Sam
Cooke
At Offbeat Sam is THE Man A performer whose sophisticated, crystalline vocal delivery and alchemical fusion of pop and gospel laid the foundations for the rise of modern soul music, Sam Cooke was a singer of remarkable spiritual resonance, a supreme talent whose vision transcended all barriers of race and faith. A champion of creative rights who wrote much of his own material and even established his own business empire to better realize his far-reaching musical ambitions, Cooke was also a champion of civil rights who utilized his stature as a performer to break down the color lines separating blacks from whites; a major crossover success, his brilliant career was tragically brief, but his shadow looms large over the generations of artists who emerged in his wake. Born Sam Cook on January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he was one of eight sons of a Baptist minister and a featured vocalist in his church choir throughout his childhood, additionally teaming with three of his siblings in a quartet dubbed the Soul Children. As a teen, Cooke became a member of the gospel group the Highway QCs, performing in churches and auditoriums across the nation; in 1950, he joined the Soul Stirrers, recording and touring with the group for close to six years and achieving a significant level of success within the gospel community on the strength of lead turns on efforts including "Nearer to Thee" and "Touch the Hem of His Garment." In 1956 he made his secular pop debut with the single "Lovable," recorded under the alias Dale Cooke in an attempt not to alienate his gospel fan base; however, when Art Rupe, the owner of the Soul Stirrers' label, Specialty, objected to producer "Bumps" Blackwell's plans for a follow-up effort, Cooke was released from his contract. Upon signing to the tiny Keen label, he resurfaced in 1957 under his own name with the self-penned "You Send Me," a majestic soul confection which sold some two million copies and made him a star. A series of hits — most of them light romantic ballads and novelty tunes — followed over the next two years, most notably the Top 40 hits "Wonderful World," "Only Sixteen" and "Everybody Likes to Cha Cha." As the 1960s dawned, Cooke began taking an active interest in the music business, founding his own independent label, SAR, producing hits for the Simms Twins and the Valentinos and releasing early efforts from Bobby Womack and fellow Soul Stirrers alum Johnnie Taylor; additionally, he established his own publishing imprint, Kags Music, and even created his own management firm. At the same time, he left Keen to sign with RCA. Upon his arrival at the label, Cooke's music adopted a grittier, more gospel-influenced feel; his RCA debut, a reworking of "Chain Gang," became his biggest hit in some time, peaking at the number two position in 1960. At RCA, Cooke's gifts reached their full potential as he reeled off a string of early-'60s hits ranging from the bluesy "Sad Mood" to the gospel-pop of "Bring It on Home to Me," through to the smooth soul of "Another Saturday Night" and the buoyant R&B of "Twisting the Night Away." While remaining primarily a singles artist, in 1963 he issued the superb Night Beat, a moody, intimate collection steeped heavily in the blues; unlike most pop albums of the era, which fleshed out a couple of hits with an abundance of filler, Night Beat was a complete and ambitious artistic statement, comprised purely of prime material. As his reputation as a performer grew, Cooke established fervent fan bases in both the pop and R&B markets, and eventually he graduated from the so-called "chitlin' circuit" of black-owned venues to Las Vegas casino stages and white nightclubs, emerging as a crossover superstar. And then, at the peak of his career, Sam Cooke died. The circumstances surrounding his tragic murder on December 11, 1964 remain hazy: according to initial reports, he was shot three times by Bertha Franklin, the manager of Los Angeles' Hacienda Motel, who claimed she acted in self-defense after Cooke raped a 22-year-old woman and then turned to Franklin herself after the young woman escaped, taking his clothes with her. The shooting was ruled a justifiable homicide, but in subsequent years it has been rumored that a number of crucial details surrounding the case were buried in deference to Cooke's wife and children, who wished to avoid any further publicity and scrutiny; decades later, a satisfactory resolution to the matter has yet to be reached. Even given the scandalous circumstances of his death, Cooke remained a major presence: At the Copa, a triumphant live set recorded at the elite New York club, was released during the month of his passing, and the single "Shake" reached the Top Ten a few weeks later. "A Change Is Gonna Come," another posthumous 1965 smash, was his true epitaph — a thoughtful, spiritually charged assessment of the then-current state of American race relations, it presaged the ascendent civil rights movement with remarkable clarity. In the years following his murder, Cooke's stature continued to grow: disciples including Otis Redding and Al Green carried on his legacy with dignity and grace, and reissues and unreleased material — most notably 1985's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, an incendiary concert set recorded in Miami — appeared regularly. In 1986, he was named a charter inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
This is by far the very best collection available today by the greatest SoulMan/Crooner in the history of modern music. Scattered every few minutes across this four-disc collection are reminders of just how far ahead of all existing musical forms Sam Cooke was, creating sounds that stretched the definitions of song genres as they were understood and created completely new categories. Indeed, he was so successful that it's easy to underestimate the impact and importance of many of his early triumphs. "You Send Me," which opens this set, may seem today like the safest, tamest pop music, but in 1957 it was a genre-bending single, a new kind of R&B/pop music hybrid and one that quietly shook the foundations of the music business when it hit number one. Disc one offers a fresh appreciation of the best of the early Keen Records sides, drawing on the best of nearly two years of singles and the strongest of Cooke's LP tracks in the best account to date of his early career in popular music. Disc two begins Cooke's RCA years, and the quality of his singles, which clearly and easily bridge the gap between genres, races, and generations, improves dramatically. The development of Cooke's writing and singing and his growing confidence and range culminate with disc four, which encompasses the Night Beat album and Cooke's live performance from the Harlem Square Club. The sound is extraordinary throughout, expansive, rich-textured, and vividly detailed; a choice earlier CD release, The Man and His Music, by comparison, sounds thin and tinny. A quick scan through these tracks is a reminder of just how timeless they are. This fabulous still sealed set is accompanied by a glossy full colour 30 page booklet that traces the life and times of the great man in words and many rare photos. The song by song liner notes tell the story of the entire 96 timeless classics.
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Night Beat
Saddled with soaring strings and vocal choruses for maximum crossover potential, Sam Cooke's solo material often masked the most important part of his genius — his glorious voice — so the odd small-group date earns a special recommendation in his discography. Thankfully, Cooke's voice took center stage on this admirably low-key session from February 1963, recorded in Los Angeles with a quartet of studio veterans. Unlike so many session crews and producers of the time, these musicians gave him plenty of space and often simply framed Cooke's breathtaking vocals. (On one of the best tracks here, "Lost and Lookin'," he's barely accompanied at all; only bass and cymbals can be heard far in the background.) The results are wonderful — except for his early Soul Stirrers sides, Night Beat is the best place to marvel at one of the two or three best voices of the century. The songs are intimate blues, most taken at the pace of a late-night stroll, but despite the dark shading and heart-rending tempos, Cooke's voice is so transcendent it's difficult to become depressed while listening. Cooke also wrote three of the songs, including the excellent "Mean Old World," and rendered the traditional "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" practically unfamiliar with his own re-arrangement. Cooke also stretches out on a pair of jump blues classics, "Little Red Rooster" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll," summoning some honest grit for the former and putting the uptown swing into the latter. He also allows some solo space, from Barney Kessel's simple, unadorned solo on "Get Yourself Another Fool" to Billy Preston's playful organ vocalizing on "Little Red Rooster." If Sam Cooke had lived longer, there would've been several more sessions like this, but Night Beat is an even richer treasure for its rarity. Track Listing
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The Rhythm and the Blues
From the title, you might infer that this 20-track compilation — taken from early-'60s sessions, and principally composed of LP-only cuts — aims to showcase Cooke's most soulful side. That's true to some degree, but this isn't his funkiest stuff; for that, look to Live at the Harlem Square Club 1963, or even his most uptempo singles. Most of this is in fact suave pop/R&B, the emphasis sometimes falling on the pop, with lightly swinging, jazzy arrangements and some orchestration. Cooke didn't write most of the material here, and while "Little Red Rooster" (a hit single) represents the earthiest extreme that the CD touches upon, there are also quite a few songs that were originally performed by jazz/popsters from the '20s, '30s, and '40s. Certainly these are decent offerings; Cooke's a great singer and interpreter, and the arrangements are smooth without being overdone. But it's neither Cooke at his very best (the hits compilation Man and His Music is much better) or his grittiest (that honor belongs to Harlem Square). It does restore much of his better obscure material to wide availability and is recommended to those who have the above-mentioned albums and want more Cooke, although the 1963 LP Night Beat (reissued on CD in 1995) is a bluesier and better one to check out first.
When this 28-song compilation (two LPs/one CD) originally appeared, it was the first serious exploration of Sam Cooke's catalog ever done. What's more, a lot of care went into the selection, if not the packaging — despite the fact that it has no annotation, or even release dates on its 28 songs, The Man and His Music is still the only comprehensive single-volume collection of the hits and highlights of Cooke's career from the mid-'50s to his last sides in 1964. What's more, it's out of print, and it is likely to be the last such compilation that we'll ever see, because in the years since its release, the ownership of Cooke's post-1963 sides (comprising his most advanced and ambitious soul recordings) shifted from RCA to ABKCO, and the chances are next to non-existent that either company will ever license its portion of Cooke's catalog to the other. There are better-sounding collections and better-annotated collections, to be sure, and fuller collections — in 2000, RCA issued The Man Who Invented Soul, a four-CD that goes deeper into Cooke's output from 1958 through 1963; and in 2002, ABKCO issued Keep Movin' On, a single-disc compilation covering Cooke's 1964 sides, including his final hits. But The Man and His Music is the only Sam Cooke compilation that covers all of the major phases of his career, from his gospel work with the Soul Stirrers through all of the early pop hits and his move into soul music, culminating with his final classic soul sides. The Soul Stirrers' classic "Touch the Hem of His Garment" slides effortlessly into and through sides like "You Send Me" and "Chain Gang," to the early soul numbers like "Nothing Can Change This Love," "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day," and the achingly beautiful "Just for You," to "Having a Party" and the wrenching balladry of "Sad Mood," and through to the transcendent final sides, the rousing "Shake" and the Civil Rights "A Change Is Gonna Come" (the latter showing up for the first time in decades, and the first of only two times on CD, in its full-length version). There are better collections with all of these songs and more on them, but none handier than this in presenting every facet of Cooke's work — the only flaw, if there is one, is the absence of one of the better tracks off of the Harlem Square live album.
For anyone who thought they knew Sam Cooke's music based on the hit singles, this disc will be a revelation. This is the real Sam Cooke, doing a sweaty, raspy soulful set at the Harlem Square Club in North Miami, FL, on Jan. 12, 1963, backed by King Curtis and his band, a handful of local musicians, and Cooke's resident sidemen, guitarist Cliff White and drummer Albert "June" Gardner. To put it simply, it's one of the greatest soul records ever cut by anybody, outshining James Brown's first live album from the Apollo Theater and easily outclassing Jackie Wilson's live record from the Copa. Cooke's pop style is far removed from the proceedings here, which have the feel of being virtually a secular sermon. The record opens with the frantic, desperate chant-like "Feel It," followed by a version of "Chain Gang" that has all of the gentling influences of the single's string accompaniment stripped from it — Cooke's slightly hoarse voice only adds to the startling change in the song, transformed from a piece of pop-soul into an in-your-face ode to freedom and release. "Cupid," perhaps the most sweetly textured song that Cooke cut during the 1960s, gets the full soul treatment, with horns and Curtis' sax up front and Cooke imparting an urgency here that's only implied in the studio rendition. "Twistin' the Night Away" gets two hot King Curtis sax solos, the highlights of a pounding, rippling performance with a beautifully vamped extended ending (with the drums, bass, and White's guitar wrapping themselves ever tighter around the central riff) that never would have made it to the floor of the Copa. "Somebody Have Mercy" leads into a long vamp by Cooke, a brief, soaring quotation from "You Send Me" that could easily have been a high point in sheer intensity — and then Cooke and the band crank the tension and the spirits several notches higher with the greatest version of "Bring It On Home to Me" ever done by anybody. It all ends with a version of "Having a Party" that manages to be both soothing and wrenching at the same time, Cooke luxuriating in every nuance as the crowd joins in singing, reaching a higher pitch to the gently swinging tune, the drums kicking in harder, the rhythm guitar rising up, and Curtis' sax and the horns rising up slowly while Cooke goes on with his singing, which is more like preaching and the group sounds like it could play the riff all night.
For decades, Sam Cooke at the Copa was a frustrating record. One of a handful of live albums by any major soul artist of its era, it captured Cooke in excellent voice, and was well-recorded — it just wasn't really a "soul" album, except perhaps in the tamest possible definition of that term. Playing to an upscale, largely white supper-club audience, in a very conservatively run venue where he had previously failed to impress either patrons or the management, Cooke toned down his performance and chose the safest material with which he could still be comfortable. In place of songs like "Feel It," "Bring It On Home to Me," or even "Cupid," which were part of his usual set, he performed numbers like "The Best Things in Life Are Free," "Bill Bailey," and "When I Fall in Love" here. True, his renditions may be the versions of any of those songs that any R&B fan will like best, but that's all that can be said for them, and they're a poor substitute for what's not here — not just the songs that he didn't do, but the intense, sweaty presentation, as much a sermon as a concert, the pounding beat, and the crowd being driven into ever more frenzied delight. All of that is missing here, and for decades fans had to content themselves with the contradiction of a beautifully executed but very flat concert. The release of Live at the Harlem Square Club solved that problem, giving us a real Sam Cooke concert and one of the great soul albums of all time. Sam Cooke at the Copa is still worth hearing as a document of what he was trying to do at one point in his career, crossing over to an older, more upscale white audience. It has some nice moments, such as "Twistin' the Night Away," "Frankie and Johnny," "Try a Little Tenderness," "This Little Light of Mine" and his performance of Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (all of which, if he'd done his usual set, we likely wouldn't have), but it's like everything by Sam, an essential purchase. Track Listing
(Out of Print) See Offbeat Search & Rescue
Tribute to the Lady
The Lady of course being Billie Holiday, with the Rene Hall Orchestra on the KEEN Label. (CD2004) An album that's seldom been seen and disappeared almost as quickly as it was released. Sam Cooke turned these songs inside out with twisting, awesome interpretations. It was one of the few times he was able to break out of the light pop/teen idol bag in a studio and pour his heart into great lyrics and numbers. Track Listing
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Encore
With the Bumps Blackwell Orchestra. on the KEEN Label (CD2003) Superb vocals by the great Sam Cooke, with some sophisticated pop, wonderful ballads, and a few intense wailers that recall his great gospel material. This disc on the KEEN Label, and almost every other magnificent release by Sam Cooke from the '50s and early '60s, has been out of print for years. Track Listing
(Out of Print) See Offbeat Search & Rescue
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