For twenty years, between 1961 and 1981, the hugely popular US soul and R&B act Sam & Dave, thrilled audiences with their all-action, stompin' soul music. Both singers were brought up singing in gospel choirs at church and they took their 'pleading preacher' call-and-response gospel style to secular audiences.
During those two decades, Sam & Dave, unleashed a string of seminal soul hits, like Soul Man, Hold On, I'm Coming, and You Don't Know Like I Know, earning them the nicknames "Double Dynamite", "The Sultans of Sweat" and "The Dynamic Duo".
They were the most successful soul duo of all time, with ten consecutive top-20 singles and three consecutive top-10 LPs, and were influential in taking soul music to crossover white pop audiences. Their biggest hit, the 1967 single, Soul Man, popularised the use of the name soul for 1960s R&B.
Soul Man also showcased the amazing songwriting talents of Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Like many great sixties soul acts, Sam & Dave benefited from talented songwriting teams (think of Holland-Dozier-Holland at Motown Records or Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham).
Dave Prater died in 1988, while Moore continued with a highly successful solo career and was performing until recently. Moore died on Jan 10 in Florida.
Despite working together for twenty years, the duo did not speak for 12 years and after they disbanded in 1981 did not reconcile. The duo did a resurgence in popularity with the release of Soul Man by The Blues Brothers in 1979. But their relationship remained acrimonious and they were involved in several legal tangles after Dave Prater continued to tour under the Sam & Dave name.
When they first met, both were experienced gospel singers and had sung in doo-wop groups. Moore had a high tenor voice, while Prater had the lower baritone voice. They performed on the gospel circuit from their base in Florida and then signed for the New York-based Roulette Records, releasing six singles.
In 1964, Jerry Wexler signed them to Atlantic Records in 1964. With great insight Wexler sent them to Memphis to work with the Stax Records house band in order to bring out their Southern soul and gospel style to the fore. Their songwriters Hayes and Porter had Moore lead the songs, with Prater following with his deep 'hellfire and brimstone' voice.
The three years the duo spent at Stax produced the greatest music of their careers. Hold On I'm Coming, released in 1966, was a monster hit for them, putting them on the pop charts Top 40 and topping the R&B charts; the album released with this hit also charted. Soul Man followed in 1967 (single and album) and it quickly became the duo's most influential song, covered by many musicians and on the soundtracks of many movies. In 2019, Soul Man was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
Moore's solo career saw him perform with Bruce Springsteen, Don Henly, Elton John, Lou Reed and Mariah Carey among others; he toured with Wilson Pickett, Booker T & The MGs, Carla Thomas and Eddie Floyd.
Despite a very active solo career, Moore did not release that many albums and some of which were never released. For instance, in 1971 he recorded Plenty Good Lovin' but it was not released until 2002, and his first solo album, Overnight Sensational was released in 2006, and featured Sting, Springsteen and a host of collaborators.
I have been lucky enough to see the Temptations, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Jimmy Ruffin, Dr John, The Neville Brothers and even Eddie Bo but the one soul outfit I always wanted to see perform was Sam and Dave. Go to YouTube and see their all-action concerts from their European tour in the 1960s -- the music is compelling and you can see why the great Otis Redding did not want them upstaging him. RIP Sam Moore -- the music lives on.
Another influential African-American musician, stride, boogie-woogie and jazz pianist Maurice Rocco is the subject of a fascinating segment on the Afropop Worldwide website focusing on Bangkok After Dark: The Story Of Maurice Rocco by writer Benjamin Tausig. Rocco was a piano star of the 1930s and 1940s, performing raucous piano pieces for talkie short movies. He performed standing up (later influencing rockn'rollers like Jerry Lee Lewis).
As rock'n'roll emerged in the 1950s, worked dried up for Rocco so he toured Europe and Southeast Asia and settled in Bangkok in the late 1950s, where he remained as resident pianist at the Oriental Hotel's Bamboo Bar and spent 12-15 years in Bangkok before he was tragically murdered. Tausig reveals the career and life of Maurice Rocco and will publish another book about Rocco, Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, And The Making Of Cold War Intimacies (Duke University Press) in May.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.