Sam Cooke
A man who opened the door to pop with a voice learned in church, and who hoped that, in the end, his songs would belong to himself.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyCharles Cook
A minister in a Holiness church, he passed on to his son not only faith but the art of speaking and singing before a congregation.
- ColleagueJ.W. Alexander
A gospel elder who led the Pilgrim Travelers, he taught Cooke the importance of copyright and became his lifelong business partner, co-founding SAR Records and Kags Music with him.
- ColleagueBumps Blackwell
A producer at Specialty who steered Cooke's move to pop, he walked out with the recordings — even giving up his royalties to do so — and brought “You Send Me” to the world.
- FriendshipLou Rawls
A friend from his Chicago gospel days, he survived the 1958 car crash alongside Cooke and sang the answering vocal to Cooke's lead on “Bring It On Home to Me.”
- InfluenceAretha Franklin
As a teenager, looked up to Cooke, a regular at the Reverend Franklin's church, and following his lead crossed from gospel to pop, later singing “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
- FriendshipMuhammad Ali
A friend who spent the night of the 1964 victory over Sonny Liston with Cooke, Malcolm X, and Jim Brown, and who shared with Cooke the idea of Black self-reliance and pride.
I. The minister's son · 1931–1949
(Birth) He was born in January 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. His given name was Samuel Cook. His father, Charles Cook, was a minister in a Holiness church, and his mother, Annie Mae, raised eight children; Sam was the fifth. For a Black family in the cotton country, the South was a land of narrow chances, and around 1933 the family moved north to Chicago, as countless Black households did. (Church) In Chicago's Black South Side, his father took charge of a church, and the children sang at services. Sam's first stage is said to have been touring churches with his younger siblings as 'the Singing Children.' Singing was a matter of faith, and a family matter, too. (Idol) As a teenager at Wendell Phillips High School, he joined the gospel quartet the Highway QCs. Chicago was then the center of Black gospel, and the boy grew up watching at close range as celebrated groups made the church circuit and competed. The singer he listened to most intently was R.H. Harris, lead of the Soul Stirrers. Harris's clear high register, his falsetto, and his way of stretching a single syllable over many winding notes (melisma) would become Cooke's starting point. (Temperament) By his brothers' accounts, he was at ease in front of people from an early age. From his father at the pulpit he learned to read an audience and to pace his words. Biographers broadly agree that this childhood in the parsonage lies beneath the way Cooke's songs, all his life, sound less like shouting than like speaking to someone.
II. The Soul Stirrers · 1950–1956
(Joining) In 1950, the nineteen-year-old Cooke took over the lead spot Harris had left in the Soul Stirrers. A young man barely twenty had entered one of the foremost gospel groups in America. At first he was said to be imitating Harris, but he soon found his own way. Instead of pushing with power, a lightly floated tone and short ornaments rolled in the throat became his signature. (Mentor) The group signed with Specialty Records in Los Angeles and made its first recordings in 1951. J.W. Alexander, who led the Pilgrim Travelers, a gospel group on the same label, taught Cooke the arithmetic of the record business: singing alone left no money behind; you had to write the songs and own the rights. (Audience) Young women flocked to the shows where Cooke sang. Among longtime believers, it is said, there was muttering that he sang hymns like love songs. With original songs such as “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” he also made a name as a songwriter. (Marriage) In 1953 he married the singer Dolores Mohawk, but touring kept them apart much of the time, and the two divorced in 1958. Around the same time, his first daughter was born to Barbara Campbell, whom he had known since his Chicago days. (Crossroads) Watching Ray Charles succeed by carrying gospel's idiom into rhythm and blues, Cooke weighed a turn to secular music. But for a gospel singer, crossing over to pop was seen as turning one's back on the community. In 1956 he released his first pop single, “Lovable,” under the pseudonym Dale Cook. No one could fail to recognize that voice, and the alias did not last long.
A song Cooke wrote himself in his Soul Stirrers days, it captures the height of his gospel era, when he stood as both singer and songwriter.
- Cooke unfolds the Gospel story of the woman who believed that touching even the hem of His garment would heal her, point by point, in the manner of a storyteller who is half preaching.
- Throughout, the voice never bursts out but floats lightly, with short ornaments rolled at the ends of syllables. The habit you will later hear in his pop hits is already fully formed.
- Listen for the texture of the group members behind him, holding up the harmony and trading lines with the lead (call and response). The instruments are minimal; layers of voices carry the song.
- As the song moves on, the lead's pitch rises little by little and tension builds. This restraint, building without a shout, is often cited as what set Cooke apart from the gospel leads of his day.
III. You Send Me · 1957–1959
(Break) In June 1957, Specialty producer Bumps Blackwell and Cooke held a pop session in Los Angeles. The label's owner, Art Rupe, dropping by the studio, is said to have disliked the smooth arrangement with its white chorus. After a quarrel, Blackwell agreed to forfeit the royalties due in exchange for leaving the label with Cooke and some of the recordings, which saw the light of day on the new label Keen Records. (Summit) “You Send Me,” released that fall, topped both the Billboard pop chart and the R&B chart. A Black gospel singer's song had reached the bedrooms of white teenagers, a success that broke through the walls of genre (crossover). The songwriting credit went to his younger brother L.C. Cook, because his publishing contract with Specialty was still in force. (Test) Success soon led to a trial. His 1958 debut at the Copacabana, New York's elegant nightclub, met a lukewarm response. Before a middle-aged white audience he had not yet found his footing, and he is said to have brooded on this failure for a long time. (Accident) In November 1958 in Arkansas, the tour car collided with a truck, killing the driver, his colleague Eddie Cunningham. Lou Rawls, a friend from his Chicago days who was also in the car, was injured badly enough to be pronounced dead for a time, while Cooke escaped with relatively minor injuries. The following year his first wife, Dolores, also died in a car accident. (Independence) Having lived through a system in which other companies profited from songs he had written, he founded the publishing company Kags Music and the label SAR Records with J.W. Alexander in 1959. That same year he married Barbara Campbell.
Carried out of Specialty on his departure, the recording topped both the pop and R&B charts and turned the gospel singer Cooke into a national pop star.
- The song begins with the voice almost from the first moment. Its hallmark is a low, gentle delivery, like someone in love confessing a bewildered heart.
- Underneath lie a lazily swaying guitar, light drums, and a white chorus sustaining long notes behind him. The very arrangement Art Rupe reportedly disliked was the key that made the song a crossover hit.
- It uses the technique of stretching a single syllable over many winding notes (melisma), yet never overdoes it. Scaling a gospel-bred skill down to a whisper sounds like the song's secret.
- The whole song is built on a simple structure, repeating the same short phrase while shifting the notes little by little. With no elaborate bridge, repetition alone holds the ear.
IV. Two labels · 1960–1962
(Move) In 1960 Cooke left Keen and signed with the major label RCA Victor. His producers were the cousins Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, known as Hugo & Luigi. The pair wrapped his voice in a sleek sound of strings and chorus, and “Chain Gang” (1960), “Cupid” (1961), and “Twistin' the Night Away” (1962) became hits one after another. (Assessment) Opinion is still divided between those who say RCA's lavish arrangements smothered his voice and those who say they made him a national star. Cooke himself thought of singles and albums separately: the singles aimed at the market, while on albums he tried blues and standards. (SAR) At his own label, SAR, he was owner, songwriter, and producer. Johnnie Taylor, his successor as lead of the Soul Stirrers; the Womack brothers' Valentinos; and the teenage organist Billy Preston all recorded there. At the time, it was rare for a Black singer to run a label and a publishing house of their own. (Reunion) On “Bring It On Home to Me” in 1962, he brought in Lou Rawls, who had survived the crash, and recorded a churchlike exchange (call and response). Long accused of leaving gospel behind, he reached No. 2 on the R&B chart with his most gospel-like song. (Aretha) Cooke was also a fellow gospel singer who frequented the Detroit home of the Reverend C.L. Franklin. In an autobiography, the minister's daughter Aretha Franklin recalled looking up to him as a teenager and, watching him cross over to pop, dreaming of the same path. Cooke's precedent lay behind Aretha's signing with Columbia in 1960 and turn toward secular music.
A song polished at Keen Records with Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, it was released by Keen just after Cooke moved to RCA and became a hit.
- A student's confession: not much good at schoolwork, but sure about love. Its charm lies in the playful way it lists school subjects one by one.
- A relaxed guitar and a rhythm that seems to stroll lightly support the song. Cooke's voice is easy, less like singing than like talking to a friend.
- At the chorus the voice rises slightly and brightens, but the climb is so small that it feels all the more unadorned. The song shows Cooke's restraint, sparing with ornaments, at its clearest.
His first big hit after the move to RCA, it sets a scene of Black convict labor in the South within Hugo & Luigi's sleek production.
- The backbone of the song is the short grunt the male chorus lets out on every beat, along with percussion that sounds like hammered metal. It is a device that turns the work rhythm of prisoners chained together into sound.
- The lyrics capture the hearts of prisoners who work all day long, longing for their sweethearts back home. Cooke sings this heavy subject not with lament but in a calm, gentle voice.
- The strings and chorus underneath are RCA's signature adult-oriented pop sound. Listen for how the sound of hard labor and the polished arrangement collide within a single song.
- A heavy rhythm that pounds down evenly on each beat never changes to the end. That monotony itself sounds like the repeated hours of forced labor.
His friend Lou Rawls, a survivor of the car accident, joins on chorus vocals, reviving the pair's Chicago gospel roots on a pop single.
- From the opening, with its churchlike piano chords, you can feel the air of a gospel chapel.
- When Cooke sings a line, Lou Rawls's low, rich voice answers it like an echo. The structure carries the call and response of preacher and congregation over into a lover's plea.
- It is a plea to a departed lover to come back, yet Cooke's voice persuades calmly rather than clinging. Rawls's answers lend the appeal its weight.
- As the song goes on, the two voices overlap more and more, and the heat rises. It is worth comparing with the live recording from the same year, in which Cooke stretched the song out far longer and hotter.
V. A change is gonna come · 1963–1964
(Ownership) In 1963 Cooke brought in Allen Klein, a New York accountant, as his business manager. Klein renegotiated with RCA and set up an arrangement in which Cooke's own company owned the master rights to his recordings and leased them to RCA. A contract that made the singer the owner of the recordings was extremely rare at the time. (Loss) That June his son Vincent, a year and a half old, drowned in the family swimming pool. Cooke was shattered, and those close to him say he began drinking far more heavily afterward. (Night) That same year he recorded a face quite unlike the polished hits. The live set taped in January at a Black club in Miami was a raw, sweat-soaked performance, but RCA did not release it. “Night Beat,” the album he recorded in February with a small band, was spare, understated night music close to the blues. (Insult) In October 1963 the Holiday Inn in Shreveport, Louisiana, turned away Cooke's party despite their reservation. When he and his companions protested, they were arrested for disturbing the peace. Around that time, it is said, he heard Bob Dylan's “Blowin' in the Wind” and felt ashamed that a young white man was singing about the plight of Black people while he himself had stayed silent. (Answer) “A Change Is Gonna Come,” recorded in January 1964, was his answer. In February, in Miami, he spent a night in a hotel room with his friend Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), who had just beaten Sonny Liston, along with Malcolm X and the football player Jim Brown. Their talk of Black self-reliance and dignity left a deep mark on Cooke's thinking that year. In July he returned to the Copacabana stage where he had failed six years earlier, and this time he was applauded.
Recorded live at a Black club in Miami in January 1963, it lay buried for 22 years because it did not fit Cooke's polished image before it was finally released.
- In place of the smooth voice of the studio recordings, you hear a Cooke who cracks and shouts roughly. That the same man could sound so different onstage is the record's greatest shock.
- The band led by saxophonist King Curtis drives relentlessly with horns and a backbeat (drums hitting hard on the second and fourth beats). Listen, too, for the way the songs run into one another without a break.
- In “Bring It On Home to Me,” Cooke stretches the song out and invites the audience to sing along. The moment when the whole club answers like a church congregation is vividly captured.
- The crowd's shouts and applause sit loud at the front of the mix. The record is regarded as a document of what Cooke could do on a stage meant for a Black audience alone.
Born of the humiliation in Shreveport and the fervor of the civil rights movement, the song came out as a B-side after Cooke's death and became an anthem of the movement.
- The song opens with strings swirling grandly in René Hall's arrangement. Unlike Cooke's other songs, it has a majestic, dark introduction, like a film score.
- Unfolding in the first person the life of a man born by a river and forced to keep moving, it interweaves weary resignation with unbroken hope. Cooke's voice never climbs; it holds low to the very end.
- In the bridge the strings withdraw and the drums settle heavily as the song depicts being turned away at the door under discrimination. Knowing that this passage was cut when the single came out in late 1964 makes it weigh differently.
- The climax comes at the end, as he draws out the last long note, gathering strength. It is counted the summit of Cooke's singing, conveying conviction without raising his voice.
VI. The Hacienda Motel · 1964
(Death) In the early hours of December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, Cooke was shot dead by the motel manager. He was thirty-three. According to the police account, a woman who had checked into the motel with him left the room carrying his clothes, and Cooke, searching for her, burst into the manager's office. The coroner's inquest ruled it self-defense. (Doubts) Many of his family and colleagues refused to accept this conclusion. Etta James, who saw the body herself, wrote in her autobiography that he had been beaten so badly that the gunshot alone could not account for it. But the case was never reopened, and no firm evidence supporting another conclusion has emerged. (Funeral) Funerals were held in Chicago and Los Angeles. Huge crowds of mourners came in both cities, and Ray Charles sang at the Los Angeles service. (Posthumous release) Later that month the single “Shake” came out, with “A Change Is Gonna Come” on its B-side. From the following year on, the song was sung on civil rights marches. Otis Redding, who idolized Cooke, recorded it and “Shake” on his 1965 album “Otis Blue,” and Aretha Franklin included it on her first Atlantic album in 1967. (Legacy) Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack and many other soul singers took his style as their starting point. In 1986 he was among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The rights to his post-1960 recordings, which he had fought to keep, passed after his death to the control of Klein's company, ABKCO. Gospel faith, pop success, a businessman's independence, a voice for civil rights — he tried to hold all of these in a single life, and the attempt ended at thirty-three.
Lesser-known stories
(A brother's name) For a long time the composer of “You Send Me” was listed as his younger brother, L.C. Cook. Cooke's publishing contract with Specialty was still in force, so registering the song under his own name could have handed the rights to his old label. Biographer Peter Guralnick sees this as the moment Cooke awoke to the ownership of songs. It was a name made by a contract, one the record credits alone would never reveal. (Pen name) The early credits of “Wonderful World” bore the name Barbara Campbell. A song Cooke had polished together with the young songwriters Herb Alpert and Lou Adler was registered under the name of his then girlfriend and future wife. Alpert went on to found A&M Records and Adler became a renowned producer, but the fact that their early careers lay hidden in a Cooke song was long obscured by the credits. (The buried live set) RCA shelved the January 1963 live recording from Miami's Harlem Square Club right after it was made. The label judged that the raw, heated performance did not fit Cooke's smooth image, aimed at nightclubs and the white adult market. The tapes were not released until 1985, and today the album is counted a classic of live soul. Only twenty years after his death did this other face of his become known. (The cut passage) Cooke is said to have performed “A Change Is Gonna Come” in public only once in his lifetime, on television's “The Tonight Show” in February 1964, and no recording of that broadcast is said to survive. And when the song came out as a single in late 1964, the bridge depicting rejection under discrimination was cut. What is widely heard today is the complete version from the album.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Gospel
(Meaning) The English word gospel comes from the Old English god-spel, “good (god) news (spel).” In Christianity it refers to the gospel (福音), the glad tidings that carry the teachings of Jesus. (In pop) Religious music that grew up in Black American churches. The lead singer cries out a line and the choir answers back; as feeling swells, voices bend and stretch, lifting the congregation. Most of the vocal style of soul and R&B came from here. Picture a song the whole school sings together in the auditorium, growing hotter with clapping and shouting, and you have something like the atmosphere of a gospel church. (Elsewhere) In everyday English it also means unquestionable truth: when you believe what someone says completely, you take it as gospel.
Falsetto
(Meaning) The Italian falsetto comes from falso, “false.” It means a false voice rather than one's usual voice; in Korean it is called gaseong ('false voice', 假聲). (In pop) A technique of thinning the vocal cords to produce notes far higher than one's normal voice, light and clear. Male singers often use it to reach into the female range. R.H. Harris, Sam Cooke's idol, was famous for his falsetto. If you have ever spoken in a deliberately high, thin voice to startle a friend, that is where falsetto begins.
Melisma
(Meaning) The Greek melisma means 'song' or 'melody.' (In pop) A technique of stretching a single syllable of the lyric across many notes, as when the voice rises and falls several times while singing just one syllable. Born in gospel, it became the signature skill of soul and R&B singers. When someone bends and twirls a single syllable on the last line of “Happy Birthday” to show off, that is melisma.
Call and response
(In pop) Just as the words call and response suggest, a structure in which one person sings out and another person or a group sings back. It comes from African music and the preaching tradition of the Black church, and it runs throughout gospel·blues·soul. In “Bring It On Home to Me,” Cooke calling and Lou Rawls answering is a fine example. It is just like a field-day cheer, when the cheerleader shouts a line and the whole stand roars it back at once. (Elsewhere) In classrooms, too, a teaching method in which the teacher poses a question and the students answer together goes by the same name.
Crossover
(Meaning) The English crossover comes from cross over: to cross a boundary line to the other side. (In pop) When a song made for one genre or one audience also becomes a big hit in another market. In 1950s America the R&B chart for Black listeners and the pop chart for white listeners were separate, and “You Send Me” reaching No. 1 on both was a classic crossover. It is like a game once popular only among your younger siblings that one day your parents are playing too. (Elsewhere) In basketball, a crossover is a dribble that moves the ball quickly from one hand to the other to get past a defender.
Master (master rights)
(In pop) The master is the very first original recording from which records are pressed, and master rights are the right to own that original recording. Whoever holds the master decides where to sell the recording and when to reissue it, and takes the largest share of the revenue. Because the record company, not the singer, usually held them, a singer like Cooke getting hold of his master rights meant a great deal. It is like how only the person with the original file of the class photo can print it and hand out copies as they please. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, master means an owner or an expert in some field, and in games it also names the most skilled player.
Publishing
(Meaning) The English publish comes from the Latin publicare, to put before the public. (In pop) Managing the copyright not in a recording but in the song itself, that is, its melody and lyrics. Every time someone records the song or plays it on air, the songwriter and the publishing company get paid. Even for the same song, the owner of the recording (master) and the owner of the song (publishing) can differ. If a friend recites and records a poem you wrote, the recording may be your friend's, but the poem itself is still yours. (Elsewhere) In general it refers to the business of putting out books·newspapers·magazines.
B-side
(In pop) Old single records carried one song on each side of a disc. The label put the lead song it wanted to push on the front (the A-side) and a song it considered less important on the back (the B-side). Yet sometimes the B-side was loved more, as with “A Change Is Gonna Come,” the B-side of “Shake.” It is like those days when the side dish on the school lunch menu is more popular than the main course.