The Golden Age of Sam Cooke
Label: RCA Limited RS 1054, UK - October 1976
Songs:
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Album Information. The backside is one the most informational around. It lists all of Sam's hits in the US pop and soul charts and the UK pop charts, including the catalogue numbers of the US singles. There's is also a fairly long essay by Paul Gambaccini. The tracklisting has S's (stereo) and E (Electronic) behind the song titles. 1-14 are E, the rest S
"lt's the Sam
Cooke era all over again," a Los Angeles disc jockey gurgled in early 1976,
noting the presence of three Cooke compositions in Billboard’s Hot 100.
The deejay was only partly right. It is now and has been the Sam Cooke era ever
since "You Send Me" first entered the American charts in October,
1957.
A singer/songwriter long before the phrase was popular, Cooke composed
and recorded a series of mainstream pop classics in the late fifties and ear1y
sixties. His clever songs have
been covered by pop
groups, country singers, soul stars and British rockers. Not even a double album
could accommodate all of Sam's hits, as the tab1e shows, but this LP does
anthologise as no previous collection has his most important singles.
Sam Cooke first gained attention as a member of the Soul Stirrers gospel
group in the ear1y 1950's. Severa1 early recordings, including the secular
ballad, "Lovable," cut under the name Dale Cook, were re1eased on the
Specialty label. But as producer Bumps B1ackwell re1ated to Charlie Gillett and
Jerry Wexler in Gillett's definitive history of Atlantic Records,
Making Tracks;
Specialty founder Art Rupe was upset when Blackwell, who thought Sam coul be
"as big as the Platters, "cut the young man on brother L.C. Cook's
ballad, "You Send
"didn't want any part of it, so finally he said he would never put
the song out on Specialty, and I said that I would buy Sam's contract from him
and take the song somewhere else. So we reached an agreement where I forfeited
the royalties Art owed me from previous records, in return for Sam's contract
and mine. And I took 'You Send Me' down the street to Bob Keen, who put it out and made the top of the chart.
"Yeah," growled Jerry, "you didn't ask us if we wanted it.
Sam Cooke was our kind of singer, all you had to do was pick up a phone."
"You Send
Me" on the Keen label introduced to white audiences a casual voice that
flirted with the lyrics as well as the sweetheart. Cooke repeated key phrases
while cruising around the scale, and words like "you" extended to four
notes and "I know”, chanted deliriously caught the fancy off-middle of
the road audiences as well as black record buyers. The mass market success was
certified by an invitation to sing the nation's number one song live on the
prime time Ed Sullivan Show, although Sam suffered the humiliation of
being cut off in mid-number when the 8 p.m. programme ran out of time at 9.
"You Send Me" was not a major hit in Britain, but Rod Stewart did take
it to the top ten in tandem with Sam's "Bring It On Home To Me" in a
1974 medley. Aretha Franklin's inspired performance to her own piano
accompaniment remains the best American cover of the song.
"We brought him to the RCA Victor label in the middle of his career,"
producers Hugo and Luigi wrote in 1962. "Bought" would have been a
more appropriate verb, RCA , purchased Sam's contract and his Keen masters in
1960, underplaying the Keen singles in early Cooke anthologies of the 1960s.
This album includes "Win Your Love For Me" and "Love You Most Of
All," Sam's most successful 1958 releases, "Only Sixteen" was a
mournful ballad of lost teenage love that adapted gospel call and response
technique to pop, An unexcited vocal group posed questions to the lead singer,
who
proceeded
to answer as if enlightened. "Only Sixteen” was the second of three hits
written by Cooke, Lou Adler and Herb Alpert under the curious pseudonym, Barbara
Campbell, following Sam's tribute to a now dated dance craze, "Everybody
Likes to Cha Cha Cha," Craiq Douglas took "Only Sixteen “to number
one in Britain in 1959, while Sam's version and Al Saxon's cover also entered
the top thirty, This competition gave "Only Sixteen" a success in
Britain it never enjoyed in the States until Dr. Hook's 1976 top ten version.
"Wonderful World," the last Keen hit, was an inspired piece of
popular songwriting. The coupling of a confession of academic inadequacy with an
affirmation of idealized love touches a chord in any student any year, and
Herman's Hermits, Bryan Ferry and Johnny Nash have all recorded successful
versions of the song in their individual styles. The key to Cooke's
acceptability as a songwriter for any musical mode is his universality of his
lyrics, and "Wonderful World" is a perfect example.
The promotional power of RCA Victor, Sam's new label, helped "Chain
Gang” reach number two in America. Choral guttural expressions of pain and a
basso profundo's repeated "Well Don't You Know" have rendered this
smash hit a novelty resistible to covers, although Otis Redding made an attempt
on
Otis Blue.
"SadMood" makes for more relaxed listening today than some of
Sam's gimmicky songs, but in its time this touching ballad did not receive the
attention of accessible numbers like "Cbain Gang" and "Cupid,"
The latter is as eternal as "Wonderful World," beseeching the timeless
archer of love to take aim on the heart of the singer’s beloved. As in "You
Send Me," Sam's voice wafts its way through this song, never losing its
ethereal quality, "Cupid" has inspired successful cover versions by
Johnny Nash and Tony Orlando, but the song has curiously proved more commercial
in Britain than in America, with both Cooke and Nash winning top ten places in
the UK denied them in the US,
"Twistin' The Night Away," Cooke's biggest British hit, also
marked a change in the arrangements of his singles, Brass became a more
frequently utilized attention-getter, and indeed he Sam's treatment of the
standard "Frankie And Johnny" he approximated a big band sound, "Twistin'
The Night Away" described objectively a scene the narrator clearly knew
intimately. While this lack of emotion in vocal delivery is typical of Cooke
numbers criticized by disappointed purists, the approach won several songs a far
wider audience than a passionate delivery would have earned, Perhaps no one
living will ever know if the homosexual doublespeak in "Twistin'" was
intentional.
"Havin'
a Party"/"Bring It On Home To Me" began a series of occasional
two-sided Sam Cooke hits. This extraordinary pairing brought together a
good-time song where mere hand clapping was sufficient to create a party
atmosphere with a torrid call-and-response duet with fellow former gospel singer
Lou Rawls. The incorporation of contemporary hit songs titles into the lyric of
"Havin' A Party" remains the cleverest example of the
stunt in pop, yet it is "Bring It On Home To Me" that is the
most important side of the record. The use of Rawls to establish a gospel sound
on a secular song predated Garnett Mimms and the Enchanters' "Cry
Baby" by a year, and the urgency created by the "yeah's", with
which Rawls punctuated Cooke's own vocal has haunted pop artists and consumers
since, Rod Stewart, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Eddie Floyd and Carla Thomas
have all enjoyed success with their versions, Burdon presented a stark, dramatic
interpretation, while Floyd enlivened his up-tempo hit with the classic ad lib,
"Here's What I'll Do For You" and Carla provided a feminine
perspective with "I’ll Bring It On Home To You," Mickey Gilley
completed
"Bring
It On Home To Me"'s sweep of formats when he reached the top three of the
country chart in 1976.
The
quality of Cooke's later singles was variable. After "Nothing Can Change
This Love" he released a rather overblown version of a Little Richard
ballad, "Send Me Some Lovin'," but rebounded to top form on "Another Saturday Night," A cheerful delivery made
a sad lyric palatable to the masses, as it would again for Cat Stevens in 1974.
Sam inspired ad libs made dating disaster sound like fun.
"Another
Saturday Night" was unpredictably succeeded by "Frankie And Johnny"
and "Little Red Rooster." Two less similar treatments of standards by
the same artist could hardly be imagined. While "Frankie And Johnny"
featured brass, "Rooster" was built around a blistering organ part.
Although personnel sheets for many of Cooke's sessios sadly do not seem to exist,
we do know this performance was Billy Preston's.
"Good News" and "Good Times" were two splendid pieces
of pop from the Ain’t That Good News album. The cover painting of the
LP was billboarded in Times Square to promote Sam's appearance at the Copacabana,
then NewYork City's top supperclub. "The Biggest Cooke In Town" made
his up-tempo version of "Tennessee
Waltz" from the album a cabaret highlight.
The
last single released before Sam Cooke's death was his greatest.
"Shake" was an exciting dance number given animation by Sam's
syncopated vocal commands and Al Schmitt's snappy production. "Shake"
was a major pop hit and an inspiration for Otis Redding's live act, but it was
the flip side, "A Change Is Gonna Come," that had lasting impact.
Cooke brilliantly merged autobiographical testimony and racial commentary info
one of the most moving records ever made. Tastefully orchestrated strings
established a mournful mood within five seconds, setting up Cooke's perfectly controlled
statement. A highly expressive instrumental phrase in the second verse and the
gritty texture of Sam's last chorus helped maintain a combination of grief and
hope. None of the many cover versions of this song have so powerfully developed
these twin themes.
Sam Cooke was shot dead in undignified circumstances in a Los Angeles
motel on December 10th, 1964. No posthumously issued material was worthy of
inclusion on this album, and we have no way of knowing how much this musical
giant had left to give. Whether" A Change Is Gonna Come" was the
promise or the peak, it was the end.
Sam
Cooke liner notes
by
Paul Gamhaccini
'MAKING
TRACKS by Charlie Gillett. Published by N. H. Allen & Co. Ltd.