Sam Moore had everything Sting ever wanted: “It’s all there in that unique texture”
Not everyone really knew what they had on their hands the first time Sting debuted with The Police.
Anyone else would have dismissed them as another hopeful punk band trying to make a name for themselves, but Sting was already one of the most sophisticated musicians of his generation. He could certainly wear all the punk clothes and play CBGBs, but he was out there to be a great songwriter above everything else, and he could admit when a great singer could blow him out of the water before he even touched the mic.
And it’s not like Sting was exactly a slouch behind the mic or anything. Most rock singers don’t really need to have the greatest vocal range or even a nice-sounding voice to sound great in a band, but there’s a reason why bar bands are a bit more limited in terms of their Police material. It would take any other singer a healthy amount of endurance to sing a song like ‘So Lonely’ or be able to get through every single piece of ‘Every Little Thing She Does it Magic’, but that’s all from years of practice on Sting’s part.
He was more than willing to learn from anyone and everyone that he came across, and while he wasn’t necessarily going back to classical music every single time he made a new record, he wanted to peel back the layers of The Beatles tracks he loved and figure out what made Brian Wilson’s productions on those Beach Boys sound like they were coming from the other side of the world.
There was certainly a road map to get his songs to sound great, but even if he was a rock and roller by trade, the greatest singers would always come from the world of soul. Aretha Franklin is still untouched in her field years after her death, and everyone from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye paved the way for what professional singers were supposed to be like, but before there was Motown, there were people like Sam and Dave.
While duos aren’t always the easiest kind of acts to manage, hearing Sam Moore playing off of Dave Prater was a match made in musical heaven. Smokey Robinson may have been the one with the keen ear for songs up in Detroit, but when they were working at Stax Records, hearing everything from ‘Hold On I’m Coming’ to ‘Soul Man’ was like listening to blues if people like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters had a bit more swagger in their delivery.
So to have a singer like Moore on one of Sting’s albums was enough for the bass to shake in his boots, saying, “Years later I met Sam and when he sings, he sings the entire history of his race. You hear everything in that voice. You can hear the pain, you can hear the hurt, you can hear the triumph, you can hear the joy, you can hear the sex. It’s all there in that unique texture that comes out of his mouth.”
It might not be the voice that you’d first expect to hear singing Sinatra songs or anything like that, but Moore was the perfect example of someone that knew exactly how to play to his strengths. Even when he was working with the biggest names in jazz like Jaco Pastorius on ‘Come On Come Over’, you can tell that he’s putting his entire soul into making the song sound like it’s one of the funkiest grooves that you’ve ever heard.
And no matter how much Sting might have wanted to emulate back in the day, there’s something about those old Sam and Dave records that can’t be touched by anyone. They were putting every bit of their soul into what they sang, and the only way you were getting anywhere close to that was singing from your own heart.
