025

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[greensparty]

Remembering Sam Moore 1935-2025

Singer Sam Moore has died at 89. He was a true soul legend. First he was one-half of the duo Sam & Dave. They had a ton of hits notably "Soul Man", later revived by The Blues Brothers. Sam & Dave did some covers of their own including "Under the Boardwalk" and The Beatles' "We Can Work It Out".

After the duo split, Moore did a lot of collaborations including Don Henley on "You're Not Drinking Enough", a remake of "Soul Man" with Lou Reed for the movie Soul Man, Bruce Springsteen on the Human Touch album and also on his Only the Strong Survive covers album, and Sting on his Duets album. He did some solo albums and had no problem getting superstars to join him.

Possibly my favorite thing he did was when he played Billy Diamond, a part of the soul duo The Swanky Modes in the 1988 cult film Tapeheads. Moore and Junior Walker actually sang their songs including the show-stopping "Ordinary Man"!

I quote that song quite often, "any ordinary man would've given it up by now"!

The link above is the obit from AP News.

[timeslide-blog]

Sam Moore, right, and Dave Prater of the band Sam & Dave performing in Chicago in 1980.Credit...Paul Natkin/Getty Images

[flashbackvixen80s]

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A post shared by Jon Bon Jovi (@jonbonjovi)

RIP Sam Moore 💔

[myimaginaryradio]

Hold On I'm Coming / Soul Man - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Sam Moore

RIP to the original Soul Man

[julio-viernes]

Sam Moore, fallecido el viernes, homenaje express. Como mitad del dúo Sam & Dave lanzó en Stax clásicos inmortales del soul como "I Thank You", "Soul Man" y "Hold On, I'm Coming", aunque tienen muchas más cosas destacables. En su autobiografía, “Rhythm and the Blues”, Jerry Wexler escribió: “Pongo a Sam en la dulce tradición de Sam Cooke o Solomon Burke, mientras que Dave tenía la siniestra voz que sonaba a Levi Stubbs de Four Tops, el predicador que promete el infierno”. Sam era el tenor de Sam & Dave.

El dúo publicó su primer sencillo en 1961 pero no alcanzó el éxito masivo hasta que ficharon por Stax en 1965. "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" fue la cara B de "Shoote Me", su undécimo single para el sello en mayo de 1967 y justo el anterior a "Soul Man" y "I Thank You". Originalmente, un tremendo baladón soul que Elvis Costello convirtió en un tema rápido y desacomplejado dirigido a la pista de baile en su cuarto LP "Get Happy". En single salió en enero de 1980 en el sello Two Tone y en febrero en F-Beat. En ambos casos con la gran "Girls Talk" como cara B.

PD: Ojo, que encuentro esta versión costelliana alternativa en la onda del "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" original.

[dog-house-riley]

Sam and Dave - Hold On, I'm Coming

The 1967 hit Soul Man was one of the 60s great coded protest songs – a message of Black empowerment disguised as loverman swagger

[flankingmanoeuvres]

Sam and Dave - Hold On, I'm Coming

[newslink7com]

[musickickztoo]

Sam Moore *October 12, 1935