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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.<\/p>\n
His death was confirmed by his daughter Gina Barge.<\/p>\n
Known by the nickname Daddy G, Mr. Barge played on landmark hits of the rock and soul era, beginning with Chuck Willis\u2019s swinging remake<\/a> of the blues standard \u201cC.C. Rider.\u201d<\/p>\n Galvanized by Mr. Barge\u2019s moaning tenor saxophone, \u201cC.C. Rider\u201d 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\u2019s calypso-derived \u201cIf You Wanna Be Happy,\u201d<\/a> a No. 1 pop and R&B hit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His greatest acclaim, though, came in 1961 with \u201cQuarter to Three,\u201d<\/a> a No. 1 pop single recorded with the R&B shouter Gary U.S. Bonds. Hoping to capitalize on the success of \u201cNew Orleans,\u201d his first big hit, Mr. Bonds created \u201cQuarter to Three\u201d by adding lyrics to \u201cA Night With Daddy G,\u201d<\/a> a churning instrumental that Mr. Barge had recently written and recorded with his band the Church Street Five.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, don\u2019t you know that I danced\/I danced \u2019til a quarter to 3\/With the help, last night, of Daddy G,\u201d Mr. Bonds sings on the opening chorus.<\/p>\n (\u201cA Night With Daddy G\u201d would prove doubly auspicious when Dion borrowed its melody for \u201cRunaround Sue,\u201d<\/a> a finger-snapping wonder that topped the pop chart in late 1961.)<\/p>\n Despite having the benefit of Mr. Barge\u2019s snaking saxophone runs \u2014 and despite the record\u2019s affinity with the twist dance craze of the day \u2014 \u201cQuarter to Three\u201d was an unlikely sensation. Muffled and lo-fi, it sounded as if it had been recorded in a bathroom or a stairwell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis record is fuzzy, muzzy and distorted,\u201d the British television producer Jack Good wrote in a 1961 issue of Disc, the popular weekly music magazine later absorbed into Record Mirror. \u201cAccording to present-day technical standards it is appalling. However, for my money, the disc is not just good, it\u2019s sensational and revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Good\u2019s assessment of the record proved prescient. An exuberant fusion of doo-wop, Black gospel and incipient frat rock, \u201cQuarter to Three\u201d not only inspired the big-beat rock \u2019n\u2019 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<\/a> and Bruce Springsteen, a rapturous call and response that came to define the E Street Band, which often performed \u201cQuarter to Three\u201d<\/a> in concert.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cQuarter to Three,\u201d when the Philadelphia disc jockey Hy Lit<\/a> adopted \u201cA Night With Daddy G\u201d 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 \u201cBristol Stomp,\u201d<\/a> singing, \u201cWe ponied and twisted and we rocked with Daddy G.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n The first recordings Mr. Barge made under his own name were a pair of instrumentals for Checker, a subsidiary of Chess Records, in 1956. \u201cCountry,\u201d his first single, was a hit along the Eastern Seaboard.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Chess heard it, they said, \u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d Mr. Barge said of the record in a 2007 interview with Virginia Living magazine.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had never heard a saxophone sound like that before. They even gave it a word: funk. That was the reputation I got \u2014 that Gene Barge could play funky.\u201d<\/p>\n Around 1960 Mr. Barge began his brief but fruitful association with the producer Frank Guida, whose Legrand label released \u201cA Night With Daddy G\u201d and Mr. Bonds\u2019s early singles. Mr. Barge and Mr. Bonds had a second major hit together with \u201cSchool Is Out,\u201d<\/a> which reached the Top 10 in 1961, but enjoyed only modest success after that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1964, as independent record labels with national distribution increasingly dominated regional markets, Mr. Barge abandoned teaching \u2014 and Norfolk\u2019s small Legrand imprint \u2014 and moved to Chicago to work for Chess Records. While there he played on R&B hits like Little Milton\u2019s \u201cGrits Ain\u2019t Groceries\u201d<\/a> and Koko Taylor\u2019s \u201cWang Dang Doodle\u201d<\/a> and produced albums, including Buddy Guy\u2019s acclaimed 1967 effort, \u201cLeft My Blues in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n In the late 1960s, he also directed the musical ensemble of the Chicago chapter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s Operation Breadbasket, an organization headed locally by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.<\/p>\n