The talented musicians, songwriters and entertainers of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s who inspired and influenced so many have been passing away with disconcerting regularity lately. These have included singers and instrumentalists whose contributions to key songs and/or albums from that era have made a significant impact on my musical preferences and those of younger artists who have followed in their footsteps. Such is the case with two notable deaths recently, both of whom I feel are worthy of a detailed look back.

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When the soul music genre is discussed, many people focus on high-profile acts at Motown Records like The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.

Just as influential, however, were the high-octane singers on Atlantic Records and its Memphis-based subsidiary, Stax Records: Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke… and Sam & Dave.

Like so many of the dynamic soul music practitioners who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, Sam Moore and Dave Prater each began their singing careers in their Baptist church choirs — in Florida and Georgia, respectively — belting out gospel music. By the time they reached 30, the two men had teamed up to become one of the most popular soul music acts of their era.

Moore passed away January 10th following complications during surgery at age 89. Prater had died in an auto accident in 1988 at age 50.

The two had paid their dues in regional gospel groups in the 1950s, Moore with The Melionaires and Prater with The Sensational Hummingbirds, each pushing their respective groups to inject more secular elements into their gospel repertoires. They met at an R&B club in 1961 when they appeared on the same bill and decided to join forces and concentrate on soul tunes while using the irresistible “call and response” style of gospel to incite audiences.

Jerry Wexler, the iconic music producer and co-founder of Atlantic who first saw the duo perform in 1964, wrote in his 1993 autobiography “Rhythm and the Blues”: “I put Sam in the sweet tradition of Sam Cooke or Solomon Burke, while Dave had the ominous Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs-sounding voice, the preacher promising hellfire.” He and Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun signed Sam & Dave on the spot that night and put them on their Stax label to augment the work of Redding, Eddie Floyd and Booker T. and The MGs, among others.

While their voices meshed so effectively, their personalities didn’t, resulting in a rather tempestuous relationship during and after their relatively brief 1965-1969 heyday.

But what a heyday it was. Sam & Dave’s chart success began with “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” which reached #7 on R&B charts in late ’65, followed by their first pop chart appearance, the classic “Hold On I’m Comin’,” in early 1966, which peaked at #21 and went to #1 on R&B charts. Three more Top Ten R&B chart hits followed (“Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody,” “You Got Me Hummin'” and “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby”) before they came up with the one-two punch that iced their reputation with the mainstream public: “Soul Man” and “I Thank You.”

In particular, “Soul Man” captured the hearts and minds of many in the fall of ’67, becoming a must-play at every teen dance and R&B club across the country. With instrumental backing by Booker T. and The MGs, Stax Records’ house band, Sam & Dave reached #2 on pop charts, followed a couple months later by “I Thank You” at #9. Even the concurrent LP “Soul Men” managed to reach #62 on mainstream album charts. All of these tunes, by the way, were written and produced by the Stax songwriting/producing team of David Porter and Isaac Hayes (who later became a performing star in his own right).

Their chart appearances waned by 1970, but for those who saw Sam & Dave in concert, their reputation and legacy as a “frenetic and kinetic” live act is etched in stone. Known in the industry as “The Sultans of Sweat” and “Double Dynamite,” Sam & Dave ’s live shows were so powerful that even as charismatic a performer as Redding was hesitant to follow them on the bill for fear of being upstaged.

They broke up in 1970 and each attempted solo careers with little success, which precipitated more than one reunion tour that ended acrimoniously. “We were a duo but we weren’t a partnership,” wrote Moore in the 1998 book “Sam and Dave: An Oral History.” He conceded that his drug habit at the time played a part in their troubles and speculated that it made industry executives leery about giving them a second chance.

Although Moore never had another hit, a 1978 cover of “Soul Man” by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as The Blues Brothers (with guitarist Steve Cropper and other members of The MGs in the group) put Sam & Dave back in the limelight for a spell. However, Moore said it chafed at him a bit because he felt that “Saturday Night Live” audiences thought “Soul Man” originated with The Blues Brothers.

Additionally, Bruce Springsteen befriended Moore around that time and welcomed him on stage for occasional guest appearances over the years. Said Springsteen in the wake of Moore’s death, “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, I can tell you that he was a sweet and funny man, filled with stories of the halcyon days of soul music. He had that edge of deep authenticity in his voice that I could only wonder at.”

E Street Band member Steve Van Zandt chimed in by saying, “Sam was one of the last of the great Soul Men. He and Dave Prater were the inspiration for me and Johnny Lyon to start Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. He was an important, righteous, wonderful man.”

Sam & Dave were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Moore’s solo album “Plenty Good Lovin’,” which he recorded in 1970 but was never released, finally arrived to glowing reviews in 2002. He performed for presidents and recorded with not only Springsteen but also Lou Reed, Conway Twitty and others. He also worked to help secure other performers’ and songwriters’ long-overdue copyrights and royalties.

“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but mostly a good one,” said his wife Joyce Moore in 2014. “The toughest part has been realizing how mistreated Sam and his peers were by managers and record labels. Many of them are gone and never got the credit or the money they deserved. Still, we’ve been blessed.”

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He has been described as “a musical polymath,” “a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist” and “an avant-garde pianist in a 1915 grindhouse.” From piano and accordion to sax and violin, he could play them all with style and dexterity, sometimes simultaneously.

He was Garth Hudson, the oldest and last surviving member of the pioneering Americana/roots music group known simply as The Band. He died Tuesday, January 21, at age 87.

John Simon, one of the top record producers of the late ’60s who manned the boards for The Band’s iconic first two albums, had this to say about Hudson: “He was a wonderful, mad, brilliant genius, a wonderful guy who had so many gifts. He could play one melody with his left hand, another with his right hand, a wah-wah pedal with one foot, another thing with the other foot. And if you put something in his mouth he could play that too, all at the same time.”

Full confession: I have always respected The Band and what they accomplished, but I wouldn’t call myself a big fan. I saw them once in concert (1974) as part of a triple bill and bought only their debut album and a “Best Of” package after they’d disbanded. Once I got around to seeing their acclaimed concert film “The Last Waltz” many years after the fact, I began a comprehensive exploration of their catalog, and am very glad I finally did. There’s much to be enjoyed and admired.

The Band’s body of work — especially its first two LPs, 1968’s “Music From Big Pink” and 1969’s “The Band” — seemed wholly unique, going totally against the grain of both the pop mainstream as well as the psychedelic underground scene of that era. Hudson, guitarist Robbie Robertson, drummer Levon Helm, pianist Richard Manuel and bassist Rick Danko were indeed a band in the best sense of the word: five earnest, dedicated instrumentalists who also sang up a storm and eschewed individual virtuosity in deference to the musical whole. Their recorded legacy stands as a testament to their communal work ethic and their many years as a performing entity honing their craft before they found fame.

Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario, to a mother who was a pianist and a father who played a variety of wind instruments. Hudson showed musical talent and an inventive nature at an early age, once disassembling and rebuilding his father’s old pump organ at age 10. He was playing accordion in a country band at age 12, and his parents sent him to the Toronto Conservatory, where he learned to play Bach preludes and Anglican hymns.

He soon developed a deep love of rock & roll and, as a member of The Capers, he played piano and sax, backing up touring stars like Johnny Cash and Bill Haley when they came to town. Rockabilly veteran Ronnie Hawkins recognized Hudson’s talent and invited him to join his backing band, The Hawks, but Hudson was hesitant until he was offered a new organ, extra money and the title “music consultant” so that his parents would feel better about their gifted son playing “mere rock ’n’ roll.”

Within The Hawks, Hudson made everyone sit up and take notice at his intricate swirls on the Lowrey organ (a departure from the Hammond B3 organ preferred by most rock keyboardists). And he could play almost anything — saxophone, accordion, synthesizers, trumpet, French horn, violin — and in a wide range of styles that could fit in comfortably in a conservatory, a church, a carnival or a roadhouse.

With Robertson’s songs, the spirited vocals of Helms, Manuel and Danko, and the inspired musicianship of Hudson, The Hawks soon outgrew the limited rockabilly genre and, in 1965, they hitched their wagon instead to Bob Dylan, who was in the process of evolving from an acoustic folk artist playing protest songs into a rock musician writing wondrous, expansive pieces. When Dylan toured in early 1966, the bill labeled them as “Bob Dylan and The Band,” and the simple name stuck.

“Like everyone who encounters Garth for the first time,” Helm wrote in his memoir, “Bob was blown away by his versatility and broad musical background. Robbie used to say that Garth could just as easily have played with John Coltrane or the New York Symphony Orchestra.”

When Dylan isolated himself in the rustic town of Woodstock, NY, after a motorcycle accident, The Band lodged themselves in a nearby modest pink house, where they worked long hours on more than 100 songs, for years available only as bootlegs, that later became known as “The Basement Tapes.” The music varied from old folk, country and Appalachian songs to such new compositions as “Tears of Rage,” “I Shall Be Released” and “This Wheel’s on Fire.” It was Hudson who set up and oversaw the capture of these sessions on surprisingly advanced home recording equipment.

Hudson found the area magical, and it would become the home base for much of his life. He grew a long beard and became, more than any of his bandmates, a musical mountain man, collecting guns and knives, skinning roadkill, and building a miniature pipe organ. With his reserved manner and technical skills, he lent the group a gravitas that set it apart from peers during the so-called Summer of Love, and he helped elevate The Band from rollicking juke-joint refugees into one of the most resonant and influential rock groups of the 1960s and ’70s.

On their debut LP, “Music From Big Pink,” Hudson immortalized the Lowery’s church-like pipe-organ tone with “Chest Fever,” whose extended introduction (sometimes referred to separately as “The Genetic Method”) would become his signature song. It begins with a fragment of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” before launching into a landmark fusion of classical music reach, jazz wandering, and R&B grind that stands as perhaps the greatest organ performance in rock history. Legend holds that Hudson never played the intro the same way twice. Robertson once referred to him as “far and away the most advanced musician I’ve ever known.”

Jon Pareles, the highly respected rock critic at The New York Times, wrote eloquently about Hudson the other day: “Ever so self-effacingly, Garth Hudson breathed history into songs. At his magisterial Lowrey organ, he summoned Bach, hymns, the gospel church or a circus calliope. At the piano, he bounced through ragtime chords and splashed out filigrees of honky-tonk or jazz. On accordion, he could invoke a Cajun dance party, a medicine show, a polka or the skirl of a bagpipe. On saxophones, he built cozy studio horn sections and occasionally stepped forward for a plaintive solo. And as his equipment choices expanded, he deployed synthesizers and electric keyboards as scenic backdrops, brass bands and wry commentary.”

Hudson used an early version of the Hohner clavinet in his rig, which he famously ran through a wah-wah pedal, mimicking the sound of a jaw harp for The Band’s early classic “Up on Cripple Creek.”

After The Band called it quits in a very public way with its Thanksgiving Day concert dubbed “The Last Waltz” in 1976, Hudson continued working in studios and on the road with the likes of Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Emmylou Harris, as well as with various lineups of The Band, including the solo work of Robertson and Danko. By the 1990s, he began working with a younger group of musicians who idolized him and his work, including Neko Case, Norah Jones and Wilco. Hudson even released a solo LP, “The Sea to The North,” in 2001, and a set of covers with multiple artists called “Garth Hudson Presents a Canadian Celebration of The Band” in 2010.

Hudson endured some rough patches of financial difficulties matter-of-factly, even when some of his most cherished belongings were sold off by an impatient landlord. He even sold his publishing rights of The Band’s recordings to Robertson, yet showed no bitterness. “The deal was made,” he said. “It was a good gig. My job was to provide arrangements with pads and fills behind good poets, same poems every night, and I got out of it alive.”

R.I.P., Mr. Hudson. Your impact was perhaps greater than you ever knew.

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I’ve assembled two Spotify playlists: one which assembles many of Sam Moore’s greatest musical moments, and another of songs on which Garth Hudson’s most notable contributions are featured.

In 1968-69, I was learning how to play guitar as a middle schooler. The songs my friend Ben Beard and I chose to learn and memorize were acoustic guitar-based with tight harmonies: a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, some Beatles and several by Peter, Paul and Mary.

We were especially fond of three songs PP&M played: the old spiritual “If I Had My Way,” their #1 hit written by John Denver, “Leaving On a Jet Plane,” and especially Peter Yarrow‘s rousing antiwar anthem “Day Is Done,” with its lyrics that balanced angst with hope: “Do you ask why I’m sighing, my son? You shall inherit what mankind has done, /In a world filled with sorrow and woe, if you ask me why this is so, I really don’t know, /And if you take my hand, my son, all will be well when the day is done…”

So the news that Yarrow had died of cancer January 6th at age 86 tugged a bit at my heartstrings. Although the righteous folk music that was PP&M’s specialty had largely fallen out of favor in the late ’60s as rock music took over, I always thought highly of their marvelous voices and strong passion for the noble causes of peace and civil rights, and counted the trio among my early influences.

Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers first joined forces in Greenwich Village in 1961 amid a thriving folk music club scene there, populated by the likes of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and a then-unknown Bob Dylan. Indeed, it was Dylan’s then-manager Albert Grossman who saw their individual talents and commercial appeal and brought the three artists together. They hit a home run right out of the box with their self-titled Grammy-winning debut LP, which reached #1 and included folk standards like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “500 Miles,” “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer.”

Yarrow recalled in 2009, “I had a very strong sense of purpose at that time. Mary never believed this would go much further than a year or so. Paul also was doing it on a temporary basis. But I had a different concept. Our voices, singing the way we were singing … I felt that we were carrying on a tradition that would be very important in terms of what was happening in the world. I really felt that we had something important to share.”

Some conservative factions in those days saw subversive meanings in popular music lyrics where none existed, and one of the first to face such criticism was Yarrow’s children’s tale, “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Ludicrously called out for being all about illicit marijuana use, “Puff” was nonetheless an enormous hit, reaching #2 in the US and a Top Five entry in four other countries. Yarrow always maintained that the song “never had any meaning other than the obvious one — the loss of innocence in children, and the hardships of growing older.” It went on to inspire three animated TV specials in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and a book adaptation.

Partly due to Grossman’s influence, Peter, Paul & Mary recorded and had huge chart success with original songs by Dylan, most notably “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” The trio famously performed the former song at the legendary March on Washington in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and the lyric’s focus on questions about peace, war and freedom pushed it, and PP&M, to the forefront of the civil rights movement.

“It was so incredibly powerful, that moment,” Yarrow said years later. “Washington was a segregated city at that time. Here we were in our nation’s capitol, where we proclaimed with others that there was liberty and justice for all, and yet there still separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Mary later told me, ‘Do you remember when we were standing there listening to the speech? I took your hand, and I said, ‘Peter, we are watching history being made.””

The trio, and especially Yarrow, took on leadership roles as activists and as musicians, joining the board of the Newport Folk Festival, organizing the 1969 March on Washington and pushing for liberal candidates and causes for decades afterwards, including Barack Obama’s presidency and the National Hospice Movement and the Operation Respect anti-bullying campaign.

But Yarrow was apparently a complicated man, and it pains me to have to write about a dark chapter in his life when, in 1970, he was convicted of “immoral and improper liberties” with a teenage girl and spent three months in prison for it. He said years later, “It was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by many male performers, and I was one of them. I got nailed for it, I was wrong, and I’m sorry for it.” In recent years, his ability to publicly support candidates and causes was curtailed by rekindled attention on his regrettable behavior.

I don’t recall hearing much about the matter in 1970 as I was playing his albums and learning his songs, but being reminded of it in obituaries last week forced me to come to terms with Yarrow as a flawed man whose unforgivable actions conflicted mightily with his support for humanitarian concerns.

Still, I continue to admire his body of musical work. Yarrow was instrumental in devising the vocal arrangements that made the best use of Stookey’s baritone, Travers’s contralto and his own tenor, combined in soothing harmony on nine albums during their initial 1962-1970 run. Almost as important, his and Stookey’s deft acoustic guitar playing lifted their material above the majority of folk-based musical offerings of that era.

Yarrow wasn’t a prolific songwriter, but the philosophical wisdom and loping melody of his 1967 song “The Great Mandella (The Wheel of Life)” stands, in my view, as one of his best moments. I also recommend checking out his sadly ignored solo debut LP — now available as one third of a trio of the solo albums “Peter” (1972), “Paul And” (1971) and “Mary” (1971). On Yarrow’s record, you’ll find several tracks worthy of your attention such as “Mary Beth,” a lovely ballad to his wife, the spiritually centered “River of Jordan” and the hopeful singalong “Weave Me the Sunshine.”

Stookey ended up scoring the biggest chart success of the three solo careers with “Wedding Song (There is Love),” a ceremonial ballad he wrote on 12-string guitar and performed for Yarrow’s wedding in 1971, which peaked at #24 on the US Top 40 chart.

Here’s something I never knew about Yarrow: He co-wrote and co-produced “Torn Between Two Lovers,” the hit single about a romantic love triangle that managed to reach #1 on US pop charts for Mary MacGregor in early 1977.

Peter, Paul and Mary reconvened in 1978 for the aptly titled “Reunion” LP, and they went on to release four more albums between 1986 and 2003, but they barely made a dent in the charts. Their time, evidently, had come and gone, although their occasional concerts during those years drew appreciative audiences of older, faithful fans.

In 1981, as a newspaper concert critic in Cleveland, I had the opportunity to interview them backstage, take some performance photos and write a justifiably favorable review (see photos above and below). In that interview, Yarrow told me how they would select their repertoire. “For us to sing a song, not only does it have to have an engaging melody, but the words need to have a sense of truth. They can’t advocate a philosophy we don’t believe in. They should be somewhat constructive. They can be angry but not hopeless. In short, they have to move us.”

In addition to the anthems of commitment and concern, they sang tender ballads (Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” Yarrow’s “Moments of Soft Persuasion”), rousing pop tunes (“Rollin’ Home,” “I Dig Rock and Roll Music”), holiday madrigals (“A-Soalin'”) and whimsical ditties like “I’m in Love With a Big Blue Frog,” a parody of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” called “Yuppies in the Sky,” and an anti-racist screed called “Listen Mr. Bigot.” They even did “Peter, Paul & Mommy,” a whole album of children’s songs.

On another more personal note, I shall be forever indebted to Yarrow for discovering and signing a trio of musicians known as Lazarus in 1970. Their stunning harmonies and original songs by guitarist Billie Hughes made an indelible mark on me, and on a number of friends with whom I shared their two albums. On the first LP’s liner notes, Yarrow wrote, “A thousand talented kids had spoken to me after concerts, asking me to hear their tunes. Why had I not just offered them an address to send their tape? Then I heard their music, and it was all clear to me the role I would play in their lives. Their songs just made me feel so good.” Although they toured behind Yarrow and other acoustic acts of that period, they never caught on, which is a huge shame. (I’ve included two of their songs on the Spotify playlist below to give you a taste. The members of Lazarus also sang harmonies on Yarrow’s solo track “Take Off Your Mask.”)

R.I.P., Mr. Yarrow. Thanks for your musical contributions, and I hope you find some measure of peace in your next life.

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