CD INCLUDED DUNGEON FAMILY REUNION the antebellum spirituals and shouts, the deep lot of folks in the grave today on account of has a population just north of 3,000, is also home African roots of which had remained largely A someone called them “nigger.” ’Cause they to the region’s largest private employer, the Ir- untouched due to the relative isolation of the got mad about it. Didn’t understand. I remem- win County Detention Center, where hundreds sea island. Thus the addition of Bessie to their ber a white lady, my white lady told me, says, of undocumented immigrants are indefinitely ranks was remarkable. She contributed material “People get mad about that, Bessie, but they ought detained in what the Georgia A.C.L.U. has de- inherited from her step-grandfather, Jet Samp- to be glad that they are one.” I still is as mad at You Don’t Know scribed as “substandard conditions.” son, a prolific singer and multi-instrumentalist her right then, and I said, “Now, what are you What You Mean In February, fifty-some-odd members of the born into slavery; ring plays picked up as a girl talking about?” I would go on to read it and I extended Prater family traveled to Ocilla from in South Georgia, around Dawson; work songs find it on there, where the Lord said that would To Me all over the country to attend Dave Prater Day. learned from convict road gangs, Bahamian fish- be: that slang name on earth for what we’re the On a Friday afternoon, several hundred people ermen, and Gulf Coast roustabouts; and hymns Ethiopians. And we’re one of the greatest people BY gathered downtown. It was chilly, even for and songs for worship gathered from a good on the face of the earth. If you would just under- JONATHAN BERNSTEIN February, and food trucks sold hot cocoa and half-dozen black churches. stand it, see. And we’s a nation. And everything. coffee for a dollar. The celebration began with By the time folklorist Alan Lomax visited But I just didn’t know it. And I was talking to a talent show, where a few locals sang George St. Simons with a stereo tape-machine in 1959, my daughter-in-law about it, and she’s pricked Strait and Hootie & the Blowfish. Prater’s grand- Bessie Jones and many of her songs had become against it, you know, and I kept on talking and daughter Shalonda won the competition with fundamental to the ensemble (soon to be re- after she got saved, and go further ’way with the her rendition of “When Something Is Wrong christened, by Bessie, the Georgia Sea Island Bible, and began to read, and I ease up on and eriously?” said the teenage girl work- with My Baby.” Singers). Lomax was entranced. He invited her ease up on—you got to ease up on, you know; you ing behind the desk at the office of the Throughout the day, Sam & Dave played to New York City for the recording of her “oral can’t feed a baby off of bones, you know; you got “S Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, over the PA, but something was missing. Dave’s biography,” which, when it was completed, to give him milk, you know—and so I just ease New Jersey. “You’re like the fourth person in son Chris had remixed songs like “Hold on, covered some thirty hours of tape, including up on, ease up on till I got her to see it. Now she’s the last couple days to ask about him.” It was a I’m Comin’,” editing out Sam Moore’s high- reminiscences, ghost stories, tall tales, jokes, as happy with it as she can be. She understand it. humid Thursday afternoon in early July, and I tenor parts and turning the duo’s greatest hits religious testimony, herbal remedies, and many, It’s just a slang word, Jesus said, that earthy name was looking for Dave Prater’s grave. A middle- into triumphant Prater solo records. Later on, many songs. Over the course of these sessions, they call you. And then it goes on that way, over aged woman working nearby chimed in: “Who traffic stopped during a moment of silence, the principals discovered that they were compil- there. It’s in Acts—Apostles, I think it’s around was he, anyway?” and a congressman from the Georgia House of ing the raw material for a large-scale pedagogical the fifth chapter, but anyway, you see straight-out As one half of Sam & Dave, Prater’s voice Representatives read a resolution officially rec- project to which, over the next twenty years, nigger, the first nigger convert. That’s Enoch. And can be heard on some of the most enduring ognizing Prater as a “distinguished Georgian.” Bessie Jones would devote herself with reli- Queen of Sheba was so black, it’s pitiful. She’s as r&b recordings of the last half-century. In the At one point, four rectangular green signs were gious fervor, teaching the old-time songs, plays, black as my son. Real dark. Like pretty smooth mid-sixties, Prater and his partner, Sam Moore, unveiled that would adorn each of the major and lore to children and adults alike, across the black skin, had long black hair—that’s Queen crafted a live act so unparalleled in its sweaty roadways into town. They read: country, in kindergarten classrooms and folk of Sheba. The greatest queen. And the prettiest tent-revival ecstasy that Otis Redding, sick of festivals, nightclubs, the Poor People’s March on woman of the time. And Jesse was a black man, being upstaged by his opener, once claimed: Home of Washington, Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Her you see. That was Mary’s father. And Mary is “I never want to have to follow those mother- “Dave Prater” Bessie, who from early girlhood was acutely at- vision was one of radical egalitarianism, inspired Jesus’s mother. Where he say that I am of the fuckers again.” Yet since his death in 1988, the Sam & Dave – “Soul Man” tuned to portents, signs, and superstitions, culti- by the enduring collective, expressive folk tradi- Ethiopian tribe. Root and offspring of David. man who was best known to the world simply 1997 Georgia Music vating an abiding sense of the spiritually sublime tions—occupational, recreational, spiritual—of You know David black. as Dave has receded from the popular history Hall of Fame Inductee in her work, her relationships, and, especially, the black rural South and her ardent faith in a of sixties r&b, erased from our pantheon of Got to her music. She nurtured a prodigious repertoire kind of ecstatic liberation theology, which found he colored peoples and the nationality of soul legends. Ocilla’s Chamber of Commerce had decided of songs—hundreds of them, for work, play, activist application in the civil rights movement. T peoples—I’m talking about the nation of After I told the women that Dave had been to honor Prater as part of its celebration of Black Ease Up On worship, instruction—as both a rite and as a voca- It was the right time for Bessie to do her work. people—all over the country, to my eye and a famous musician, they remained perplexed as History Month. It was the first time the town tion. For Bessie, music was a means of honoring The entirety of Bessie Jones’s oral biography my belief, everywhere in the world, I believe to the recent surge of interest in his grave. “Was had ever recognized its most famous native. BY her enslaved ancestors, as she called them, and is available in free streaming audio through we should realize that peoples are just people. it a recent anniversary, or anything like that?” “It should have happened a long time ago,” NATHAN SALSBURG uplifting her hard-driven contemporaries. “Those the online archive of Lomax’s Association for And you’re human and you got to die. We all Not as far as I could tell. said Mayor Horace Hudgins. Hudgins moved to folks were going through some hardships,” she Cultural Equity. What follows is one small ex- realize and know that God don’t think no more “Can you think of any reason why everyone Ocilla from nearby Homerville in 1987, a year told the scholar John Stewart in 1978, “and all cerpt, particularly illustrative of Bessie’s mys- of you than he do of me. That’s what we oughta would be visiting now?” before Dave Prater lost control of his Chevy those good songs, and the meanings of those tical worldview and the often-visionary oral see. If God loved you—I was talking to a white I could not. and crashed into a tree on Interstate 75, just songs, the Lord gave it to them. It was handed poetry in which she expressed it. lady then—if He loved you more than He did twenty-five miles west of his hometown. Prater down to them without any schooling. And that’s me, He wouldn’t let you have to even birth a ive months earlier, a small town in south- had been driving home, as he did at the end of essie Jones got the Holy Ghost in the vicini- why I’ve been so delighted to keep it going the baby: He’d let your childrens come on up to you F central Georgia was hosting its own Dave every tour, to visit his mom. He was fifty. ty of Fitzgerald, Georgia, on September 28, old way—the way they had it.” before you. You got to get ’em like I get ’em. You Prater remembrance. Ocilla, Dave’s hometown, 1932. It didn’t happen in a church but in a Jones joined the Spiritual Singers of Coastal od made the whole world’s flowers—every got to go through what I go through it. You got to is best known for its Sweet Potato Festival, held am was the heavens, his voice was almost Bvision: a tall man approached her with three tick- Georgia after moving to St. Simons Island in the G tree, every bush—and had to make different shed blood. You got to die for that child. That’s every autumn since 1961. Residents from the “Snot human,” Bruce Springsteen has said. ets representing three separate denominations. early thirties. The group had been organized flowers to make a bouquet. That’s for us to pick in right. You got to stink like everybody else. That’s surrounding area participate in cooking contests, “But Dave rooted their music in the dirt and in She chose the Pentecostal Holiness, thereafter around 1915 by Lydia Parrish (wife of painter together; we’s for Him to pick in together. Had to true. Everything is right. But if God thought any compete in the pageant to determine the annual the earth.” From the beginning, Sam’s other- taking up membership in the Church of God in Maxfield Parrish) and their charter was a con- make different color for a bouquet for Him. We’s more any different in it, well, He would make Miss Georgia Sweet Potato, and buy t-shirts that worldly high tenor overshadowed Dave’s low Christ. The ecstatic mysticism of COGIC suited servative one—preserving through performance His flowers. He pick us as He want to. it different. ø say Rise & Shine, It’s Tater Time. Ocilla, which harmony, and for a variety of reasons—some

- 114 - WINTER 2015 “Bessie Jones, St. Simons Island, Georgia” (1941), by Edward Weston. © The Lane Collection. Photograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston OxfordAmerican.org - 115 - the angel-voiced tenor with whom there’s an interest to look into Dave and give “Every anniversary party, every sweet sixteen.” stone: You were always on my mind. Dave would perform on and off him some notice, because he deserves that,” Sing with a partner for a living, and if, forty “He was really adamant about that song,” ex- for the better part of twenty years. he told me. years later, your songs are still being heard in plained Rosemary at a nearby diner shortly after Finally, when Prater’s relationship Compared to Sam’s tenor, Dave’s gritty bari- grocery stores and basketball arenas, who gets my trip to the cemetery. Rosemary was talking with Moore became strained beyond tone possessed a pedestrian frailty. Because his to be remembered? At best, contributions and about Dave’s two all-time favorite songs, “The repair, he sang with Sam Daniels, a voice seemed so mortal, so attainable, Prater credits disperse. More likely, they’re disputed. Wonder of You,” by Elvis Presley, a ballad he high school English teacher from had a way of wringing every ounce of emo- had always hoped to record, and Willie Nelson’s Miami whom Prater enlisted to tour tion out of the simplest of lines, turning an he same two words that decorated Dave version of “Always on My Mind,” which meant with him in the eighties, much to aphorism like “When something is wrong with T Prater’s car and license plate also receive so much to Dave that Rosemary could think of Moore’s chagrin, as “The New Sam my baby, something is wrong with me” into a choice placement on the front of his gravestone: no finer inscription when her husband died one & Dave Revue.” world-ending cry of compassion. His voice was Soul Man, the title of his biggest hit. But the month after Rosemary turned forty. Despite all of the pain and disap- a triumph of finding beauty through, and in more curious inscription is on top of the grave- A lifelong New Jerseyan, Rosemary is now pointment it caused him through- spite of, human limitation. While Sam fluttered out his life, Prater remained eter- through falsetto, Dave scratched and fought nally committed to singing as one against his own range, arriving at a deep, unas- half of a pair, wed to the notion that suming sensitivity. Sam made singing seem easy; one can achieve something making Dave sweat his way through each line. Like Dave music with a partner that cannot be himself, his voice was humble. Handcrafted achieved alone. “When you’re by Prater thrived in the shadows of Sam & Dave, yourself,” Prater said in the early reveling in his role of seasoned harmonizer, as only we can. seventies, after his brief attempt at jubilant supporter, occasional front man. Moore going solo, “sometimes you look up usually handled the interviews. “Some artists in the sky for that other voice, and are great at telling stories. They understand the it ain’t there.” nature of the interview, and they understand Music’s inexplicable alchemy is that if they give good interviews, they’re go- a frightening thing, and we tend ing to get good press,” Rob Bowman, author to make sense of it by rewarding of Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records, individual stardom whenever explained. “Dave Prater was not one of those possible. We lionize the auteurs, guys.” those who appear to have absolute “People need to know that there really was authority over their own music: a Dave,” said Deanie Parker, who worked as Jimi, Joni, Woody, Nina. But what Stax’s in-house publicist during the sixties. “It personal, some practical, some musical—the Without the lineman, the quarterback couldn’t does it mean to be famous not for the sound of is no surprise that Sam always surfaced in the history of Sam & Dave has been rewritten in have had the ball in the first place.” In Sam & your own voice, but for the sound of your voice spotlight and Dave seemed to have been hid- the nearly thirty years since Prater’s death so as Dave, Dave was the lineman. blended with another’s? den in the shadows. That was the difference to diminish Dave’s contributions. In Sam and Dave Prater was born to a pair of sharecrop- “A lot of these duos have problems with in their personalities. Sam was the showman, Dave: An Oral History, the only book published pers in 1937, the seventh of ten children. When each other over the years,” said John Regna, he needed the spotlight. It fueled him. On the on the duo, Dave isn’t mentioned until page 42. Dave was seven, his father died in a fire, leaving a Florida-based artist manager who served as other hand, Dave was very quiet. You might Almost everyone I talked to who had worked his mother, Mary Pressley, to raise the children. Dave Prater’s agent in the eighties. “They’re so read that as passive, but I think Dave just chose with Sam & Dave throughout their career said As a boy, Dave took to singing, both at the Mt. friendly onstage, and then the next time they to be more reserved.” a version of the same thing: Dave was the sec- Olive A.M.E. Church that his family attended talk to each other is on the next stage. They have “He was very comfortable being the second ondary member of the group. When I called each Sunday, and at work, picking tobacco with different dressing rooms; they get to the gig in banana,” Regna said. If Sam Moore never quite John Abbey, a British music industry veteran his siblings in the fields after school. “He never different vehicles. It’s very interesting, from a accepted that his career was bound to the voice who produced Sam & Dave in the seventies, took lessons,” said Dave’s older sister Bertha sociological point of view.” of his singing partner, Prater prospered in the he apologized for having almost nothing to say McMath, shortly after Dave passed away. “It was The Louvin Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, unlikely arrangement. Prater’s voice burst into about Prater. “To be very honest with you, I just a talent given to him by the Good Master.” the Righteous Brothers, Sam & Dave. It’s no life when it blended with Moore’s, when the two didn’t really get to know Dave anywhere near One of Dave’s first public performances was surprise that in a culture so intent on celebrat- delved into what David Porter has called “ab- as I did Sam,” he said. “Dave was, frankly, the at his high school graduation, where he sang ing the stardom of selfhood, the two halves of stract harmony parts,” the often unconventional, junior member of the team.” a rendition of the Rodgers and Hammerstein a singing duo often grow apart. occasionally dissonant, frequently transcendent Steve Alaimo, a sixties pop singer who pro- show tune “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” During music that resulted when the two men shared ® duced Sam & Dave’s earliest singles in Miami, his thirty years as a professional singer, Dave he fact is that together, Sam and Dave a microphone. went as far as to estimate that Sam & Dave was Prater took the song’s title quite literally. He “Twere magical,” David Porter said, a word The hit-making solo singer has it easy. His “ninety percent Sam and ten percent Dave.” preferred, always, to sing with others. After he kept returning to. As the man who cowrote, or her voice becomes immortalized: broadcast “How do you say who’s responsible for graduation, he fled to Miami to sing with the alongside Isaac Hayes, nearly every one of Sam through car radios, mimicked in showers, wor- what?” Alaimo mused, resorting to a sports Sensational Hummingbirds, his older brother & Dave’s biggest hits at Stax Records, Porter shipped in teenage bedrooms, canonized in “Best Since 1888. analogy: “The quarterback does everything, J.T.’s gospel group. Then he had a chance meet- had a ringside ticket to the duo’s peak years in of” lists. “Every wedding you go to plays ‘Soul FourRosesBourbon.com Be mellow. Be responsible. but it’s the lineman who picks up the fumble. ing at a nightclub talent show with Sam Moore, the mid- to late-sixties. “I was happy to see that Man,’” said Rosemary Prater, Dave’s widow.

- 116 - WINTER 2015 David Porter, Sam Moore, and Dave Prater at a Sam & Dave recording session at Stax Records. © API Photographers Inc/Getty Images OxfordAmerican.org - 117 - in her sixties. When she doesn’t agree with cook fried fish, butter beans, and cabbage for “Everybody who met Dave liked him,” said another person’s behavior, she will say things Rosemary and two of his sons from his first Rosemary. “He was a joyful person. Did he like “that’s not my cup of tea” or “they’re just marriage, who had moved up to Paterson from have a bad side? I’m sure he did. Did he show going to have to reap what they sow.” During Miami. “Dave was a family person,” Rosemary it sometimes or a lot of times? I’m sure he did. I our nearly three-hour conversation, she shared a said. “He was very dedicated to his mother. If experienced both sides of it, but I take the good number of anecdotes about Sam & Dave, like the you didn’t like his mother, you didn’t like him.” and forget the bad, because the bad sides were time Ray Charles called Dave Prater at home in “What you saw was what you got with him,” either tormented or imposed.” the seventies asking if he could produce a Sam said Willa Daniels, speaking on behalf of her & Dave record (the project never happened). husband, Dave’s late-career partner, Sam Dan- hat Sam and Dave managed to perform to- Or the time Sam Moore played drums and sang iels, who now suffers from Alzheimer’s. “Dave T gether for two decades is some small miracle. for an entire show one New Year’s Eve after the was non-pretentious. He was old school. He had It was a relationship perhaps fraught from the drummer didn’t show up. this nickname for Sam—he called him Pete. I was start: Prater, with his nine siblings, a quiet Rosemary first met Dave in 1973, at a Sam & just talking to Sam the other day—we were like church boy from the country, and Moore, a Dave gig on the Jersey shore. Dave had taken ‘Why did he call you Pete?’ Sam said, ‘I don’t smooth-talking, mischievous only child from a cab to the show from his hotel in Newark know, but I think he called a lot of people that.’” Miami (in his sixties, Sam Moore discovered and paid the driver to stay until the end of the Around the comfort of close friends and fam- he was actually born in Macon County, Geor- concert. But the driver took off early, and Dave ily, Dave was more outgoing. “My dad was gia, less than one hundred miles from Ocilla). needed a ride back to the Holiday Inn. Newark hilarious,” his son Anthony told me. “And he “David and I were never really close,” Moore was on Rosemary’s way home. The next day, could dance.” says in Sam and Dave: An Oral History. Moore Prater called her to see if she wanted to come “I do remember one thing,” John Regna said, claims that a cultural divide created distance be- to his show that evening. Before long, Dave had when I asked if he has any specific personal tween him and Prater. “I’m hanging with people relocated to Paterson, where Rosemary lived. memories of Dave. “When we would all sit like Jackie Wilson, B.B. King, Chuck Jackson,” They moved in together, married in 1982, and around and tell a story and laugh, his laugh Moore brags in the book. “Dave would try, but he lived there for the rest of his life. was so hearty that you got a second bite at the to tell you the truth, when Dave would show POLITICs Prater’s kids called him Daddy Dave. As road laugh. You’d laugh at whatever the story was, up, they would be very cordial to Dave. They gigs started to thin out in the eighties, Dave and then you’d laugh because of how much he weren’t rude, but as soon as Dave would leave, spent more time at home, where he liked to was laughing.” they would laugh and they’d call him country.” O SWAMP POP Both flamboyant disruptions of The left-right Shuffle

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AD #: 15VBR004-9 CAPTION: Politics SPECS: 8.375x10.75” - Full page 4C PUB: Oxford American 1ST RUN DATE: 2015 FILE NAME: 15VBR004-9 Client politics_OA_8.375x10.75 Moore gave me a written statement when I veloped a dependence on cocaine and heroin. were still rudimentary: mess up a take and you asked to interview him for this story. “I’ve been “Dave took more dope than any other human I had to start all over again. If you listen closely Escape to Athens accused of hating Dave,” he wrote. “I never have ever personally witnessed,” the late Memphis enough to the first few seconds of Sam & Dave’s Old Crow Medicine Show at The Classic Center. Photo by Wingate Downs. hated him, even when things were a big and producer Jim Dickinson writes in his unpub- “I Thank You,” you’ll hear a faint voice shouting ugly mess. For better or worse, we were a team lished memoir. The cover of Sam & Dave’s 1975 “Yeah, baby!” in the background. That’s David when it counted and our history is what it is.” album Back at ’Cha captures them at the height Porter, so excited about the magic taking place “When Dave killed himself,” he continued, of their disorder: A tired-looking, full-bearded that he can’t keep his mouth shut. “which is how I look at what happened, I never Sam (“I’ve started wearing a beard now, ’cause “Dave knew how to make what he did com- cried, I’ve never mourned and I’m not sure I I’m ashamed,” Moore has said of the period) plement the effectiveness of what Sam would even know why.” is leaning on Dave, whose once-boyish, sweet do,” Porter concluded. “There was a uniqueness At the height of their success in the late smile has turned sinister, almost maniacal. By in Dave’s flavor that made Sam come off better. sixties, Sam & Dave reveled in their newfound that point, because of contractual legalities, And there was a specialness in Sam that made rock & roll excesses: women, drugs, custom- Moore and Prater were no longer working with Dave come off stronger.” ized planes and tour buses. Their success was Hayes and Porter at Stax. In the studio they Porter told me that if he could have done one due in large part to the group’s unrivaled stage were directionless, recording standards like thing differently in his career, he would have show, where Moore and Prater—masters of “Under the Boardwalk” in a desperate search produced a solo album with Prater—let Dave dynamics, of the quick stops and slow builds for a comeback. have the spotlight to himself. “Dave Prater has and pregnant pauses and dramatic climaxes In 1977, Sam & Dave flew to England, where never gotten the proper acknowledgment he from the bursting horn section of the Sam & they recorded one of their last singles. It was a deserves. It was so obvious to me how great Dave Orchestra—dazzled and delighted, reign- murky, soul-ballad rendition of Lennon and of a talent he was, and that could have been ing as the finest working old-school showmen McCartney’s “We Can Work It Out.” A few validated with the quality of that solo record. in pop music. It was Sam & Dave’s live act that years later, they broke up for good. That’s a missed opportunity that I wish I had later served as the primary inspiration for the not missed.” Blues Brothers. here are many songs where I’m supposed As the duo became increasingly popular, “Tto be a shadow, a silvery edge around Paul ix days before he died, Dave Prater took the Moore exploited Prater’s quiet disposition. “I Simon’s lead front part,” Art Garfunkel once S stage for the last time. It was Easter Sunday took advantage there because I felt that was a said. “I don’t care if it’s seven-eighths Paul and in Atlanta, and Dave was performing as part of weakness in Dave. I thrived on that weakness,” one-eighth Arthur. Look how the silvery edge a Stax reunion concert alongside some of the he writes in An Oral History. “Years later, Dave makes the record work.” label’s biggest names from the sixties: Rufus would say aloud that I felt like I was better than Dave tried to play quarterback just once, and Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, him. Naturally, I denied it, but when you look returning to Miami in 1971 after one of his Johnnie Taylor, Isaac Hayes. back, it was true.” temporary breakups with Moore to record two After the show, Prater was sitting around According to Moore, the duo’s relationship decent, if unremarkable, songs under his own backstage with some of the other artists. The became irreparably damaged after Prater shot name. “They just put ’em out and that was that. musicians all thought Dave, who performed his girlfriend, Judith Gilbert. No promotion,” he said shortly after. “Keep with Sam Daniels, had sounded great, as good Live music One night in December 1969, Prater and Gil- My Fingers Crossed,” the stronger of the two, as ever, and they congratulated him for hanging bert went to see a concert by Little Anthony and is a driving r&b number that tries too hard to in through the years. One of those musicians the Imperials in Miami. When they returned emulate Porter and Hayes’s Stax magic. The was Newt Collier, a trumpet player from the home, Prater, overcome with jealousy over what next year, Prater was back singing with Moore. original Sam & Dave Orchestra, who noticed he perceived as some sort of unfaithfulness ear- Moore also had a tough time jump-starting his Prater quietly beginning to cry. “Everybody lier that evening, retrieved his gun from the solo career, recording a high-profile solo debut was telling him how good he sounded, and he central bedroom and shot Gilbert in the head. for Atlantic Records that was thwarted when just lost it, man,” Collier remembered. “He Gilbert, who survived the shooting, ended the album’s producer, King Curtis, was mur- couldn’t take it.” up marrying Prater shortly after the incident, dered in 1971. Perhaps Prater was overcome by how well his and remained married to him for several more Throughout the seventies, Moore and Prater set had been received, that he had been recog- years. “It was a very tumultuous, miserable, continued to rely on each other. David Por- nized, finally, by his contemporaries for having surreal time for us,” said Kevin Gilbert, Ju- ter, in fact, vehemently disagrees with Steve contributed an awful lot to Sam & Dave’s music dith’s son. In what has become arguably the Alaimo’s ninety-to-ten assessment of Sam & after all. Maybe he was thinking about his old th most famous quote ever uttered by either Sam Dave. “He didn’t know what he had to work partner then—noticeably absent from the bill By night, Athens is alive with a variety of music clubs that 20 anniversary or Dave, Moore claims, in An Oral History, that with,” Porter said, getting audibly agitated. that night—whom he hadn’t seen in almost a offer entertainment suited to every taste. World-famous after the shooting he told Prater: “I’ll sing with “That’s a stupid comment. If he had known decade. Or maybe he just agreed with the critic venues such as the 40 Watt Club and the Georgia Theatre you, man, okay? I’ll sing with you. But I shall what he had, he would not make a ludicrous in the audience who wrote days later that Prater’s attract up-and-coming musical acts as well as established not ever, ever again speak to you.” statement like that.” voice “appeared to be shot” and his stage pres- headliners. Spend daylight hours taking a Music The pair continued to work together on and During recording sessions, Porter would ence was “framed with apathy.” History Tour and visiting Athens’ local breweries. Festival off throughout the seventies. As bookings stand on the other side of the microphone, Before anyone else could notice him getting thinned out and the demand for soul and r&b coaching Sam and Dave through their vocals. In emotional, Prater stood up, without saying a You’ll find a true escape in Athens, Georgia. junE24-26 2016 waned with the rise of disco, both men de- the mid-sixties, the recording techniques at Stax word, and walked away. ø Plan your getaway at VisitAthensGA.com

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