John Robert “Joe” Cocker was born on the 20th of May 1944, in Sheffield, West Yorkshire, England, and was an English rock and soul singer, widely acknowledged as ‘one of the voices of rock’, who rose to fame in the 1960s. He passed away in 2014.
Best known for performing cover songs, how rich was Joe Cocker? Sources estimate his net worth was at $60 million dollars, earned during his more than 50-year career in the music industry.
Joe Cocker Net Worth $60 Million
Cocker attended Sheffield Central Technical School, and began his working career as a gasfitter for the East Midlands Gas Board. In his free time, he played music in local pubs under the stage name Vance Arnold, accompanied by his backing band, The Cavaliers, later known as The Avengers. With Cocker’s highly distinctive, gritty, bluesy voice, they achieved some success, supporting both The Hollies and The Rolling Stones, in 1963. In 1964, Cocker signed with Decca Records and released a single, a cover of The Beatles track “I’ll Cry Instead”, but actually disliked the song intensely, and refused to perform it on stage. When the track didn’t become a hit, his contract with Decca lapsed, and he returned to work as a gasfitter.
Persuaded by his manager, Cocker left the north and moved to London in 1967. It wasn’t until 1968, when Cocker released his second Beatles cover, “With a Little Help from My Friends”, that he achieved the major success that had thus far eluded him. The song, which featured Jimmy Page and Steve Winwood, went to number one in the UK singles chart, and stayed in the top ten for thirteen weeks. In 1969, he had a second hit, “Delta Lady” and performed at Woodstock with The Grease Band. He began to be characterised by the unusual and eccentric way he would move whilst on stage, making wild flailing movements with his arms.
Cocker would spend the next year on the “Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour”, accompanied by forty other artists, both his mental and physical health waning as a result of his gruelling schedule. He developed problems with alcohol addiction, which affected his vocal abilities, and often left him unable to remember lyrics whilst on stage. He was arrested in Australia in 1972 for possession of marijuana.
In 1974, Cocker returned to the charts with the ballad “You Are So Beautiful”. In 1983, he won a Grammy for the song “Up Where We Belong”, a duet with Jennifer Warnes, from the soundtrack of the film “An Officer and a Gentleman”. The song reached number one in the US charts and held the position for three weeks. During the 1990s, he continued to have some success, but found his career slowing, although In 1993, he was nominated for a BRIT award for Best British Male. His last studio album, “Fire It Up”, was released by Sony in 2012. It was his twenty second, and went platinum in Germany.
His many accolades include being listed in Rolling Stones magazine’s “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”, an OBE for Services to Music, and two Goldene Kamera awards.
In his personal life, Cocker succumbed to lung cancer in December 2014, survived by his wife of twenty seven years, Pam Baker.
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