Specialty Profiles
Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers
Label: Specialty SPCD-30058-2 (2006)
Compilation Producers: Colin Escott and Cheryl Pawelski
Mastering: Joe Tarantino at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley
Art Direction: Jamie Putnam Design: Deb Sibony
Tracklisting
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Liner Notes
Specialty
Records president Art Rupe was, and is, an astute man. He arrived on the West
Coast with 600 dollars, and started a record company that truly made a
difference in the history of popular music. He then parlayed that money into
real estate and oil. His business sense was good, and his ear was almost
infallible. . . but only almost. For all that he did right, Rupe made two
mistakes. When Sam Cooke wanted to record what Rupe regarded as limp pop
arrangements, Rupe cut him loose and watched a song recorded on his own dime
become one of the big hits of the rock ‘n’ roll era. Then, five years later,
one of Rupe’s artists, Little Richard, toured Europe. The supporting act acts
included a young group that went over well, and Richard told Rupe about them.
Rupe wasn’t interested. They, of course, were the Beatles. No one bats 1,000.
Was Sam Cooke the greatest r&b singer of all time? Few would dispute
that. Was he the most influential? Undoubtedly. And although Cooke never lived
to see the eruption of soul music, it was founded on reverence for him. Later,
there was rock and even reggea singers who openly based their style upon his,
and many others who absorbed his influence at several removes. Even Cooke’s
trademark “whoa-oh-oh” has passed into the vernacular of popular music,
although no one has quite managed to replicate it.
Sam Cooke could bear down on the hardest gospel song or glide
effortlessly through a pop ballad. He could soar above a full orchestra or be
almost embarrasingly intimate in front of a small group. He never seemed to
overstretch or lose sight of his direction. He also wrote many of his own songs,
produced many of his sessions, and later took control of the business of music.
If he were alive today, he would only be in his seventies; as it is, he has been
dead for more than 40 years.
“I’ve seen musicians come along,” Rupe said later. “Some kid who
has a good voice. He’ll have a hit record and get all kinds of money offers,
but suddenly the success vanishes and so does he. If he has what it takes,
he’ll work hard and pay his dues. A person who makes it to the top too fast
can’t get the fundamentals.” Cooke paid his dues and understood the business
from all sides. He was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on January 22, 1931, not
1935 as was often reported. In 1933, the family moved to the south side of
Chicago, where his father became a preacher in the Church of Christ Holiness
Church. Sam was one of seven children, and his father formed a group with four
of them called simply the Singing Children. Just out of high school, Sam was
recruited by a professional gospel group, the Highway QC’s. in January 1951,
he moved on to of the most prestigious black gospel groups, the Soul Stirrers,
replacing an idol, Rebert Harris.
The
Soul Stirrers were on Art Rupe’s Specialty Records, and Rupe had gotten into
gospel as an act of expediency. He’d started Specialty in 1946, and it was a
young company without much back catalog when the American Federation of
Musicians called a year-long recording ban on January 1, 1948. The union only
governed those who played instruments, so vocalists were free to record, leaving
the field wide open for vocal groups. “I observed the strike,” Rupe told
Keven Howlett. “I was a good corporate citizen, and I got into gospel. It was
music I always liked; in fact it was my favorite type of music, not for
religious reasons but because of the feeling. The soul and honesty of it. I put
plywood on the linoleum floor, and a put a microphone down there to pick up the
foot-tapping. I had a terrific gospel roster. We had the Pilgrim Travelers, who
included J.W. Alexander, who later became Sam Cooke’s manager, and we had Alex
Bradford, who was very flamboyant and openly gay. When everyone was out of sight,
we’d drink Scotch, and when he’d phone the office, he’d say, ‘Can I talk
to the original oppressor of the black man?’ I’d say, ‘Dammit Alex,
they’re gonna believe you.’”
The
Soul Stirrers joined the Specialty roster in February 1950 at the suggestion of
the Pilgrim Travelers’ J.W. Alexander. By this point, gospel made up half of
Rupe’s releases. Most histories of popular music confine the Soul Stirrers to
the footnotes of the Sam Cooke story, but they were among the most popular
groups in black gospel music before and after Sam Cooke. They were in business
more than 60 years, and Cooke was part of the story for just six. Roy Crain had
formed the group in Texas around 1926, and, after a parishioner had told him how
much their singing stirred his soul, they became the Soul Stirrers. Members came
and went, but with the addition of lead singer Rebert Harris in 1937 they became
famous for their dual leads. By the time of the Specialty deal, they were based
in Chicago, drawing upon that city’s pool of gospel songwriters.
Rebert Harris quit in late 1950, and Rupe was dismayed, especially when he was told that Harris’s replacement would be a largely untested Chicago youngster, Sam Cooke (the “e” came later). Sam joined in January 1951, and made his first recordings with the Soul Stirrers in March. Maintaining the dual-lead format, the Stirrers paired Cooke with Paul Foster. Their first record with Cooke’s upfront lead was “Jesus Gave Me Water,” and with it Rupe’s doubts were dispelled. The Pilgrim Travelers had recorded the song just five months earlier, but it became a hit all over again. Cooke was playful and effortlessly in command. That same session, they performed “Peace in the Valley.” Now one of the most familiar gospel songs of our time, it has crossed between black and white music. The hit coutry version by Red Foley was not only copied note-for-note by Elvis Presley, but became the standard way of interpreting the song. At the time of the Soul Stirrers’ session, Foley had yet to record “Peace in the Valley” (although it had been kicking around for more than a decade), and, as a result, their version is very different from the placid renditions we’ve come to know. Sam Cooke shared the lead with Paul Foster. The coupling of “Jesus Gave Me Water” with “Peace In The Valley” was a hit. “We want to thank you for suggesting that we put [it] out, and keeping on us until you did,” Art Rupe wrote to Roy Crain.
From
a session in March 1954 came “Any Day Now.” Although unrelated to the Chuck
Jackson hit of the same title, it was almost litigiously close to and old
British pop song, “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” It was written by Faidest
Wagoner, whose piano stylings were a little florid in places and almost
detracted from Sam Cooke’s mastery. At one of his last sessions as a Soul
Stirrer in March 1956, Cooke recorded the self-composed and magisterial “Touch
the Hem of His Garment.” By then, his thoughts were elsewhere.
Sam
Cooke had become the star of the Soul Stirrers. His voice, his looks, and his
style brought him adulation that could not always be described as holy. As Peter
Guralnick revealed in his recent biography, Cooke managed to get his Chicago,
Detroit, and Cleveland girlfriends pregnant within weeks of each other. He was
living the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, and all that remained was to switch to
rock ‘n’ roll. By 1956, gospel records no longer made up 50 percent Art
Rupe’s release schedule. The success of Little Richard had reoriented his
thinking in a hurry, and reoriented Sam Cooke’s thinking, too. “Sam felt
guilty at first,” said Rupe, “but when he observed Little Richard and Larry
Williams and Lloyd Price making the big bucks and driving the Cadillacs, he
wanted to make secular records, too.”
In
June 1956, Sam Cooke wrote to Art Rupe, telling him that he planned to record
pop music pseudonymously for another company, while remaining with the Soul
Stirrers. Rupe replied politely that he was doing no such thing because he was
under contract to Specialty. If Cooke was to record pop music for any company,
it would be Specialty. Rupe’s new recording director, Bumps Blackwell, took
Cooke to the J&M Studio in New Orleans, where Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, and
the city’s big stars recorded. By then, Cooke had determined that he would not
record rock ‘n’ roll, but would apply himself to pop music. A Soul Stirrers
song, “Wonderful,” was adapted into “Lovable,” and was issued under the
name of Dale Cook. Still with the Soul Stirrers, Sam couldn’t promote the
record, although most gospel fans recognized his voice at once. The Soul
Stirrers forced the issue, and Sam Cooke was out. He now had to stand or fall
with pop music. Art Rupe scheduled a session, and explained what happened next:
“I
usually did the producing, but I turned this over to Bumps Blackwell. We went to
an audition studio and Sam went through eight or nine songs, and I picked four.
We plotted how we were going to do it. Got a choir background, et cetera. When I
got to the session, I assumed…in error…that he’d have either a gospel
group or black singers. Be he had these white singers, and they were fine, but
we’d had these plans, and they had digressed. I didn’t think the sound was
the sound our market demanded. One of the songs was ‘You Send Me,’ and the
ill feeling from me criticizing the session carried over into subsequent talks.
Bumps and Sam came into my office one day and said Sam should get more money.
I’d already raised Sam’s rate when we did the initial pop session, but he
wanted more. One thing led to another, and I figured I wasn’t going to fool
with these people, and this stuff wasn’t going to sell much anyhow ‘cause of
these white singers. I thought one hundred, one hundred and fifty thousand.
Bumps was on a bonus assignment with me. I said, ‘Bumps, if you’re a gambler,
I’m gonna make you a preposition.’ I gave him the masters [in lieu of some
bonuses] and bid him goodbye. It looked like my judgment was right ‘cause no
one was interested in these masters. Finally some airplane parts manufacturer
took a chance, put it out [on Keen Records], and it became a tremendous hit. I
made a terrible business mistake. And it wasn’t the first one.”
It
was the the worst decision of Art Rupe’s career, and his only recourse was to
take a demo tape of “I’ll Come Running Back To You” that Sam Cooke had
recorded in April 1957 and overdub it in November with guitarist Rene Hall and
the same background singers he’d hated on “You Send Me.” It was only
apparent in a couple of spots that this was a concocted master, and it was a
succesful move in that it reached No. 1 on the r&b charts and No. 18 on the
pop charts. The bad news for Rupe was that the bottom of the barrel was in sight.
He’d thought he’d built a safeguard into the separation agreement when he
stipulated that Sam Cooke would remain contracted to his music publishing
company, but Cooke thwarted him by registering his songs with other companies
under the names of family members.
Sam
Cooke’s recording career spanned 13 years, and he spent six of them with
Specialty Records. We’re left to wonder what would have happened if he’d
remained with Specialty for the rest of the three-year or five-year contract
he’d just signed. Clearly, Art Rupe and Sam Cooke had different visions. In an
unusual reversal, it was the label owner who wanted to stay with a hard-edged
“black” sound while the artist wanted to go pop. If Rupe’s vision had
prevailed, the results could have been very interesting indeed, but Sam Cooke
proved during his few remaining years that he would not be a pawn in anyone’s
game.
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COLIN ESCOTT
Nashville,
April 2006