Portrait of a Legend: 1951-64 - Cooke, Sam (CD 2003)

Soul music, like all genres of music in general, has so many familiar faces to them and so many names that have made the genre as credible as it is today. Its urbanized R&B roots have caused soul to branch out into so many other genres that more and more faces and names come along to keep the genre alive. And so many of these names bring together a sense of warm recollection and admiration of the work in soul music: Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, The Isleys, Stevie Wonder, Sly & The Family Stone, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Al Green, and, last but not least, the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown.

But in 1957, a 26-year-old singer from Clarksdale dominated both R&B and pop charts with one single, a gentle meld of the two genres with a gospel sensibility that helped to solidify the sound of soul music. The man performing the song was an African-American crooner who had been singing ever since he was a child, a veteran of the Teen Highway QC s (a young troupe who sang at religious meetings), and the man who from 1950-1956 helped develop a popular name for himself via his work leading the Soul Stirrers. He had gotten the devotion of African-American audiences, but made a radical move to go past religion and the black audience to reach mainstream audiences. The singer struck gold with a self-penned single which, besides being a #1 hit, sold two million copies on a small label.

The song: You Send Me. The artist: Sam Cooke.

Cooke s solo recording career spanned June 1956 to November 1964, from his renegade first single Lovable to the recording of Shake. Sam recorded a cadre of songs that helped solidify him as a pioneer, but also managed to do more than just sing and write hit singles: he founded both a song publishing company (Kags) and set up his own record label (SAR). He got involved in civil rights and had penned one of the key musical statements of the entire struggle, A Change Is Gonna Come, a song which also was a realization of what the future would hold for Sam Cooke.

But the future for Sam Cooke lasted until December 11, 1964. In a Los Angeles hotel, Cooke had spent the night with a woman who abandoned him and taken his clothes, and Cooke entered the manager s office looking for her. In a case that was ruled to justifiable homicide and not given as much attention then as it sure would have now, Sam Cooke had been shot to death and had his life tragically cut short at the age of 33. The man died, but the legend survived, and with Otis Redding the most notable among many who have covered Cooke s body of work, the man s music was heard and popularized time and again.

In 1986, RCA Records released a definitive Sam Cooke compilation on one single CD, the 28-song package The Man And His Music. But that collection is recently out-of-print, leaving only two minimal single-disc sets that had taken away a lot of the important Cooke tracks, so A Change Is Gonna Come didn t appear on either 1998 s Greatest Hits or 2000 s "16 Most Requested Songs," or, for that matter, did it not appear on The Man Who Invented Soul boxed set in 2000, which had every other essential track and even included his classic Live At Harlem Square Club, 1963 LP.

This omission was mostly due to the fact that Abkco Records owned the rights to his late recordings, and even tracks from his earliest gospel recordings for Specialty weren t featured. However, on June 17, 2003, Abkco issued a quartet of Sam Cooke releases on Hybrid SACD: the middling live release Sam Cooke At The Copa, the stellar final studio album Ain t That Good News, a 23-song compilation of near-career-end essentials called Keep Movin On, and the ultimate album to supplant The Man And His Music, Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964.

Rolling Stone Magazine have realized that the 1986 compilation is no longer available, and so when a group of musicians, writers and staffers voted on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, this new compilation took the place of the older counterpart. And it s also the right way to go anyway: this 30-track release not only bears the hallmarks of being remastered using the SACD technology, but it contains nearly all of the tracks from The Man And His Music, leaving off a couple songs and adding a few others: gone are That s Heaven To Me, When A Boy Falls In Love, Rome (Wasn t Built In A Day), Love Will Find A Way, Somebody Have Mercy, and Soothe Me, but all the remaining songs exist, and they ve included eight others: Lovable, (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons, You Were Made For Me, Sugar Dumpling, and covers of Jesus Gave Me Water, Tennessee Waltz, Little Red Rooster, & Summertime.

The CD liner notes are crammed with information on each song, whereas perhaps the older compilation had none. Peter Guralnick, who wrote the liner notes for Live At The Harlem Square Club, 1963, contributes an introduction and comprehensive track-by-track information, and there s also additional sections for recording/production information and an index of musician credits. All this is presented in a nice Digipak design, and the remastered quality of these songs trumps anything heard before it, with crisp attention given to the detail in Sam s voice and the musical arrangements: everything sounds so much better in either regular stereo or Super Audio that this will become a treasure in your collection.

All of Cooke s best is here, and I mean ALL of it. Let s run down the track listing:

1. Touch The Hem Of His Garment is the opening track and one of this album s Soul Stirrers gospel-oriented bookend trackss: this was an essential track from 1956, and the album closes with another from 1951. The only known instrumentalist here is Bob King, whose guitar is the first thing and last heard on the track. There are piano and drums here, and they lend a easygoing gospel rhythm to the track. The Soul Stirrers sing back-up to Sam s lead vocal, which soars and swings with a faith-inducing scale and pitch. This was a Cooke original, although it wasn t made preordained: Specialty Records A&R producer Bumps Blackwell remembers Sam was taking the Bible and searching for a passage, and he came upon the right one to make into a song. Sam s storytelling abilities are realized in this song, wherein a sickly woman manages to touch the robe of Jesus in hopes she will be saved.

2. Cooke s first solo single was Lovable, written by Cooke and Toni Harris and produced by Bumps Blackwell. Cooke was asked to record more pop-worthy material by a friend, and the result was a session of tracks cut in a New Orleans studio. When Lovable was issued as a single under Specialty, the track was credited to Dale Cook as to avoid controversy with the gospel audience, but Cooke was found out easily and the result was an outraged Specialty chairman Art Rupe surrendering Sam s contract and his latest session to Bumps in return for royalty payments. As it is, the song is a secular remake of The Soul Stirrers Wonderful, with lyrics slightly tweaked but Cooke s voice distinct and amazing, which made it all to easy for his cover to be blown. The background vocals weren t originally part of the song, and were recorded a year after the song came out. Nevertheless, if it s sweet, romantic soul you want, Lovable lives up to its title.

3. You Send Me was credited to brother Charles Cook because Sam was still signed to Specialty as a writer and didn t want them to reap the rewards off the song, which was a bright idea when this song became the smash it was destined to be. This was also the session where Art Rupe confronted Sam in, the date being June 1, 1957. A jazzy arrangement with a guitar hook, female harmonies, and upright bass rhythm to its credit, this was the record that broke Cooke into the pop audience like he wanted it to, and exposed the throaty yet marvelous singing voice which would drive Cook through a load of later recordings. A breezy ballad of growing love and devotion (it s only verse goes At first I thought it was infatuation/But it lasted so long/Now I find myself wanting/To marry you and take you home ), it would become a soul standard, not unlike future Sam Cooke classics on this CD, and had been covered by the likes of The Everly Brothers, Jose Feliciano, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Percy Sledge, and even Kenny Rogers and Steve Miller too.

4. She was Only Sixteen, but she was too young to fall in love/And I was too young to know, or so goes the chorus of this aching young love-gone-wrong track. A thumping bass rhythm and shuffling R&B ballad tempo drive this song, which was inspired by the sixteenth birthday of Lou Rawls stepsister and written by Sam, alongside Lou Adler & Herb Alpert, by request of the B-movie directing father of Steve Rowland, a teen actor who used to hang around the Keen Records studio and would ve performed this song if his producer hadn t argued against it simply because he didn t like the song. The bridge of this song came from an earlier Cooke number ( Little Things You Do ), and for a whispy 1:54 this song works a spellbinding magic. Both Craig Douglas and Dr. Hook unleashed hit covers of this song, the former a UK #1 and the latter a US #6, but Cooke s original remains a classic. One other side note: Cooke wrote this under another alias name, Barbara Campbell, to once again sideline profits out of Specialty s hands.

5. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons is a Nat King Cole cover delivered in a delightful soul blanket cradled by Cooke s passionate voice as well a chorus of female harmonies. To be truthful, I would prefer the dynamic live version Cooke recorded for Live At The Harlem Square Club, 1963 which stripped to song down to its raw R&B roots and featured some intensely magical interplay between the singer and a crowd of enthusiastic people who were more than proud to sing the back-up vocals. But that is because this song is so endearing that so many loved it under Cooke s guidance, and it makes a welcome addition to this set anyway.

6. Just For You from 1957 is a glorious R&B track with the kind of infectious bass-and-drum rhythm that would inspire The Drifters, and Cooke seems to lets loose here in his singing and crooning, bringing intensity and depth to his performance throughout. The lyrics are a revelation of desire and romantic worth: When you see me working all night long/Working till my stress was gone I finally realize that it s just for you. The song was actually not released on any Sam Cooke album until 1986 s The Man And His Music because it was used basically as an offering to RCA Records via Sam s SAR label.

7. Win Your Love For Me was an RCA single in 1958 that made #22 on the pop charts. The version of this song contains background vocals, unlike that on The Man And His Music. Not exactly a love ballad, it s more of an upbeat song that draws on Latin rhythms and the background vocals merge well with Sam s voice to create one of Sam s great lost hits, simply because it differs from a typical soul structure that didn t attract the attention of a lot of cover versions, and it showed Sam going in an admirable new direction of songwriting.

8. When he went with his daughter to Lou Rawls stepfather s house for a Christmas party in 1958, Sam was so motivated by the sight of an entire party doing the cha cha that he penned a song on the spot and a week into the new year checked into Radio Recorders studio in Hollywood to record the song. Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha keeps the spicy Latin influence coming with an upbeat and joyful celebration of bringing your girl to a party and teaching her to cha cha cha. The personnel on this track are bassist Adolphus Alsbrook (also played on 7, 10 and 13), guitarists Rene Hall (also played on 3,10, 12, 16-18, 20-29) and Clifton White (also 3-7 and 10-29), drummer Charles Blackwell (also on tracks 5, 7 and 10), and Jack Costanza & Mike Pacheco on the bongos.

9. I ll Come Running Back To You was a song from the New Orleans sessions that Loveable spawned from. The ballad format comes back big time, and this song (obviously inspired by You Send Me ) features most of the same instrumentation and backing vocals borrowed from Cooke s #1 hit and overdubbed by Rene Hall. Cooke s voice is a smoky entity onto itself, and this dedication to longing for love makes it work like a charm.

10. A Top 40 hit from 1958, You Were Made For Me was revealed by Cooke to be his favorite song four years later in an interview. Lawrence Bunker plays the vibe instruments and only contributes to this song s dreamy appeal, as Cooke lends his vocals another gentle workout to such lyrics as A fish was made to swim in the ocean/A boat was made to sail on the sea/As sure as there are stars above, I know, I know/You were made for me.

11. Sad Mood is Sam s first bluesy ballad, a song where he loses his love but feels the need to mourn. Milton Hinton delivers a superb upright bass lick, and the arrangement is given heft by string arrangements.

12. Bobby and Kenny Simms do the mimicking noise of having an arrow fly by and hit Sam Cooke s heart in the chorus of the lovely Cupid, one of his most sweet and textured romantic songs to date. With a Caribbean lilt to the typical R&B rhythm, as well as the inclusion of French horn and later a wistful violin (like it was straight from some lost Lieber/Stoller gem) piercing the rhythm, which in the great tradition of fusion melds the most sensuous elements of foreign and modern musical elements, all of which have been developed in all of the previous songs. And the voice Cooke adopts is velvety and pleading, a lover s prayer to the God of Love himself for a companion: Cupid, draw back your bow/And let your arrow go/Straight to my lover s heart for me/Cupid, please hear my cry/And let your arrow fly/Straight to my lover s heart for me. This is one of Cooke s essentials, but it couldn t get Cooke back into the Top 10 like it should have.

13. Neither Cupid nor this song did the deed, but the song that is track 13 came wee close, peaking at #12. I m talking about (What A) Wonderful World, Cooke s second writing collaboration with Adler & Alpert and one of the Cooke classics that would be featured in the memorable National Lampoon s Animal House. Art Garfunkel would cover it with sadness, and Herman s Hermits would cover it in joy, and Otis Redding would just cover it and do the best job so far. The instrumentation is fairly similar, standing bass and brushed drums and acoustic guitars make up the foundations, with distinct background vocals and, in the case of this song, no strings attached. But as a pop song, this is one of Cooke s best: a soulful, pining, slightly sullen vocal delivery drives the narrator, who may not be a genius at some things, but hopes love will find a way: Don t know much about history/Don t know much biology/Don t know much about a science book/Don t know much about the French I took/But I do know that I love you/And if you say that you love me, too/What a wonderful world this would be.

14. I hear someone saying Uhhh, Ahhh, Uhhh, Ahhh. Chain Gang opens with these noises as well as clanging sounds like pick-axes striking stone. The musicians credits are all but known on this track, but the work on guitar deserves applause because it lends a solid melody to the clacking backdrop, and the rhythm throughout remains true to Sam s Latino experimentations. A deep voice bellows Well don t you know followed by Sam and a backing chorus delivering the famous line: That s the sound of the men, working on the chain ga-a-ang. The song s depiction of the highway prisoners working their lives away is accessible, and there s a sense of longing to be somewhere else hinted in lyrics like I m going home one of these days/I m going home to see my woman whom I love so dear/But meanwhile, I got to work right here. An orchestra arrangement sweetens the driving beats, and Cooke keeps a restraint on his vocals, never singing with true protesting anger but not glamorizing or glorifying the outlaw spirit. Instead, he sings the verses with an observational tone, something which would change if you pick up the Harlem Square, 1963 live CD, where Cooke s raspy delivery and the live-band setting brings out a different side of the song. Either way, Chain Gang almost became a second #1 hit, and is regarded as one of his greatest.

15. Sam Cooke had a reinterpretation of the Gershwin standard Summertime which nearly perplexed his longtime guitarist Cliff White. The harmony [was] entirely reversed, he said, and the song was done in a later remake, the one which shows up here. High-shrieking background voices that sound angelic in nature appear throughout the entire song, as a bluesy shuffle unfolds. Cooke does show a soft confidence here, and it s great to hear a stretch from R&B ballads.

16. Another cover song shows Cooke s interest in blues, something which grew late in his career, and Willie Dixon s Little Red Rooster is the song in question. Joined by drummer Hal Blaine and a sixteen-year-old Billy Preston on organ (and he can really cooke, no pun intended), there s an appeal to this jumpin blues resurrection, sung with conviction and loose drive by Cooke. This song appeared on the 1963 album Night Beat, considered by many to be Sam s finest real studio LP to date.

17. Bring It On Home To Me pairs Cooke with singer Lou Rawls for a smooth, passionate reflection of Cooke s gospel roots. With Ernest Freeman s rolling piano throughout, as well as an excellent orchestral section under Rene Hall s conduction, Cooke pleads for his lover to come back against a wall of certainty and honesty, admitting his mistakes and wanting to make up in any way: You know I'll always be your slave
'til I'm buried, buried in my grave/Bring it to me, bring your sweet loving/Bring it on home to me/Yeah (yeah), yeah (yeah), yeah (yeah), yeah (yeah). The studio version is an earnest plea, but I recommend the live album from 1963 again because even if Rawls is absent, Cooke still sounds assured and pleading, perhaps to an even greater degree.

18. Nothing Can Change This Love is a more heartfelt ballad than others, more lush and naked in its arrangement, but still bears Cooke s ability to inject feeling into a song, be it loving or thinking or mocking or longing. The way Cooke sings this song is more important than the words, with a bridge section referring to his girl as cherry pie and cake and ice cream.

19. Sugar Dumpling is presented here in the 1963 version he recorded at United Recording, CA. This was a posthumous Top 40 hit in September of 1965, and the version here is steeped in soul, and even presents some doo-wop influence. The background guitar licks and harmony vocals add some subtlety to the urgent, jovial and celebratory in Cooke s voice, and all the while the rhythm clicks along with toe-tapping finesse. The woman Cooke sings of is surely one-of-a-kind: Whenever I tell her, Honey I'm hungry/Now go and fix me something to eat, /The girl rushes in the kitchen/And fixes me a dinner/With seven different kinds of meat.


20. Ain t That Good News almost reached the Top 10 in 1964. The flavorful conga drums, banjo plucking, and blasts of trumpet bring a cheerful groove to the music that is basically country mixed with swing and soul in one simple 2:30 single. Sam was adapting a gospel song which was made famous by the Staple Singers, and the way Cooke delivers the news, there are times where he just can t contain himself, times when he feels content, and, as the liner notes mention, moments of wistful melancholy. But for the most part, Cooke sounds for the most part satisfied the girl he loves will be there at the station for him.

21. Meet Me At Mary s Place came from the same album that Ain t That Good News came from, and this particular release, 1964 s Ain t That Good News, also features three other songs on this collection: Tennessee Waltz, Another Saturday Night, and A Change Is Gonna Come. The song was originally another of Sam s songs designed to cash in on the twist, and Johnnie Morisette covered that song, Meet Me At The Twisting Place. But the Mary in the song is really Mary Pratt, a gospel lover from Charlotte, North Carolina, and the background vocals on this track are his old friends from The Soul Stirrers, who saw this as a chance to make some real gospel without the pop pretensions, which is exactly what this song is: 100% pure, honest-to-God gospel heaven, a failure as a single but a blessing in Cooke s catalog.

22. Are you ready to some major-league twistin ? Cooke apparently wrote the party-starting funk-soul smash Twistin The Night Away after seeing TV footage of elderly ladies twisting at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC. It s really a story-telling song, perhaps his own imagining of that hot spot where young and old, men in evening clothes or blue jeans, and where chicks in slacks or older queens dolled up in diamond rings can go to twist their troubles away. It sure does sound retro hearing a song about the twist these days, but this stands alongside Chubby Checker s take on The Twist as a long-lasting classic of twisting proportions.

23. Shake was a Top 10 single in the wake of Cooke s death, as was A Change Is Gonna Come, and I can t help but think of how both these songs appeared in stellar cover versions on Otis Redding s essential 1966 release Otis Blue. As Shake appears in Cooke s version though, it is just a sad hint at a voice silenced too early, a talent who died before his time, and someone who seemed poised to become an innovator. The liner notes mention Bobby Freeman s C mon and Swim influenced this song, one of the most uncharacteristic but also one of the most fun songs in Cooke s repertoire, another theme dance number. Cooke was onto something when he realized the sound of a song was the driving force of R&B in modern times, and Shake is one great big ball of sound, brass and solid swinging grooves driving the entire song in a jubilant and funky manner.

24. Tennessee Waltz is a late-career track that takes the Patti Page song and gives it a twist: no longer is it a waltz but a sober, brass-driven song once again rooted in gospel but with a fervent acoustic guitar rhythm behind it. This is one of Cooke s best cover songs to date, and it even shows the surprise influence of country music on Cooke.

25. Another Saturday Night was written by imagination, when they stayed at the Royal Maharajah Suite at the Mayfair Hotel in England during a tour in the fall of 1962 and learned they could have no ladies with them. Cooke picked up the guitar and gave birth to a lonely-man anthem ( Another Saturday Night, but I ain't got nobody/I got some money, 'cause I just got paid/How I wished I had someone to talk to ) by way of his own experience being left in the dry English existence ( I got to town a month ago/I seen a lot of girls since then/If I could meet them I could get them/But as yet I haven't met them/That's why I'm in the shape I'm in ). Strangely enough, with a chorus as sing-along catchy as can be and another jubilant Latin-inspired beat, this song is anything but pure Brian Wilson melancholy, and this is Sam Cooke s best single of 1963 as well as a greatest hit.

26. If the strains of Let The Good Times Roll enter your mind when you hear the start of Good Times, well you aren t crazy. 25 takes into the same session which spawned the hit Ain t That Good News, Cooke finally nabbed the joyous feel of Good Times, and the giddy thrill of this song is driven by an island rhythm that mixes marimbas, congas, xylophone and acoustic guitar in one swift 2:28 cannon of sunny fun. Cooke was alive during the time this song was a hit, and it was unfortunately the last song of his to chart before the December incident that cost him his life. This song was resurrected by the Rolling Stones for their seminal album Out Of Our Heads, and Robert Christgau opinioned that Mick Jagger, although sounding like he wished us good times, made the prospect seem doubtful where Sam Cooke enjoyed the wish itself. This song and the next are lite party anthems Cooke effortlessly pioneered.

27. Having A Party is a slow song, something which seemed poised to explode into spontaneous joy and fun on a live album (1963!), but sounds simply like a smooth soul-pop track meant to fill two-and-a-half minutes. But when Sam Cooke is singing it, and the way the awesome arrangement mixes fresh-sounding guitars with swooning strings up until the fade out, during which we hear Sam joined by J.W. and Lou Rawls and Fred Smith in a clap-your-hand and sing coda, what more could you ask for. The message of Sam Cooke is to keep on having that party, and when he concludes that Harlem Square gig I couldn t help but mention time and time again, these are the last things he says. The party is still going on, Sam, and it will never end.

28. That s Where It s At was written by Cooke with J.W. Alexander and original recorded for those twins who sang on Cupid. The use of a sixth chord, like Peter Guralnick aptly says, somewhat expresses fatality and profundity, and the bass, guitars and horns lend this sort of moody grace to the song. The lyrics are striking: Your heart beatin' fast/You're knowin' that time won't last/But a-hopin' that it lasts/That's where it's at.

29. The song Bob Dylan inspired Sam Cooke to write, A Change Is Gonna Come is the near-conclusion of this stellar compilation. The Rene Hall orchestral composition is the most grand and realized of all the arrangements he made for Sam Cooke to date. The song itself came to Cooke not only through Dylan s Blowin In The Wind, but also experiences with racial segregation and his conversations with student sit-in demonstrators in Durham. This was Sam Cooke s most reflective and observational piece of realist songwriting, where he sees himself in a world full of injustice and uncertainty, and assures himself of the future bringing a change. The last lines of the song go a little like this: There have been times that I thought I couldn't last for long/But now I think I'm able to carry on/It's been a long time, but I know/A change is gonna come, oh yes it will. This effective, spiritual and universal song showed Sam Cooke standing up for civil rights, and God only knows where he could ve went from that.

30. Like the album opened with Cooke singing vintage gospel, so it ends the same way. Jesus Gave Me Water was taken from the very first session Sam cut with the Soul Stirrers, recorded in only two takes in March of 1951 when he was only 20 and able to sing his heart away. His lead vocal soars with self-assurance and at times he just sounds like he was destined to bigger and better things as a solo artist. This isn t just a realization, but a revelation, an early gem that shows where Sam Cooke came from and what influence would guide him through the years 1951-1964. An extra unlisted track appears after this one, and I ll let you hear it for yourself.

This is the last word on Sam Cooke, the only greatest hits CD you will ever need from this artist, and proof positive what the wonders of SACD can do to a voice like Sam Cooke s. His voice alone is as full of varied tones and pitches as any primitive musical instrument, and when it comes to soul music, gospel and R&B, this was a man who was able to turn all three of these genres into something spectacular. The ballads, the dance numbers, the reflective pieces, the dedications and celebrations and ruminations songs from Mr. Soul, the man who made you Feel It, got a whole country to Twistin The Night Away, and told everyone when the party seemed about to end that they should always keep Having A Party no matter where they go or what they do. Play Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 at high volume on your stereo/SACD system, and it ll be like 1962 all over again and with Sam Cooke, you know it s going to be heaven.