Joe Cocker Net Worth

How much is Joe Cocker worth?

About Joe Cocker

John Robert “Joe” Cocker, an English singer with an estimated net worth of $60 million, passed away on December 22, 2014 (20 May 1944). People were drawn to Joe Cocker from the start of his career (in 1960, when he formed a band with three of his school friends) because of his distinctive voice, his enthusiastic air guitar playing on stage, and his frequently emotive interpretations of the songs he covered.

Cocker was born and reared in Sheffield, England, and his early performances in neighborhood bars featured the skiffle music, a fusion of blues, folk, jazz, and country that ruled British music in the early 1960s. After The Cavaliers, his first band, disbanded after a year, Cocker started a new band and changed his stage name to Vance Arnold.

Joe Cocker, whose name was changed from John to Joe at some point, although his family was undoubtedly involved, came from a working-class upbringing comparable to that of the soul artists he admired as a youngster. However, fortunately for us all, his near obsession with Ray Charles and the Beatles soon took over, and he started to make music, first with a skiffle group and then with a jazz-blues combo at local clubs.

His career path in the renowned steeltown environs of Sheffield, England, was actually supposed to lead him into pipe fitting for the local natural gas authority. By the late 1960s, he had been discovered by manager Denny Cordell and set up with a steady gig at London’s Marquee Club. His gruff but passionate voice delivered a blue-eyed soul that was ridiculously, exhilaratingly over the top. His new thirst for deep soul, Motown, and raw blues fortunately coincided with his country’s. Cocker was busy following Brother Ray’s reasoning much as Janis Joplin had done with Bessie Smith.

Joe again

At a 1963 Sheffield concert, “Vance” and his band, The Avengers, served as The Rolling Stones’ openers. In 1964, he signed a record deal and cut the first of a number of Beatles covers. On “I’ll Cry Instead” which Decca Records released with a significant promotional effort, a young session guitarist by the name of Jimmy Page (pre-Led Zeppelin) provided the accompaniment guitar. Nevertheless, the album was a commercial failure, and the Decca contract expired in less than a year.

In 1964, Joe Cocker’s Big Blues was formed. They released an EP and worked as a house band in a London nightclub. Cocker stopped making music entirely in 1965, but he returned in 1966 with the Grease Band, which disbanded when Cocker got his second record deal as a solo artist.

Cocker covers turn up the volume.

“Marjorine” Cocker’s follow-up song, was co-written with Chris Stainton, a former bandmate in the Grease Band. Although it made the American charts, it was Cocker’s 1968 cover of the Lennon-McCartney song “With A Little Help From My Friends” (featuring largely McCartney) that catapulted Cocker into the spotlight. The agreement was sealed by his appearance at Woodstock in 1969.

More success followed with covers of songs like “Midnight Rider,” “Delta Lady,” “Feelin’ Alright,” and “The Letter” as well as more Beatles classics like “Something” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” during the course of the following ten years. His intense stage antics and gravelly voice made him popular with both crowds and the musicians whose songs he covered.

Between 1969 and 1971, Leon Russell’s big ensemble Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which had thirty musicians and vocalists, went on tour with Cocker. Russell and Cocker had a falling out, and Cocker took a second musical hiatus until coming back in 1972. More than 50 years after his initial on-stage appearance, he is still recording and performing.

More than thirty studio, live, and video releases make up his discography. He and Jennifer Warnes sang “Up Where We Belong” and received a Grammy for it in 1983. He is among the Top 100 singers, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

What was Cocker’s secret to his success throughout the years? It all comes down to listening to what I enjoy and determining whether I can adapt it to fit my style.

Success

Cocker was soon signed to the UK Regal Zonophone label and immediately delivered a hit: his tortured gospel-rock rendition of a lighthearted Beatles song called “With a Little Help From My Friends” struck a real chord in the blended family that was the hippie movement, going straight to the top in the UK. He was now backed by a talented group of young men whom he dubbed The Grease Band. Following that, Leon Russell, a new fan, gave him another hit, “Delta Lady,” and when he played “Friends” at Woodstock alongside Ray Charles’ “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” the nation stood up and paid notice.

Cocker was the new benchmark for white bluesmen, and he had a stage persona to match. His agonizing hunches wonderfully complemented the intensity of his performance. In 1970, when his band disbanded due to the stress of nonstop celebrity touring, Russell provided a replacement in the form of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a 40-person circus of well-known session musicians and fans. The age of the supergroup was ushered in by the multimedia juggernaut that went along with it.

Later years

Joe gradually felt the demands too, and he started abusing booze and drugs whenever he had a moment to himself to cope. In the process, he was close to losing his voice. However, he made a comeback as a ballad singer two years later, earning a massive hit with the 1974 remake of the Billy Preston song “You Are So Beautiful.”

After meeting Pam Baker, his second wife, in 1976, Cocker transitioned into a sober new life as a softer, urban contemporary R&B artist. In 1982, Cocker achieved one of his biggest hits when he performed “Up Where We Belong,” a duet with Jennifer Warnes, in the infamous closing scene of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman. Up until his death from lung cancer in December 2014, he continued to perform varied degrees of success as an interpreter of other people’s works. The age of Joe Cocker was seventy.

Information

John Robert Cocker, May 20, 1944, Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK; died December 22, 2014, Crawford, CO

Styles: 

Blues rock, Blue-eyed soul, Classic rock, Soft rock, Blues

Instruments: 

Vocals, guitar, harmonica

Vanity claims:

• Blue-eyed soul was transformed into a deeply moving gospel-style encounter.
• With a Little Help From My Friends,” a song by the Beatles, was covered by him and became a generational anthem.
• Many rock performers in the 1970s were influenced by his outrageous stage antics.
• shifted gears in the 1970s and 1980s and established a reputation as a superb interpreter of adult contemporary music.

Information about Joe Cocker:

• Jane Fonda originally owned the land where Cocker built his final residence, which he dubbed the Mad Dog Ranch.
• His rendition of “Friends” really arrived in stores a few days before Abbey Road because The Beatles were so moved by his rendition of “Something” that they tested new songs for him before release.
• On a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live, Joe and John Belushi performed the well-known “dueling Cockers” duet.
• The first rendition of “You Are So Beautiful” by Billy Preston was a straightforward prayer to God.
• Cocker loved gardening and fly fishing.
• His neighborhood organization earned more over $1 million for Colorado’s poor youngsters.

Joe Cocker awards and honors:

GRAMMY Award (1983), Order of the British Empire (OBE) (2007), GRAMMY Hall of Fame (2001)

Joe Cocker hit singles and albums:

#1 hits:

US:

• “Up Where We Belong” with Jennifer Warnes (1982)

UK;

• “With a Little Help From My Friends” (1968)

Top 10 hits:

US;

• “The Letter” (1970)
• “You Are So Beautiful” (1975)

UK:

• “Delta Lady” (1969)
• “Up Where We Belong” with Jennifer Warnes (1982)

​Top 10 albums:

UK:

• Have a Little Faith (1994)
• Hymn for My Soul (2007)

Other important Joe Cocker recordings: “Feelin’ Alright,” “Cry Me a River,” “High Time We Went,” “When the Night Comes,” “Unchain My Heart,” “Put Out the Light,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Something,” “Darling Be Home Soon,” “Black-Eyed Blues,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Sticks and Stones,” “Bird on a Wire,” “Superstar,” “Space Captain,” “Let It Be,” “Blue Medley: I’ll Drown in My Own Tears/When Something Is Wrong with My Baby/I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “The Weight,” “Further on Up the Road,” “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” “Midnight Rider,” “I Can Stand a Little Rain,” “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” “The Jealous Kind,” “Fun Time,” “I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today,” “Sweet Little Woman,” “Many Rivers to Cross,” “Don’t You Love Me Anymore,” “Could You Be Loved,” “Civilized Man,” “The Simple Things,” “N’Oubliez Jamais,” “That’s All I Need to Know,” “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” “Now That the Magic Has Gone,” “(All I Know) Feels Like Forever,” “My Father’s Son,” “Never Tear Us Apart,” “Ruby Lee,” “Shelter Me,” “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” “Unchain My Heart,” “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” “Night Calls,” “Summer in the City,” “Have a Little Faith in Me,” “Sail Away,” “Tonight,” “First We Take Manhattan,” “You Can’t Have My Heart,” “One”

Movie and TV appearances (movies in italics): “Beat-Club” (1968, 1969, 1970, 1971), “The Joey Bishop Show” (1969), “The Mike Douglas Show” (1969), “The Ed Sullivan Show” (1969), “The David Frost Show” (1969), Woodstock (1970), “This is Tom Jones” (1970), “Playboy After Dark” (1970), Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1971), “Saturday Night Live” (1976, 1983), “The 55th Annual Academy Awards” (1983), “The 25th Annual Grammy Awards” (1983), “Musikladen” (1983), “Top of the Pops” (1983), “Solid Gold” (1985), “The Prince’s Trust Rock Gala” (1988), “The Arsenio Hall Show” (1990), “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” (1992, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004), “Later with Jools Holland” (1996, 2007), “Woodstock ’94” (1995), “Behind the Music” (1998, 1999), “Austin City Limits” (2000), “Live with Regis and Kelly” (2005), “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” (2008), “The View” (2008), “Tavis Smiley” (2008), “American Idol” (2010), “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (2012) 

Covered by: Ray Charles, Leon Russell, Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand, Isaac Hayes, Diana Ross, 5th Dimension, Paul Weller, Freddie King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Bonnie Tyler, Grand Funk Railroad, Jackson 5, Babyface, Lou Ann Barton, Widespread Panic, Little Milton, The Ohio Players, Westlife, Rare Earth, David Ruffin, Three Dog Night, Lulu, Lou Rawls, Chairmen of the Board, The Shadows, The Black Crowes, Perry Como, Captain and Tennille, BeBe and CeCe Winans, Doris Day, Maceo Parker, Dan Reed Network, The Undisputed Truth, Mother’s Finest, Kenny Rankin, Ray Stevens, Huey Lewis 

Joe Cocker Discography

• Studio Albums (with U.S. release dates)
• With a Little Help from My Friends (1969)
• Joe Cocker! (1969)
• Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1970)
• Joe Cocker (1972)
• I Can Stand a Little Rain (1974)
• Jamaica Say You Will (1975)
• Stingray (1976)
• Luxury You Can Afford (1978)
• Sheffield Steel (1982)
• Civilized Man (1984)
• Cocker (1986)
• Unchain My Heart (1987)
• One Night of Sin (1989)
• Night Calls (1992)
• Have a Little Faith (1994)
• Organic (1996)
• Across from Midnight (1997)
• No Ordinary World (2000)
• Respect Yourself (2002)
• Heart & Soul (2005)
• Hymn for My Soul (2008)
• Hard Knocks (2012)

Live Albums

• Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1970)
• Live in LA (1976)
• Space Captain (1976)
• Live in New York (1981)
• Joe Cocker Live (1990)
• Vance Arnold & The Avengers (1999)
• Standing Here (2001)
• The Complete Fillmore East Concerts (2006)
• Live at Woodstock (2009)

Cocker passed away from lung cancer in Crawford, Colorado, on December 22, 2014. Joe Cocker had a net worth of $60 million at the time of his passing. He was in his 70s. Cocker was listed as the 97th best singer by Rolling Stone.