Sam Moore, co-founder and half of the famous 1960s “Sam & Dave” singing duo, passed away on Friday, January 10, aged 89. According to his representative, Mr. Moore passed away due to complications that arose when he was trying to recover from a recent surgery. His passing on Friday morning occurred in Coral Gables, Florida.
As background, Mr. Moore, who was best known for Sam & Dave hits like “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin,'” founded Sam & Dave with Dave Prater, who died in the late 1980s in a car wreck. Mr. Prater and Mr. Moore met at an amateur night in a Miami nightclub in the early 60s, with Moore chiming in to help Prater.
The two both sang gospel music in church, getting their start as public performers by praising the Lord, an were able to bond over that similarity as they started working together as an R&B stage act. However, that fell apart later, as Moore developed, for a time, a nasty drug habit and the band broke up and reunited before turning to lawsuits and great dislike of each other. But, before all that, they were gospel singers in church.
Sam & Dave’s biggest hit came in. 1968 with Soul Man; it not only topped the United States R&B chart but also reached No. 2 on the pop chart, making it a wildly successful hit. In fact, the song was so successful that it first won a Grammy in 1968, then a few decades later in 1999, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
But that massive success with the Grammy is not all it did. It was also used by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi in their famous 1978 “Blues Brothers” film, and that did well enough to reach the charts as well and, in the process, became utterly iconic. The Guardian, describing some of their other hits, noted:
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.
Singer Sammy Hagar, commenting on Mr. Moore’s passing on X, said, “I know there’s so much heartbreak and devastation going on in southern California right now, but I have to share the passing of Sam Moore. The original soul man has left us to join his many brothers and sisters in the afterlife. This once in a lifetime experience i had rehearsing in Las Vegas for the wonderful @ccnevadakma event is one of the highlights of my musical collaborations. Here in his mid 80s that voice, that voice, that voice. rest in peace, soul, brother. Love and prayers to Joyce and the family.”
Also commenting on his passing, another poster on X wrote, “I was lucky enough to play w/ Sam Moore (L, half of the hall-of-fame soul duo Sam & Dave) in the early ’90s when his travels brought him through Canada. Moore passed away yesterday at 89, and the house band in heaven gained one of the great tenor voices of the twentieth c. #RIP”
Featured image credit: By Sam Moore and Joyce Moore – Sam Moore and Joyce Moore, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7044941
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