Legendary Soul Singer Sam Moore, Half of Sam & Dave, Dies at 89

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.

Moore, who grew up in Miami, began singing in church and drew the attention of another legendary Sam, Sam Cooke, who wanted Moore to replace him in his gospel group The Soul Stirrers. However, after seeing Jackie Wilson perform, Moore shifted from gospel to pop and was performing at the King O’Hearts Club when he met Dave Prater and the two formed Sam & Dave.

Legendary Atlantic Records executives Ahmet Ertegun, Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler saw the pair at the King O’Hearts Club and signed them to the label in 1965. Wexler passed them to Atlantic’s southern partner, Stax Records, where Isaac Hayes and David Porter took them under their wing and produced their iconic hits.

Following Sam & Dave’s breakup in 1970, Moore signed to Atlantic as a solo artist. He recorded a solo album produced by King Curtis featuring Donnie Hathaway and Aretha Franklin. However, after Curtis was murdered in 1971, the album was shelved. He reunited with Dave for a few years, but spiraled into heroin addiction, which was chronicled in the DA Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus documentary Only the Strong Survive.

Interest in the duo was greatly revived by 1980’s The Blues Brothers movie, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. The pair’s main theme was their boisterous version of “Soul Man.”

The song “turned out to be an anthem, sort of like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind” or one of those,” Moore told the Library of Congress in a 2002 interview when “Soul Man” was added to the Library’s National Recording Registry. “And, I tell you, it doesn’t matter where I sing — perform it — at the end of the night; if we didn’t do ‘Soul Man, the room would go up in smoke!”

Moore also shared how he and Prater worked out how to trade verses, with the help of Hayes. “By me at that time being the dominate one — and I’m not bragging here — I always sang the high parts,” he said in the same interview. “We went back with Isaac and he took us back and forth [with the verses]. Isaac was like, ‘Sam, try something like this.’ I remember him saying, ‘We want it bright. Not a dull opening.’ That’s why you hear all the high. Isaac was the one that suggested that.”

In the early ‘80s, Moore became sober with the help of Joyce McRae, whom he married in 1982 and who became his manager.

Moore went on to perform for six U.S. presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and was a frequent performer at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Springsteen asked Moore to perform on his 1992 Human Touch album, as well as Only the Strong Survive, his 2023 album of soul covers.

Moore recovered his lost 1970 album, Plenty Good Loving, and released it in 2002 via EMI. “I met Sam and his wife, Joyce, when I was in my 20s and working for Rhino Records, who reissued the classic Sam & Dave albums,” says Exceleration Music creative director David Gorman, who was instrumental in the album finally seeing daylight. “Drooling fanboy that I was, I showed up to our first meeting holding a 45 and asking for his autograph. The 45 was his solo single ‘If I Should Lose Your Love.’ When he picked it up, his jaw dropped because he had completely forgotten that he ever made a solo record at all. Over dinner, his memories came flooding back and he remembered making an entire album but had no recollection around its fate. As soon as I got back to LA, I asked [mastering engineer] Bill Inglot if it really existed and within a few days he’d found the tapes and sent over a CD-R. It was brilliant. Sam, Joyce, and I worked together to find a new home for the solo album nobody remembered making.”

Four years later, Moore released his first new album in 30 years, Overnight Sensational, which featured Bon Jovi, Sting, Springsteen and Billy Preston, with whom he received a Grammy nomination for their duet of “You Are So Beautiful.”

In 2019, Moore and Prater received the Recording Academy’s highest honor, its Lifetime Achievement Award.

In his later years, in addition to continuing to perform, Moore became an artists’ advocate, including testifying in Congress on behalf of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, which would pay performers for radio airplay.

“His loss is deep,” Gorman says. “He was a force of joy as a human being, who lit up everyone around him. As an artist he had the explosive ability to work a crowd out — even Otis [Redding] feared following Sam & Dave on stage — but I found Sam’s genius alone with his records, especially the ballads. Sam’s cries, his knowing asides, the way would use time as a weapon to hit you when it would hurt or heal the most, gave me comfort and companionship in ways no other artist could. He could turn up the tempo and turn up the heat, but his slow-burn just couldn’t be touched. He was a master, the last of his kind.”

At the time of his death, Moore was working on a gospel album with Rudy Perez. He is survived by Joyce, daughter Michelle and grandchildren Tash and Misha.