RIP Sam Moore, of the legendary Sam and Dave.

Soul icon Sam Moore, half of the Grammy-winning duo Sam and Dave, died Friday at age 89.

Moore — who with his late partner Dave Prater cut some of the best-known records of the genre with hits like “Soul Man” and “Hold On! I’m Comin’” — died in his Florida home after an unspecified surgery earlier in the week, though his cause of death has yet to be determined, his wife Joyce Moore told Rolling Stone.

His former partner Prater, with whom he shared a sometimes contentious relationship, died in a car accident in 1988.

The trailblazing black artists were known for their high-energy live performances and became in the 1960s one of the top acts on the legendary Memphis-based Stax Records, alongside stars like Otis Redding and collaborators Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

Moore was born in Miami on Oct. 12, 1935, and like his eventual partner grew up singing in church, cutting their teeth separately on the southern gospel circuit before they joined forces in 1961 at an amateur night at the Miami’s King of Hearts Club, according to a Stax spotlight on their careers.

Prater supposedly forgot the lyrics to the song “Doggin’ Around” when Moore joined him and a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame partnership was forged.

The harmonizing, hard-dancing pair had already gained a name for themselves and signed with Atlantic Records but they quickly were moved to subsidiary Stax, where they recorded with “house band” Booker T and the MG’s and started a run of 10 consecutive top 20 R&B hits with “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” the bio said.

In 1968, Atlantic’s distro deal with Stax was axed and the duo were left working with the larger company as whatever personal relationship they had deteriorated.

Booker T and the MGs (for Memphis Group, natch) was another legendary outfit, one of my all-time favorite instrumental combos; their Christmas album in particular is nothing short of truly stellar stuff, start to finish. Booker T Jones; Donald “Duck” Dunn; one of the most amazing guitarists ever to wrap his hands around a Tele neck, Steve “the Colonel” Cropper—I ask you, what’s not to like? Cropper started off playing with yet another legendary outfit, the Mar-Keys, who were responsible for one of my verymost favorite songs EVAR. To be specific:

LOVE that ooky-spooky-kooky organ. Bizarre thing: peeping out now and then from behind the tenor sax man and/or trumpeteer is what looks suspiciously like a Marshall Plexi rig, which in 1961 didn’t even exist yet. Hrm…