Portrait
of a Legend
Portrait
of a Legend
Label: Abkco (released June 17, 2003)
Songs:
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Portrait Of A Legend, 1951-1964
Sam Cooke was constantly
writing. On napkins. In the car. In hotel rooms and, later, in a notebook he
kept, filled with his sketches as well as his lyrics. When he was still with the
Soul Stirrers, his friend and fellow gospel singer, J.W Alexander, manager of
the Pilgrim Travellers, bought him a book on songwriting, and he absorbed its
lessons: the function of verse and chorus, how to construct a bridge, above all
the importance of simplicity -the key to a good song, he always insisted, was to
write a melody that even little children could hum. At first he used the songs
he was writing as a kind of social introduction. "We'd have a roomful of people
sometimes," said Soul Stirrers guitarist LeRoy Crume, "he'd get on my guitar and
I'd sing back-up, and we'd sing all those songs to the ladies, try them out and
see if they were acceptable. And for the most part they were!"
Of the thirty songs on this album Sam wrote or co-wrote twenty-four, and each
bears his unmistakable stamp. What makes them so enduring for all of their
evident simplicity is not just Sam's inimitable singing style ("Sam Cooke was
the best singer who ever lived, no con test," said Atlantic Records vice
president Jerry Wexler, who tried desperately to sign him at two different
junctures in his career. "When I listen to him, I still can't believe the things
that he did") but the emotion and craft he put info their composition. To Sam it
wasn't worth singing a song if you didn't believe it. But, just as important,
you had to present it in such a way that it mimicked everyday speech.
He took his lesson from no less unlikely a source than Louis Armstrong ("Don't
listen to the voice, listen to the phrasing," he told his protegé, Bobby Womack)
and built his songs entirely around a conversational style. "You just talk the
story," he told Bobby. "That's how you get people to come to you -because it's
not like a song, it's like two people rapping, only with a melody attached. But
then when you come to the hook ('That's the sound of the men working on the
chain gang'), then you're free, everybody's gonna sing that part, you want to
get everybody to sing along." That's exactly what Sam did. You can hear the
invitation in virtually every song on this collection. See if you can resist.
Just try not to sing along.
TOUCH THE HEM OF HlS GARMENT
This is Sam telling a Bible story, as he had learned to do from his preacher
father, and as he would do alI his life. "He could make the Bible come alive,"
said Ann Taylor, a sickly five year old when her father, Reverend Goldie
Thompson, first started bringing the Soul Stirrers, with their new singer, Sam
Cooke, to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1951. In the case of this 1956 song the
Stirrers' new a&r man, Bumps Blackwell, saw evidence of Sam's creative gift and
storytelling abilities at first hand. He was riding to the session with the
group in their car when it became evident that Sam, at this point the Stirrers'
principal composer, was not fully prepared. "Well, hand me the Bible," Sam said,
when Stirrers' manager S.R. Crain expressed his concern. "He was skipping over
it and skimming through it," Bumps said, "and then he said, 'I got one. Here it
is right here.'" And right there, before Bumps' eyes, he composed this song.
LOVABLE
In June of 1956 Sam Cooke wrote to Art Rupe, owner of the Specialty label, for
which the Soul Stirrers recorded: "A fellow I've been knowing for quite a while
asked me if I would consider recording same popular ballads for one of the major
recording companies...I told him yes...But it's my understanding that I would
have to get permission from you before I went through with the deal. I'm
planning on doing the recordings under another name. Awaiting your immediate
reply." The friend was Newark DJ Bill Cook, also manager of
twenty-seven-year-old Roy Hamilton, the great balladeer who had announced his
retirement due to illness just weeks earlier. Art Rupe replied that of course he
would be interested in seeing Sam record same secular numbers but that Specialty
would be the label. In December Sam went into Cosimo Matassa's studio in New
Orleans and, under Specialty a&r director Bumps Blackwell's supervision,
recorded "Lovable," a direct translation of "Wonderful," one of his biggest
recent gospel hits. Because of continued misgivings about the gospel audience's
reaction, the record was indeed issued under a different name -but not all that
different, as it came out credited to "Dale" Cook. With Sam's unmistakable voice
and delivery, not to mention the unmistakable source of the song, the change
didn't exactly fool anyone, and the consternation that Sam's recording caused
throughout the gospel world may very well have helped him in rus decision to
make a clean break and go pop just four months later.
YOU SEND ME
Sam quit the Soul Stirrers in May of 1957 and was in the midst of this June 1
session when Specialty owner Art Rupe walked in and brought the session to a
screaming halt. What Rupe objected to, vociferously, was Sam and producer Bumps
Blackwell's decision to use a clearly white chorus and a deracinated sound
rather than the r&b feel Rupe had assumed they would be aiming for in Sam's
first explicitly acknowledged pop release. The ultimate result was Rupe handing
over both the tapes of the session and Sam's contract in exchange for any past
or future royalties owed to Bumps. When "You Send Me" came out three months
later on the brand-new Keen label, it quickly shot to #1, going on to sell
almost two million copies and causing Art Rupe to rush-release a follow-up
record of his
own, "I'll Come Running Back to You," from the New Orleans (the "Lovable"
session) tapes Sam had left behind.
ONLY SIXTEEN
The inspiration for this song was the sixteenth birthday of Lou Rawls'
stepsister, Eunice. It was intended originally for a teenage actor named Steve
Rowland, a friend of Ricky Nelsons, who used to hang around the Keen studio. His
father was a B-movie director, "and we just liked him," Sam's business partner,
J.W. Alexander, said, "and he asked Sam to write this song. Sam used the bridge
from an earlier song he had recorded, 'Little Things You Do,' and we cut a tape
and gave it to Steve, but his producer didn't like the song, and it broke
Steve's heart. So Sam recorded it himself."
(I LOVE YOU) FOR
SENTIMENTAL REASONS
Released as a follow-up to the huge success of "You Send Me," this 1946 Nat'
"King" Cole hit was recorded at Sam's first actual Keen session, on August 23,
1957 (the label didn't really exist until then), just a few days before copies
of Sam's debut single were shipped. Nat "King" Cole, along with me Ink Spots'
Bill Kenny, was one of Sam's earliest ballad-singing models, and here he
recreates Nat's song with all of his own characteristic vocal flourishes and the
signature yodel with which he had already put his own unique stamp on gospel
music
JUST FOR YOU
Sam had joined with J.W Alexander in a song publishing partnership in early
1959. By March he was writing like crazy for their new venture (it was named
Kags after their friend Lou Rawls' stepfather, "Keg"), and "Just For You" was
one of a number of new songs ("When a Boy Falls in Love," "I'll Always Be in
Love With You," and "Cupid" were some of me others) that he and J. W were
demoing and pitching to other singers every chance they got. By the summer of
1959 Sam had reached a parting of the ways with Keen Records and went into the
studio with tapes of same of the demos he had previously recorded with me
intention of creating a record of his own. "Just For You" was me song he
concentrated on, adding three vocal overdubs to produce a bright, bouncy,
effervescent surface that perfectly matched the lilting Latin rhythms he had
favored since the previous sumrner. "Just For You" was ultimately released two
years later on Sarn and J. W's SAR Records (always intended as a label for other
artists, not for Sarn) -and then only "for a minute," solely to induce Sam's new
label, RCA, to buy up his Keen masters, which he had acquired in a lawsuit over
unpaid royalties. The strategy worked, as reviews in Billboard and Cash Box
prompted RCA to make an immediate offer, and the record did not have a
full-scale release until 1986, more than twenty-five years after it had first
been recorded.
WIN YOUR LOVE FOR ME
One of Sam's first and most successful experimentations with the Latin rhythms
that he and Bumps Blackwell thought could be the next big thing. Recorded in
June of 1958, "Win Your Love For Me" represented something of a songwriting
breakthrough for Sam, departing for the first time from the "love-song" format
of his earlier compositions, and with a chorus that falls in behind hifi with
the kind
of quiet quartet sound that had been previously missing from his pop numbers.
Like "Just For You," it is the kind of easy, effortless, almost indefinable
performance mat puts one in mind of some of his most graceful (though not his
most intense) gospel recordings.
EVERYBODY LOVES TO CHA CHA CHA
Another of Sam's increasingly farmiliar Latin numbers. This one stemmed from a
Christmas 1958 party at Lou Rawls' stepfather's house. At one point in the
evening everyone was doing the cha cha, even the little kids, and Sam was
watching his five-year-old daughter, Linda, when all of a sudden one of me kids
called out, "Everybody, cha cha cha!" They were all just having a good time,
said JW Alexander, and Sam grabbed a piece of paper and set me lyrics down while
everybody else was dancing. When he went into me studio me week aftee New
Year's, he laid it down just like that. "I think me secret is really
observation," he told Dick Clark years later about the key to all of his
successful hit songs. If you observed what was going on and were in tune with
the times of your day, I think you can always write something that people will
understand."
I'LL COME RUNNING
BACK TO YOU
Bill Cook, acting as Sam's manager, was the author of this song, originally
recorded with a barebones rhythm section at the same New Orleans session from
which "Lovable" emerged. After "You Send Me" had hit on Keen, Specialty owner
Art Rupe, realizing the goldmine he had lost, instructed arranger René Hall to
do his best to duplicate the sound of Sam's #1 smash, overdubbing some of the
same instrumentation and background singers. It went on to become one of Sam's
biggest sellers.
YOU WERE MADE FOR ME
One of Sam's earliest and most enduring compositions. He originally recorded it
in New Orleans in December of 1956, then demoed it for Bumps, just playing
guitar by himself; some five months later, sang it once again at the session
that produced "You Send Me," and finally recorded this version for Keen in
November of 1957. Five years later, when asked in
an
interview by his friend, the DJ Magnificent
Montague, to name his favorite song, he cited this one and quoted with feeling
From its overtly romantic lyrics ('a fish was made to swim in the ocean / A boat
was made to sail on the sea/But sure as there are stars above/You were made for
me") while suggesting to Montague that he hadn't changed that much over the
years, his conception had simply deepened.'
SAD MOOD
Originally recorded at Sam's second singles session for RCA in April of 1960,
this marked a significant advance, if only because Sarn's producers, cousins
Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, for the first time fully recognized him at this
point as a songwriter. The song's subject matter marked it as something of a
departure, too (you might say it was "light blues"), but the initial recording
didn't work, and when Sam re-recorded it in October, once again at the RCA
studios in New York, there was still something missing. He had established a way
of working with arranger René Hall out on th Coast, and even though Sarnmy
Lowe's string arrangements were not all that different from some of René's, the
song still did not say Sam Cooke in the way that some of his earlier Keen hits
indelibly, if indefinably, had.
CUPID
"Cupid" definitely did have that stamp -no one but Sarn Cooke could have made
this record, in any one of its particulars, and not coincidentally it stemmed
from his first RCA session in Los Angeles. Only one of Sam's producers was
present (Hugo didn't fly), and Luigi Creatore, tried "an old yogi trick" he had
learned in his study of yoga, where "you lie down, and you think of nothing, and
then you imagine the session and how weIl it's going and how everyone's enjoying
it a lot." Luigi's "yogi trick" seems to have worked -that's the way the session
sounds, easy, relaxed, Sarn is finally home again. But what makes the session
work, of course, are Sam's songs, in particular this one with its easy
conversational style ("Now, Cupid, I don't mean to bother you, but I'm in
distress"), intricate simplicity, and the hint of melancholy it offered in the
muted sound of a French hornset against jaunty Caribbean rhythms. For trivia
specialists, this record also represents the debut of the Simms Twins (Bobby
and Kenny) on record. Sam and J. W. had recently signed them to the SAR label,
and they offer the rather subdued background on the chorus, but perhaps just as
significantly they are also the sound of the arrow in flight, with Kenny
mimicking its whoosh as it leaves the bow, Bobby the thwack when it reaches its
target.
(WHAT A) WONDERFUL
WORLD
One of the most transcendent of Sam's romantic classics, "Wonderful World"
started out as a Lou Adler-Herb Alpert composition. It had something to do, says
Adler, with the idea that love -and love alone -could make the world a wonderful
place. Not even Lou thought it was one of their better songs, "but Sam kept
coming back to it. His idea -since it was all about reading and books and what
you didn't have to do [to find love] was to take it more towards school, and
that's how it evolved." They recorded it almost accidentally in the Keen studio,
just off the cuff, and that may be part of what gives it so much of its charm.
No one even thought of releasing it until a year later, after Sam had left the
label foy RCA. But like so many of Sam's best compositions, the simplest
elements coalesced in such a way as to form a whole much greater (and more
memorable) than the sum of its parts. "Sam brought everything to it," said Lou
Adler. "I don't know what it would have been if he didn't get involved, but what
it became was because of him."
CHAIN GANG
"We were driving along the highway," said Sam's older brother, Charles, who
served as his driver and valet, "and we saw these people working on a Chain Gang
on the side of the road. They asked us, 'You got any cigarettes?' So we gave
them the cigarettes we had and drove down the road and bought five or six
cartons more. I asked the guard if it was all right to give them the cigarettes,
and they thanked us, and that was it. And Sam said, 'Man, that's a good song
right there.' And just started singing it right on the spot." He originally
tried to persuade Charles to record it, but by the time of his first RCA
session, in January of 1960, he had decided to do it himself. It had become by
then a kind of meditation on longing -it is, really, a love song, however
unconventional its source -set once again to a Latin beat. He was unable to
fully achieve the kind of vocal effect he was aiming for at that first session,
probably, according to coproducer Luigi Creatore, because he and his cousin,
Hugo, didn't know Sam weil enough yet to bring out the best in him. Three months
later Sam came into me studio again and did three quick vocal overdubs, each
gaining in assurance and relaxation, with the principal difference showing up in
the fade, where all of Sam's vocal improvisation comes into play and the subtle
balance of sound and meaning is something which can be neither calculated nor
denied.
SUMMERTIME
Sam's original version of "Summertime," from the same session mat marked his
departure from me Specialty label, was intended to be me A-side of his first
Keen single, with "You Send Me" me B-side. Sam took a decidedly unconventional
approach to me Gershwin standard, and in fact guitarist ClifWhite, who first
joined him on this session and remained with him for the rest of his life, took
decided
exception to Sam's interpretation of me song. Clif; a trained musician who had
spent years on me road wim me Mills Brothers, played it the way it was written,
"and Sam said, 'No, man, you're playing me wrong chord.' Well, I don't play no
wrong chords, partÏcularly to a song like that," said Clif. So he handed me
guitar to Sam, who played it "with the harmony entirely reversed, but after a
while I began to hear what he was doing." This is a later version of me song and
represents yet anomer variation by Sam, somewhere between a lonesome blues and
an elegant spiritual.
LITTLE RED ROOSTER
Sam was more and more drawn to the blues in me last year or two of his life. He
tried to get his brother L.C., a SAR recording artist, to cut this Howlin' Wolf
number in the revamped form that he had given it, but when L.C. showed no
interest ("I told him, 'I ain't no fucking blues singer"') Sam recorded it
himself. It was part of an album, Night Beat, that was one of Sam's crowning
studio achievements and served as a kind of tribute to me music of blues pianist
Charles Brown, a considerable influence on Sam and the direct inspiration for
"Bring It On Home to Me." Featured on organ is sixteen-year-old Billy Preston,
who had recently signed with Sam's SAR label.
BRING IT ON HOME TO
ME
Sam was out on tour when he wrote "Bring it on Home to Me" in me spring of 1962.
It was based on Charles Brown's "I Want To Go Home," which was in turn based on
a farniliar spiritual, and Sam offered it to his friend, fellow singer Dee
Clark, one of the featured performers on me show. But Clark, who had already
recorded several other songs of Sam's, turned it down, and Sam scheduled a
session of his own out on the Coast. "Bring It On Home to Me" was very different
from anything Sam had recorded for Keen or RCA to date. It represented for the
first time an explicit bow to his gospel roots ("[He] felt that he needed more
weight, that that light shit wouldn't sustain him," said J.W Alexander), and
after experimenting with a chorus made up of Alexander, Lou Rawls, and Fred
Smith on the
first take, he selected Lou Rawls alone to provide me echoing second voice in a
call-and-response patern as old as anything in me African-American musical
tradition.
NOTHING CAN CHANGE
THIS LOVE
One of Sam's deepest ballads, not so much because of the words as for the
feeling that the singing imparts to them. Sam recorded this in a completely
different "doo wor" version six months earlier, but here he transforms it into a
lustly orchestrated, finely calibrated expression of belief in apple pie, the
American dream, and romantic love that suggests a picture-postcard view, with
only the singer's tone to suggest the layers of irony, yearning, and knowledge
underpinning its heartfelt declarations.
SUGAR DUMPLING
Written in nominal tribute to Sugar Hall, the wife of Sam's longrime arranger,
René, this was Sam's second version of the song, and with an arrangement by
Jimmie Haskell, entirely different from the more conventionally orchestrated
original. Sam was obviously very fond of the number -not only did he record it
twice himself, but he cut it on the Valentinos as well -though it appears to be
more about the same mythic "W-O-M-A-N" that Jerry Leiber and Mike Stolier would
write about for Peggy Lee man any one reality-based female. "Whenever I tell
her, 'Honey I'm hungry,'" Sam sang with good-natured braggadocio, "Now go and
fix me someming to eat/This girl rushes into me kitchen/And fixes me a
dinner/Wim seven different kinds of meat." On me other hand Sam's brother L.C.
insists that "Sam did things exactly the war that he wanted to. He told me, 'You
see the way I live today? I want to live like this all my life.' And he had four
or five different kinds of meat at me table. That's just the way he was!" So who
knows in me end where legend and reality intersect?
AIN'T THAT GOOD NEWS
'Ain't That Good News" was a direct translation of the gospel standard, "Good
News," most recencly farniliar in the Staple Singers' 1959 version. The
deceptively simple approach that Sam took to its translation was complicated,
though, by the introduction of a jangling banjo lead, perhaps suggested by René
Hall (who had made his professional debut playing tenor banjo with Papa
Célestines Orchestra in New Orleans in the early '30s), playful congas, and a
hom chart that pushed hard against the banjo's country flavor. But it was Sam's
vocal, as
always, that dominated, introducing an almost subliminal nare of wistful
melancholy info the uptempo approach and otherwise cheerful message.
MEET ME AT MARY'S
PLACE
"Meet Me at Mary's Place" was a variation on a number Sam had written for
Johnnie Morisette in 1962 to take advantage of the Twist craze ("Meet Me at the
Twistin' Place" was one of the SAR label's first big hits). For this January
1964 version Sam got his old group, the Soul Stirrers, to sing back-up,
overcoming their reservations about appearing on a pop session by arguing that
since he was trying to break their gospel songs in me pop marketplace, why
shouldn't they help him restore same of me gospel feel to his music? While the
song can certainly stand on its own as a celebration of shared good times, it
was in fact written in explicit tribute to gospel fan and promoter Mary Trapp in
Charlotre, North Carolina, and offers an affectionate salute not just to a
single individual but to a fondly recollected era.
TWISTIN' THE NIGHT
AWAY
Another example of Sam's inspired reportorial skills. The Twist had been all the
rage for well over a year in late 1961 when it suddenly caught on with high
society at New Yack City's Peppermint Lounge, and for me second time Chubby
Checker had a #1 pop hit with the same rendition of Hank Ballard's tune. Sam
happened to be watching a TV show one day featuring scenes from the Peppermint
Lounge with "all ladies dressed in diamonds twisting away," as he told a British
reporter, and he "switched the set off, sat down, and wrote [the
song] straight off." Like so many of his "story" songs, it was based almost
entirely on description, but for all of its apparent straightforwardness, it was
so perfectly matched in metre, melody, and rhyme as to be instantly memorable
and, once heard, virtually unforgettable.
SHAKE
Sam got the inspiration for this uncharacteristically hard-driving dance number
(Otis Redding picked it up three years later) from Bobby Freeman's "C'mon and
Swim," which you can hear echoed in Bobby Womack's guitar outro. Cut at Sarn's
last session in November 1964, less than a month before his death, it marked a
real departure for his music, indicating his belief that r&b (and popular music
in
general) was heading in a direction that more and more was "almost all sound. It
used to be that sound brought attention to me lyric," he explained -but what you
needed to do now was to find sounds that could "emotionally move" an audience,
"inject [the kind of] fervor that makes people want to dance."
TENNESSEE WALTZ
A visible demonstration of Sam's fondness for country music (he even wrote a
country song or two). Sam took the Patti Page classic in a direction, as he says
on his Live at the Cola album, that Patti Page would scarcely recognize. For one
thing it is no langer a waltz, with a driving beat reminiscent of Roy Hamilton's
"You Can Have Her" and gospel underpinnings that give this otherwise tragic tale
of love gone wrong an unexpectedly cheerful tone. Sam fase to the vocal
challenge of the chorus ("I never thought he was going to make that note," Soul
Stirrers guitarist LeRoy Crume, who was standing right in front of him, wryly
observed. "He let out a little laugh when he did") with all of his customary
élan.
ANOTHER SATURDAY
NIGHT
Sam wrote this on his sole English tour in the fall of 1962 almost as a kind of
goof. "We were staying in the Royal Maharajah Suite at the Mayfair Hotel," said
J. W., "and they wouldn't let us have any female guests. So Sam picked up his
guitar and started strumming, 'Here it is another Saturday night/And I ain't got
nobody/I got same money 'cause I just got paid/How I wish I had someone to talk
to/I'm in an awful way.'" But nobody should feel sorry for Sam. He and J. W
managed to maintain an active social life ("You know, it was like a joke," said
J.W, who arranged to switch to a less stuffy hotel right away). This was, like
so many of Sam's songs, an exercise in imagination. Once again the clipped tone
of the verses and the almost irresistible pull of the singalong chorus created a
hit song in bath the pop and r&b markets.
GOOD TIMES
This comes from the same December 1963 session as 'Ai't That Good News," the
first of two sessions (held one month apart) that produced Sam's first album
under his new Allen Klein-negotiated RCA contract (technically, the contract was
with Tracey, a holding and manufacturing company set up for Sam), guaranteeing
him not only half a million dollars but total artistic control. "Good Times"
provides an example of the kind of perfectionism that Sam brought to even his
simplest and most transparent compositions. Here Sam was clearly inspired by
Louis Jordan's anthemic "Let the Good Times Roll" but took a full twenty-five
takes over the course of two days to achieve that same good feeling, layering in
marimbas, congas, and rhythm banjo as he became more and more confident of the
feel that he wanted for the song. Then he added four more takes of vocal
overdubs to create a number that, like "Having a Party," explicitly invited the
listener not only to join in the fun but to sing along.
HAVING A PARTY
"Having a Party" was the
inevitable close of Sam's live show from the time that he first recorded it at
the same 1962 session as "Bring It On Home to Me." It sounds like a party, as
you hear Lou Rawls, Fred Smith, and J. W. all joining in on the chorus and
adding handclaps ro boost the party atmosphere. "'Having a Party' was the song,"
said Sam's drummer, June Gardner. 'All the other acts would be out on
stage, and we'd be throwing confetti, and everybody be having a jolly good
time." The entire audience would be singing along, and all the other performers,
too. "We're having a party/Dancing to the music/Played by thé DJ/ON THE
RA-DI-0," the voices would swell, with Sam's rising above all the others and
exhorting them to "Keep on having that party" as the curtain came down. "Keep on
having that party," he would call out over and over again. "No matter where
you're at, remember, I told you, keep on having that party." Through his music,
he declares, he will continue to be with them -it's as close to eternity, in
their common but unvoiced understanding, as they will be able to come.
THAT'S WHERE IT'S AT
A minor hit for the Simms Twins in 1963, Sam recorded his own variation on his
and J.W.'s composition in this slower-paced, more stately, almost mournful
version that evokes all of the flavor, and all of the soul, of the gospel world
he had come out of. It is a beautiful performance that hints at a fatalism and
profundity which can scarcely be borne out by the words but is conveyed
nonetheless by tone, phrasing, and me melancholy of that ever-present sixth
chord, along with Sam's penchant for always suggesting a deepening subtext.
A CHANGE IS GONNA
COME
Sam's magnum opus. It clearly stemmed from a confluence of events: Sam's
appreciation for (and envy of) Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," which had been
a #2 pop hit for Peter, Paul and Mary the previous summer ("He listened to that,"
said J. w: Alexander, "and he said, Alec, I got to write something. Here's a
white boy writing a song like this"); his conversations with student sit-in
demonstrators in Durham, North Carolina; and his own arrest in October for
trying to register at a segregated Shreveport motel. But nothing can fully
explain the majesty or soaring eloquence of the song. It came to him almost, he
said, as if it were dictated in a dream. "He was very excited," said J. w:
Alexander, "and when he finished it, he explained it to me -his reason behind
the lyrics. Like, 'I don't know what's up there beyond the Sky' -it's like
somebody's talking about I want to go to heaven, really, but then who knows
what's really up there? In other words, that's why you want justice on earth. Or,
you know, in the verse where he says, 'I go to my brother and I say, Brother,
help me please,'- you know he was talking about the establishment -and then he
says, 'That motherfucker winds up knocking me back down on my knees.' He said,
'I think my daddy will be proud.' I said, 'I think so, Sam.'" In the summer of
1964 Sam donated the use of both the composition and the recording for an album
to benefit Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference."
JESUS GAVE ME WATER
"Jesus Gave Me Water" is from Sam's very first recording session with the Soul
Stirrers, scarcely two months after he had joined the group. They had recorded
seven songs at the session already, but "Jesus Gave Me Water" had been one of
Sam's featured numbers with his previous group, the teenaged Highway QCs.
Specialty Records owner Art Rupe was against it, primarily because the label had
just had a hit with the song by the Pilgrim Traveiers, J.W. Alexander's group.
Soul Stirrers manager S.R. Crain and J. W. insisted, though, and Sam's
performance more than bore out their confidence in him. It is imitative of no
one, despite his enormous admiration for R.H. Harris, the Stirrers' previous
lead, and while he is not fully in control of all of his remarkable vocal gifts,
it is obvious from the first notes that he is singing with a confidence and
flair that had not appeared previously in the session. Several times in the
course of the performance Sam hits on a unique, almost lilting way of playing
with the melody, as he elongates the central element of the story, "water,"
until it becomes a kind of patented ululation ("wa-a-a-a-a-ter"), which takes up
several bars and occupies the listener's attention in a manner that becomes its
own text. All in all, it is a bravura piece, a startlingly confident performance
from a fresh-faced twenty-year-old still trying to grow a mustache. Only two
takes of the song were necessary to get it right, and when they had finished
there was little question in anyone's mind what the next Soul Stirrers single
was going to be.