R.I.P.: Gene Barge, Pioneering Sax Player On '60s Hits

Gene Barge (1926-2025)

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, reports The NY Times.

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.

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.

“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.

Sources differ as to how Barge came to be known as Daddy G. The nickname, 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.