Soul: Joyful Noisemakers

These are hard times for music audiences that want to see as well as hear a lively show. Jazzmen turn their backs to the house and noodle obscurely. Rock groups shamble around the bandstand in rummage-sale outfits, sometimes acknowledging their listeners’ presence only with obscenities. And as for the avantgarde, how much stage presence can an electronic synthesizer have?

For true visual flair, nothing beats rhythm-and-blues. Snazzy-stepping, soul-singing performers like James Brown and Wilson Pickett sock it to the faithful with a furious abandon that shakes the halls on college campuses and urban temples like Harlem’s Apollo Theater or Chicago’s Regal. Of all the R-and-B cats, nobody steams up the place like Sam & Dave.

Mournful Wails. What they offer is a big, glossy, geared-up show. Flashing, multicolored panels of lights flank a glistening fountain in the background, while two go-go girls shimmy in the foreground. The band, massed in a double row facing the audience, is a discotheque in itself. While punching out blues riffs over a pile-driving beat, the brass and saxophone players whirl their instruments around and swivel through the shing-a-ling, the funky Broadway, and other loose-jointed steps—some of their own devising. Leaders in each section use hand signals to cue the choreography.

Only soloists with galvanic energy and commanding musicianship would dare to perform against such a busy background. Sam & Dave qualify on both counts. Weaving and dancing, they gyrate through enough acrobatics to wear out more than 100 costumes a year. Their voices—Sam’s higher and more cutting, Dave’s huskier and darker-toned—blend robustly in mournful, harmonized wails or fervent gospel-style shouts. And their listeners respond like converts at a revival meeting. “Sing it, Sam!” they yell, or “I hear you, Dave; good God, I hear you!”

Clowning Around. Samuel David Moore, 33, the son of a Baptist deacon in Miami, got much of his early training in the gospel choir at his father’s church. After graduating from high school, he consulted his grandfather, a Baptist minister, about whether to continue as a gospel singer or go into pop music. The old man cited the 100th psalm (“Make a jovful noise unto the Lord”) and said: “Whatever noise you’re going to make, just be sure you make the best of it.”

It was years later, while Sam was singing at a Miami club called the King of Hearts, that he got to know Dave Prater. Dave, now 31, a laborer’s son from Ocilla, Ga., had also sung in church. But since moving to Miami, he had supported himself as a short-order cook and baker’s assistant. One night at the King of Hearts, still dressed in his baker’s white outfit, he joined Sam on the stage for some “clowning around.” They have been making joyful noises ever since.

Last week their latest college tour brought them to the University of Tennessee, Mississippi State University and Bloomsburg (Pa.) State College. By year’s end, their 35-member troupe will have played enough college and town dates to gross around $1,500,000. Wherever they stop, they give completely. “We simply try to do a little more than required,” says Sam. “If this means we have to sing one song for 50 minutes, then we sing the song for 50 minutes.” That may seem terribly long, but when Sam & Dave pound out Hold on, I’m Comin’, even 50 minutes seem too short for the fans.