Label: RCA Victor 6026/6027 (1970)
Songs:
Album Information: This is a double LP with a text in the middle by Jim Aylward with a factual few errors.
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This is Sam Cooke
When the song was happy, Sam Cooke was joyful! "Whenever I'm feelin' bad, right away she puts me to bed and she hires two nurses...one to hold my hand... the other one to hold my head!"
When the song was sad, Sam Cooke was unconsoulable. "I'm in a sad mood tonight ...oh, my baby done gone away and left me ...my baby done gone."
Sam Cooke lived his songs. That's what made them so popular and that's what made him so loved. You knew it the minute the record started or the first moment you saw him take the stage at the Apollo or the Copa or anywhere.
He has been called "a musical innovator," "the man who invented soul" end "a legend." Yet he can also recognize now what might have been almost too obvious while he lived. Sam Cooke was a man who sang the truth of his time. He just let it all have his way. He allowed himself to be real, to give honest expression 10 what he felt inside. "Don't fight it...feel it," he sang. And he meant it. In the touching words from another Sam-Sammy Davis Jr.-"When you listen to him on records, you don't hear a highly trained, technically pure voice. What you hear is the sound Sam Cooke was born with... a sound as spontaneous and uncontrived as a child's laughter or a mother's tears. What Sam knew about music, he knew in his heart...and it's his heart that you hear singing."
Sam Cooke understood Another Saturday Night and the lost feeling of being flush with dough in a strange town, alone on a Saturday night. "I’m in an awful way...another weekend and I ain't got nobody!" And he knew what could happen when someone tries to find somebody for you. "She had a strange resemblance to a cat named Frankenstein!" Sam was saying a lot of things for a lot of people. And he said it the way they would have said it. He made them laugh because he knew how ridiculous things could be. He made them cry because he knew what crying was all about. From the exaggerated happiness of Sugar Dumpling to the husky highs of Cupid to the lost, empty Sad Mood, Sam Cooke was saying it all. And he could say it with any kind of music-pop, gospel, spiritual or jazz. He said it until he was 33 years old.
But he left a world of followers who remember, and there's an army of newcomers who are discovering Sam Cooke for the first time. It's an unusual discovery, too, since none of Sam's material is dated. Even in his songs of dances now long gone, like Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha and Twistin' the Night Away, the music has a timeless quality. His records ware hits then and they're still hits today. They'll be hits tomorrow, too. Such was the impact Cooke had on contemporary music.
Sam Cooke was a Chicago boy, one of eight kids who learned to sing in the gospel heritage through the church choir. His father's church became the way, and, singing the natural truth music of the Baptist religion, his ambition soared along with his inspiration. His father once said to him, "It isn't what you sing that is so important, but rather the fact that God gave you a voice to use...to make people happy by singing." At the age of nine he began his career when he, a brother and two of his sisters formed a group called "The Singing Children." They sang at various socials end other functions end were paid not only by experience but by "offerings" when a plate was passed. A little later Sam worked with one of his brothers in a group called "The Highway Q.C.s," named after the Highway Baptist Church. The Q.C.s played at other churches in Chicago end performed outside the area during school breaks. They remained together until their graduation, and during this time Sam resolved to continue singing as a profession. When he graduated from Chicago’s Wendell Phillips High School, he moved out with a gospel group, "The Soul Stirrers” and brought along some of his own songs for the Stirrers to perform. The glossy world of show business dazzled Sam Cooke and he left his group to dazzle it back. Hollywood called him, so he thought. His answer was quick. Yes, he would record on his own. Yes, he would sing popular songs. But the small West Coast company wanted him to do spirituals, so he did them. His heart, however, was al ready lost to the larger life of rhythm and blues end pop. The company gave in end let him do a few the way knew he could. They were never released end Sam rejoined "The Soul Stirrers."
Soon after, the man who had recorded him in Los Angeles, Bumps Blackwell, formed his own label end called Sam end asked him to come along as a pop artist. Again, Sam's answer was quick. Yes! The year was 1953. The very first Sam Cooke record on a small independent label, Keen, sold two end a halt million copies. It was You Send Me and it sent Cooke soaring on his spectacular rise to fame. His career came to a temporary halt when he was involved in an automobile accident in Arkansas in which his closest friend was killed. Cooke had six slivers of glass removed from his eye and he was able to resume his career weeks later. As Sam prophetically told it, "The accident set me back for a while, but God, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to let me stay around a bit longer."
In 1958 his contract with Keen Records expired end he signed with RCA. Ever one of his records was a best seller. Kids loved him. Old cats loved him. And he loved them "You know those old cats...they don't go out much. A lot of them are lonely. They need records. They need them worse than anybody. I'm gonna sell them'" And he did. By the millions. At one stretch, from 1963 to 1964, he had eight consecutive hits. He was untouchable at the Apollo. He was the champ at the Copa. He was loved end respected wherever he appeared. And he communicated like no one before or since. He felt it. He knew it. He lived it end he sang it. In his own words, "It makes no difference what kind of song you sing. You must make your audience feel what you feel. Every song has a message, whether it's pop, rock 'n' roll or a spiritual. It you can’t get this across to the listener, then you haven't done the job you're supposed to do as a performer. I learned this lesson at an early age in church. It you've ever attended Baptist services, you'll know what I mean. You have to stir up the emotion congregation end literally lift them from their chairs. To do this you have to muster up all the sincerity in your body end project it to every solitary person in the room. And this is precisely what I strive for every time Io pen my mouth to sing."
And that's precisely what Sam Cooke did. Every time.
Jim Aylward