Gene Barge, R&B Saxophonist Who Played on Landmark Hits, Dies at 98

New York Times

05-02-2025

Gene Barge, one of the last surviving saxophonists of the golden age of R&B, whose career ran the gamut of 20th-century Black popular music, died on Sunday at his home in Chicago. He was 98.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Gina Barge.
Known by the nickname Daddy G, Mr. Barge played on landmark hits of the rock and soul era, beginning with Chuck Willis's swinging remake of the blues standard 'C.C. Rider.'
Galvanized by Mr. Barge's moaning tenor saxophone, 'C.C. Rider' reached No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1957 and stalled just outside the Top 10 on the pop chart. In 1963, Mr. Barge was featured on Jimmy Soul's calypso-derived 'If You Wanna Be Happy,' a No. 1 pop and R&B hit.
Mr. Barge also played the wailing tenor part on Fontella Bass's 'Rescue Me' (1965) and supplied the rhythmic drive, with members of the Motown house band the Funk Brothers, for Jackie Wilson's 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)' (1967). Both records topped the R&B chart and crossed over to become Top 10 pop hits.
His greatest acclaim, though, came in 1961 with 'Quarter to Three,' a No. 1 pop single recorded with the R&B shouter Gary U.S. Bonds. Hoping to capitalize on the success of 'New Orleans,' his first big hit, Mr. Bonds created 'Quarter to Three' by adding lyrics to 'A Night With Daddy G,' a churning instrumental that Mr. Barge had recently written and recorded with his band the Church Street Five.
'Oh, don't you know that I danced/I danced 'til a quarter to 3/With the help, last night, of Daddy G,' Mr. Bonds sings on the opening chorus.
('A Night With Daddy G' would prove doubly auspicious when Dion borrowed its melody for 'Runaround Sue,' a finger-snapping wonder that topped the pop chart in late 1961.)
Despite having the benefit of Mr. Barge's snaking saxophone runs — and despite the record's affinity with the twist dance craze of the day — 'Quarter to Three' was an unlikely sensation. Muffled and lo-fi, it sounded as if it had been recorded in a bathroom or a stairwell.
'This record is fuzzy, muzzy and distorted,' the British television producer Jack Good wrote in a 1961 issue of Disc, the popular weekly music magazine later absorbed into Record Mirror. 'According to present-day technical standards it is appalling. However, for my money, the disc is not just good, it's sensational and revolutionary.'
Mr. Good's assessment of the record proved prescient. An exuberant fusion of doo-wop, Black gospel and incipient frat rock, 'Quarter to Three' not only inspired the big-beat rock 'n' roll of the Beatles and the garage-rock of bands like the Kingsmen and the Sir Douglas Quintet. It also provided a blueprint for the sax-and-vocal exchanges between Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen, a rapturous call and response that came to define the E Street Band, which often performed 'Quarter to Three' in concert.
Breaking into pop music when the saxophone was ascendant (and before it was supplanted by the electric guitar), Mr. Barge was as distinctive and versatile a stylist as King Curtis, if less well known. Over six decades, he played on or produced records by Muddy Waters, the Chi-Lites and the incendiary Detroit funk band Black Merda. He also toured with Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones.
Sources differ as to how Mr. Barge came to be known as Daddy G. The sobriquet, though, was already gaining traction before the release of 'Quarter to Three,' when the Philadelphia disc jockey Hy Lit adopted 'A Night With Daddy G' as the theme song for his radio show. Shortly afterward, the doo-wop group the Dovells paid homage to Mr. Barge on their 1961 hit 'Bristol Stomp,' singing, 'We ponied and twisted and we rocked with Daddy G.'
James Gene Barge Jr. was born on Aug. 9, 1926, in Norfolk, Va., the oldest of eight children of James and Thelma (Edwards) Barge. His father played banjo and worked as a welder in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. His mother managed the home.
Mr. Barge played clarinet in high school and took up the saxophone only after his father brought home a waterlogged tenor that he had found on a torpedo-damaged ship. He was 20 at the time and had just completed two years in the Army Air Forces.
After graduating from West Virginia State College in 1950 with a degree in music, he taught high school and pursued music as an avocation. Jazz was a formative influence, especially the effervescent phrasing of the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young.
The first recordings Mr. Barge made under his own name were a pair of instrumentals for Checker, a subsidiary of Chess Records, in 1956. 'Country,' his first single, was a hit along the Eastern Seaboard.
'When Chess heard it, they said, 'What the hell is that?' Mr. Barge said of the record in a 2007 interview with Virginia Living magazine.
'They had never heard a saxophone sound like that before. They even gave it a word: funk. That was the reputation I got — that Gene Barge could play funky.'
Around 1960 Mr. Barge began his brief but fruitful association with the producer Frank Guida, whose Legrand label released 'A Night With Daddy G' and Mr. Bonds's early singles. Mr. Barge and Mr. Bonds had a second major hit together with 'School Is Out,' which reached the Top 10 in 1961, but enjoyed only modest success after that.
In 1964, as independent record labels with national distribution increasingly dominated regional markets, Mr. Barge abandoned teaching — and Norfolk's small Legrand imprint — and moved to Chicago to work for Chess Records. While there he played on R&B hits like Little Milton's 'Grits Ain't Groceries' and Koko Taylor's 'Wang Dang Doodle' and produced albums, including Buddy Guy's acclaimed 1967 effort, 'Left My Blues in San Francisco.'
In the late 1960s, he also directed the musical ensemble of the Chicago chapter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Operation Breadbasket, an organization headed locally by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Mr. Barge later ran the gospel division of Stax Records and, over the ensuing decades, worked as a freelance musician, producer and arranger, most notably on Natalie Cole's Grammy-winning single 'Sophisticated Lady (She's a Different Lady).' In the late 1970s he took a detour into acting, working locally in Chicago (he made his screen debut in the independent 1978 film 'Stony Island') before eventually landing roles in Hollywood action thrillers like 'Under Siege' (1992) and 'The Fugitive' (1993).
Mr. Barge remained active into the 2000s, serving as a consultant for Martin Scorsese's 2003 PBS documentary series 'The Blues' and playing on records like Public Enemy's 'Superman's Black in the Building' and with the avant-garde jazz trumpeter Malachi Thompson.
'Gene Barge is the flyest octogenarian I know,' Chuck D of Public Enemy told Virginia Living in 2007. 'To go from Muddy Waters to Public Enemy is a good trick.'
In addition to his daughter Gina, Mr. Barge is survived by another daughter, Gail Florence; three siblings, Celestine Bailey, Kim Williamson and Milton Barge; two grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren. His wife, Sarah Barge, died in 2008. His first marriage ended in divorce.
Mr. Barge's career might not have gotten off to the start it did with Chuck Willis's 'C.C. Rider' were it not for his patience and good humor. After playing the grinding riff on the demo that persuaded Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records to record it as a single, he was flown to New York for the session, only to find that another saxophonist had been hired instead.
'Ertegun and Wexler told me they were going to pay me, but they didn't want me to play,' Mr. Barge told Virginia Living.
'I went down to the liquor store, man, got me a pint and sat down on the floor to listen to them. They did 27 takes and weren't satisfied. So Chuck said, 'Look, why don't you let Gene run down one to get the feel?' So I ran down one and they said, 'Hold it, that's it, you got it. Let's cut it.''