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Jeremy Westby
Sam Moore
FYI
Obituaries: Canadian Tributes to Soul Star Sam Moore of Sam & Dave and Influential Canadian Book Store and Venue Owners
This week, we acknowledge the passing of Toronto record and book store owner Bruce Surtees, music venue owner Roger Dupuis, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, and Renaissance bassist Jon Camp.
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Bruce Venn Surtees, owner of music and book retail stores in Toronto and the U.S. and a record reviewer, died on Dec. 28, at age 94.
Bruce Surtees and his wife Vivienne ran The Book Cellar in Toronto's prestigious Yorkville area, helping it earn a reputation as one of the best independent book stores in Canada. In 1983, they sold it to Lori Bruner, a prominent Canadian record label executive (Astral Records, Polydor).
An official obituary reports that "Bruce Surtees will be known to many from his retail stores, The Book Cellar, The Classical Record Shop in Hazelton Lanes and Shakespeare Beethoven & Co. in Arizona and Dallas, as well as his many years co-hosting Records in Review on CJRT. Bruce contributed for over 20 years to The Wholenote Magazine and enjoyed writing his column 'Old Wine in New Bottles.' His last column was published in October 2023. He was an audiophile and was widely considered an expert in classical musical and classical recordings.
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"It was his all-consuming love of music that guided his life and led him to open the Classical Record Shop. One of his greatest joys was to advise his customers what recordings were best and what to listen to next. His charming and engaging personality made him unforgettable. He had a wicked sense of humour and was a very good friend to many. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him."
In a 1998 column in The Globe and Mail, Robert Fulford wrote that "in 1961 Bruce and Vivienne Surtees started out in the basement below a Yonge Street record store, but within a year they emerged from the cellar and moved into an old Bay Street coachhouse. They kept the punning original name, for sentiment's sake, and pretty soon it was famous."
Celebrities who regularly shopped there included Peter Ustinov, Robertson Davies, Marshall McLuhan and Whoopi Goldberg.
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Bruce and Vivienne Surtees were born and raised in Australia, but emigrated to Canada after visiting on their honeymoon.
Canadian music industry veteran Glenda Rush offered this tribute to Bruce Surtees to Billboard Canada:
"Bruce was incredible. I was his sales rep when I worked at Polygram and he had his shop in Hazelton. He was a friend-colleague, but truly a mentor-father figure who taught me so much, especially about classical music and navigating that side of the industry among so much more. Bruce holds a huge place in my heart and life."
Roger Dupuis, co-owner/founder of the Urban Corral Club in Moncton, a major East Coast venue for East Cast country music in the 1980s, died on Jan. 8, at age 86.
Country music historian Larry Delaney (Cancountry) reports that "The Urban Corral (Moncton) was named CCMA's Country Club Of The Year in 1983,1984 and again in 1986. Dupuis was a driving force in bringing the CCMA's Country Music Week Convention and Awards Show to Moncton in 1984. He was also instrumental in establishing local Talent Search contests and for providing many of New Brunswick's top country stars (Joan Kennedy, Lee Marlow, Johnny Comfort, Shirley and Debby Myers, etc.) opportunities to showcase their talents."
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His operation spawned a series of similar "Urban Corral" clubs throughout New Brunswick.
International
Sam Moore, a soul singer who found major fame as one half of the seminal soul duo Sam & Dave, died on Jan. 10, at age 89, after complications from surgery.
A Billboard obituary reports that "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."
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"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."
The Miami-raised Moore started by singing gospel, and was courted by Sam Cooke to replace him in his gospel group The Soul Stirrers. Moore shifted from gospel to pop, however, and was performing at the King O’Hearts Club when he met Dave Prater and the two formed Sam & Dave. Atlantic Records heads Ahmet Ertegun, Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler signed them to the label in 1965, and Wexler passed them to Atlantic’s southern partner, Stax Records. There, Isaac Hayes and David Porter produced their iconic hits with musical backing from the MGs, including guitarist Steve Cropper.
Following Sam & Dave’s breakup in 1970, Moore signed to Atlantic as a solo artist. He recorded a solo album, Plenty Good Loving, produced by King Curtis and featuring Donny Hathaway and Aretha Franklin, in 1970, but it was shelved, then eventually released in 2002 via EMI.
After a reunion with Dave, Moore descended into heroin addiction. Interest in the duo's music was 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.”
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.
Bruce Springsteen asked Moore to perform on his 1992 Human Touch album, as well as Only the Strong Survive, his 2023 album of soul covers.
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Springsteen's tribute to Moore on Bluesky reads, “Over on E Street, we are heartbroken to hear of the death of Sam Moore, one of America’s greatest soul voices. There simply isn’t another sound like Sam’s soulful tenor in American music. Having had the honor to work with Sam on several occasions, he was a sweet and funny man. He was filled with stories of the halcyon days of soul music, and to the end had that edge of deep authenticity in his voice I could only wonder at. We offer our prayers to his wife Joyce and thanks to the immortal recordings Sam left us. God bless.”
In 1994, Moore teamed with Conway Twitty to record the Brook Benton hit “Rainy Night in Georgia” for the all-star Rhythm, Country & Blues collection. The pair received two CMA Awards, for album of the year and vocal event of the year.
In 2006, 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.”
2019, Moore and Prater received the Recording Academy’s highest honor, its Lifetime Achievement Award.n 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.
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Canadian musicians who got to meet Moore recalled the experience fondly on Facebook. Downchild Blues Band drummer Jim Casson posted this tribute: "I just read that Sam Moore of the legendary soul / R&B duo Sam & Dave has passed. I had the honour of having dinner with Sam backstage at the Wasaga Beach Blues Festival. I was there with the Maple Blues Revue and he was there with the Funk Brothers. We sat at a table with him and he regaled us with tales of the old days with Dave playing in Harlem. It was a moment I'll never forget. Thank you for sharing your soul with us, Mr. Moore."
Don Breithaupt (Monkeyhouse, The Breithaupt Brothers) reminisced that "I was lucky enough to play live with Sam Moore back in the early nineties when his travels brought him to the 3000-seat Lulu’s Roadhouse in Kitchener. Moore’s voice and charisma were undiminished then, and he was a total pro. He passed away yesterday at the age of 89 in his home state of Florida, and the house band in heaven gained one of the great tenors of the twentieth century."
Peter Yarrow, one third of the beloved 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died on Jan. 7, at age 86, following a long battle with bladder cancer.
"With his high tenor melding seamlessly with baritone Paul Stookey and contralto Mary Travers, Yarrow and his singing partners produced some of the most beloved songs of the 1960s, taking the lead on classics Puff the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandala and Day Is Done, all of which he wrote or co-wrote," reports Billboard.
"Perhaps the group’s most well-known track, Puff the Magic Dragon, was penned by Yarrow based on a poem by fellow Cornell grad and author Leonard Lipton. The 1963 song was later turned into a beloved 1978 animated special and two follow-up sequels. The song was one of the group’s most successful on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 2 on the tally in August 1963."
Yarrow started his singing career as a student while pursuing a degree in psychology at Cornell University in the late 1950s, and he began performing in New York’s burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene after graduation. After a performance at the Newport Folk Festival, the event’s founder and famed music manager Albert Grossman shared his idea for putting together a vocal group in the vein of folk favourites The Weavers.
It was Grossman’s idea to put Yarrow and Travers together, with the latter suggesting the addition of Stookey, who both had performed with on the folk scene. After signing to Warner Brothers Records, they debuted in 1962 with the song “Lemon Tree,” which peaked at No. 35 on the Hot 100.
The trio's cover of the 1949 Pete Seeger/Lee Hayes-penned protest anthem “If I Had a Hammer" won them two Grammy Awards in 1962 for best folk recording and best performance by a vocal group. They were also nominated for best new artist that year. They picked up two more Grammys the next year in the same categories for their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and a fifth one in 1969 for the Peter, Paul and Mommy LP, which peaked at No. 12 on the album chart.
Other hits on the Billboard Hot 100 included the 1969 No. 1 cover of John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” as well as the No. 9 charting “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” and the No. 21 hit “Day Is Done.” They were also well-known for their charting covers of such Dylan classics as “Blowin’ in the Wind” (No. 2, 1963) and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (No. 9, 1963), scoring a total of five albums in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart. Two of those albums, a self-titled collection from 1963 and that year’s In the Wind, topped the album chart.
Peter, Paul and Mary were also notable for their strong, progressive political stance in song and in practice. They participated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963, performing Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, helping to cement that song’s place as a civil rights anthem.
Billboard notes that "Yarrow was also an indefatigable anti-war protester, helping to organize the anti-Vietnam National Mobilization to End the War protest in 1969 in Washington that drew nearly 500,000 fellow anti-war activist, as well as 1978’s anti-nuclear benefit show Survival Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl. In 2000, he founded Operation Respect, a non-profit that aimed to tackle the mental health effects of school bullying."
In total, the group released nine albums during their initial run before breaking up in 1970.
Yarrow also released five solo albums, scoring a No. 100 hit on the singles chart with “Don’t Ever Take Away My Freedom” in 1972 and a No. 163 debut on the Billboard 200 album chart in 1972 for his debut solo LP, Peter. Following solo ventures by all three, the trio reunited several times over the ensuing years, including for a 1972 concert to support George McGovern’s failed presidential campaign, his 1978 Survival Sunday anti-nukes show and a summer reunion tour that same year.
By 1981 they were back together for good, performing and releasing five more albums before Travers’ death in 2009, at age 72. Stookey, 87, is now the group’s last living member.
Jon Camp, bassist in U.K. prog rockers Renaissance's classic 1970s line-up, has died, at age 75.
Loudersound reports that "Camp also sang for the band, notably the male lead on 1975's Song Of Scheherazade (from the album of the same name) as well as handling occasional guitar duties for the band. He was part of the perceived classic line-up, which he joined in 1972, alongside vocalist Annie Haslam, guitarist Michael Dunford, keyboard player John Tout and drummer Terry Sullivan.
"Camp featured on every Renaissance album from 1972's Prologue through to 1983's Time-Line as well as featuring on Annie Haslam's 1977 debut album Annie In Wonderland.
He also worked with Roy Wood (The Move, Wizzard) throughout the 70s and early 80s, played on UK melodic rocker Robin George's solo debut album, Dangerous Music, and also formed the band Cathedrale, an '80s pop meets progressive rock group that also featured Lifesign's mainman John Young. That outfit released one album, in 2017.
In a post on the group's Facebook page, Renaissance vocalist Annie Haslam noted that "it is with great sadness that Jon Camp, our incomparable bass player, has passed away. Jon played a huge role in the band with his unique powerful yet emotional bass playing, occasional acoustic guitar parts, singing and of course songwriting.
"Terence Sullivan and I had a long conversation, both of us stunned by the news. We talked about the early days in the band, the fun we had together but more importantly creating unique, dramatic and the most beautiful music one could ever wish for. Then we had all the excitement of touring especially performing at Carnegie Hall and then at the Royal Albert Hall with all our parents having their own 'boxes,' our hit single Northern Lights!
"Many priceless memories with Jon. We will see you again somewhere out there and make more heavenly music. Love, Annie Haslam and Terry."
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