Sam Cooke

History regards Sam Cooke as soul music’s foremost practitioner, the genre’s true originator, and a vocalist adored equally by Black and white listeners. He also ranked among the earliest Black artists and songwriters to treat the commercial machinery of the industry with serious attention, establishing his own record label and publishing firm as natural extensions of his work as a performer and composer. Commercial concerns never kept him from addressing urgent social questions, above all the battle for civil rights. The rising force of that struggle traced an arc that matched Cooke’s ascent to stardom; his career repeatedly crossed racial boundaries that almost no one else had managed to bridge. In the same manner that Chuck Berry and Little Richard drew Black and white teenagers into the same rooms, that James Brown reached white adolescents while holding listeners of every age in the Black community, and that Muddy Waters placed young white folk enthusiasts alongside older Black migrants from the South, Cooke attracted all of those audiences plus the parents of white teens, without ever sacrificing standing among his core Black following. His breadth and depth of appeal, in that respect, prefigured the reach the Beatles would later enjoy.

Born Sam Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on January 22, 1931, he was one of eight children of a Baptist minister and his wife. Even in childhood he possessed an exceptional voice and sang regularly in his father’s church choir. Midway through the decade the Cook family relocated to Chicago’s South Side, where the Reverend Charles Cook soon became a leading presence in the city’s religious life. Sam and three siblings formed their own ensemble, the Singing Children, during the 1930s. Although his own singing remained limited to gospel, he listened appreciatively to the secular hits of the day, especially the smooth, harmony-rich style of the Ink Spots, whose influence would later surface in recordings such as “You Send Me” and “For Sentimental Reasons.” As a teenager he joined the Teen Highway QCs, a gospel quartet that appeared at churches and religious events. That association led to an introduction to the Soul Stirrers, one of the nation’s premier gospel groups, and in 1950 he became a member.

Even if Cooke had never issued a secular record, gospel audiences would still remember him for his six years with the Soul Stirrers. During that time his stature within the group and across the broader Black community grew until he commanded his own fiercely loyal following, earned through performances on “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” “Nearer to Thee,” and “That’s Heaven to Me.” The ensemble ranked among the leading acts on Art Rupe’s Specialty Records roster, yet Cooke’s ambition extended beyond religious listeners and beyond Black audiences alone. At the time, any move into pop music risked instant alienation from gospel supporters, who viewed sacred song as both a talent and a duty while regarding popular music, rock & roll, and R&B as incompatible with that calling. The divide was so pronounced that when blues singer Blind Gary Davis embraced religion and became the Rev. Gary Davis, he had to supply new lyrics to his former blues melodies and never again performed the original words.

Cooke first tested popular waters in 1956 with the single “Lovable,” produced by Bumps Blackwell and issued under the pseudonym Dale Cooke to avoid drawing immediate notice from his gospel constituency. The release nonetheless prompted his departure from the Soul Stirrers and from Specialty. Free to record under his own name, he delivered one of the decade’s largest-selling singles, the Cooke original “You Send Me,” which surpassed two million copies on the small Keen Records label and reached number one on both the pop and R&B charts. Though it may sound restrained today, “You Send Me” represented a groundbreaking soul record in its moment, fusing R&B, gospel, and pop elements into a sound that was still taking shape.

He remained with Keen for the next two years, during which he produced some of the era’s most graceful romantic ballads and teen-oriented singles, among them “For Sentimental Reasons,” “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha,” “Only Sixteen,” and “(What A) Wonderful World.” These sides were exceptionally polished, and between the hits he recorded early album projects, most notably Tribute to the Lady, devoted to songs associated with Billie Holiday. Dissatisfied with both the financial terms at Keen and the constraints of a small label, he fielded offers from major companies, including Atlantic and RCA Records. Atlantic, then the leading R&B-oriented imprint, might have provided a comfortable home, yet the label sought his publishing rights, and Cooke already understood the value of retaining ownership of his copyrights.

He therefore signed with RCA Records, at the time one of the three largest labels worldwide alongside Columbia and Decca, while simultaneously forming his own publishing company, Kags Music, and his own record label, SAR, through which he would oversee recordings by other artists. Among those signed to SAR were the Soul Stirrers, Bobby Womack (formerly of the Valentinos, also on the label), ex-Soul Stirrers member Johnny Taylor, Billy Preston, Johnnie Morisette, and the Sims Twins.

Cooke’s initial RCA output presented a divided body of work. He advanced both pop and soul with the single “Chain Gang,” a blend of melodic sweetness and raw, physical energy that also introduced a measure of social awareness. A number-two hit on both the pop and R&B charts, it stood as his biggest success since “You Send Me” and signaled a more assertive chapter. Subsequent singles such as the blues-inflected “Sad Mood,” the idyllic romantic soul of “Cupid,” the direct dance track “Twistin’ the Night Away” (a pop Top Ten and number-one R&B hit), and “Bring It on Home to Me” sustained that momentum and sold in substantial quantities. Yet the first two albums RCA assigned him, Hits of the Fifties and Cooke’s Tour, ranked among the weakest LPs ever made by any soul or R&B artist, consisting of diluted pop material arranged in ways that rarely showcased Cooke’s strengths.

In 1962 he released Twistin’ the Night Away, a somewhat delayed “twist” album that became one of his strongest sellers. He did not fully hit his stride as an album artist, however, until 1963, when Night Beat appeared—a cohesive, atmospheric collection of blues-leaning songs that included some of the most demanding and rewarding material he had yet committed to tape. By then he was known chiefly through singles that ranked among the finest of their period, and he had cultivated two distinct audiences: white teenage and post-teen listeners alongside Black listeners of every age. Cooke hoped to cross more completely into the white market and thereby open opportunities for other Black performers that had long been shut. He had attempted a booking at New York’s Copa as early as 1957 and failed because of inexperience; in 1964 he returned triumphantly, an engagement preserved on one of the era’s most carefully captured live recordings. That performance, however, captured only Cooke’s most genial and least provocative side, presenting safe material to a largely middle-aged, middle-class white crowd that responded warmly yet encountered only his mildest persona.

Midway through 1963 he had played a date at Miami’s Harlem Square Club that was also recorded. Performing before a Black audience and delivering his characteristic show, he produced a charged, gripping set built from the same ingredients found in his singles and strongest album tracks—an arresting combination of lyrical beauty and gritty soul feeling. The two live albums together illustrate the split running through Cooke’s career and the full span of his abilities, rewards he had only begun to claim more completely in 1963 and 1964.

The drowning death of his infant son in mid-1963 kept Cooke out of the studio until late that year. During the interval, with Allen Klein now handling his business affairs, he secured the financial and creative autonomy he had long sought, including an advance larger than any previously granted a Black performer and eventual ownership of his masters beginning in November 1963; he had likewise gained creative control of his recordings and appeared ready for a major advance. That advance arrived once he resumed recording amid the creative turbulence of the early 1960s. Cooke paid close attention to the music around him, especially Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” its treatment of the circumstances facing Black Americans and other politically oppressed groups, and its success in the hands of Peter, Paul & Mary. Those elements persuaded him that the moment had come for songs addressing more than dancing the night away.

The outcome was “A Change Is Gonna Come,” arguably the greatest song to emerge from the civil-rights era and one that appeared to close the distance between the two poles of Cooke’s work, from gospel to pop. Widely considered his finest and most consequential composition, it marked an artistic summit. During the same stretch he also created a newer, more sophisticated dance-oriented soul style in the song “Shake.” These two recordings announced a fresh chapter for Cooke and seemed to place the broadest possibilities within reach.

None of it came to pass. Early on December 11, 1964, while in Los Angeles, Cooke became involved in a dispute at a motel involving a female guest and the night manager; he was shot and killed, allegedly while attempting to confront the manager. The circumstances remain clouded and were never examined with the thoroughness a star of his stature would receive today. His death stunned the Black community and sent shock waves far beyond. The single “Shake” became a posthumous Top Ten hit, as did “A Change Is Gonna Come” and the At the Copa album, issued in 1965. Otis Redding, Al Green, and Solomon Burke, among others, incorporated important elements of Cooke’s repertoire, as did white acts including the Animals and the Rolling Stones. Even the Supremes recorded a memorial album of his songs that later became one of their most sought-after original releases.

His standing endured, at least among those attentive enough to look past the most familiar hits—to hear, for instance, Redding’s performance of “Shake” at the Monterey Pop Festival and recognize its source. Cooke’s own recordings proved somewhat harder to appreciate at first. Listeners encountering only the early RCA albums Hits of the Fifties and Cooke’s Tour might reasonably question what the fuss was about, and several subsequent LPs were uneven enough to give potential listeners pause. Meanwhile, the contractual arrangements surrounding his catalog greatly hindered reissues. Business manager Allen Klein retained considerable control, especially over the final year’s worth of recordings. By the 1970s only modest, mostly budget-priced collections existed, limited to hits through early 1963, along with a single television compilation. The film National Lampoon’s Animal House featured two Cooke songs, “(What A) Wonderful World” and “Twistin’ the Night Away,” which considerably raised his profile among college students and younger baby boomers, while Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes built a virtual sideline around reviving Cooke material (notably “Having a Party” and portions of “A Change Is Gonna Come”) in concert. In 1986 The Man and His Music went some distance toward filling the gap with a career-spanning overview, yet by the mid-1990s the final year’s releases had been separated from the earlier RCA and Keen sides and placed with Klein’s ABKCO label. Only in the late 1990s and afterward did RCA, ABKCO, and even Specialty (still owner of Cooke’s gospel recordings with the Soul Stirrers) issue unified, comprehensive editions of their respective portions of the catalog.