Remembering Sam Cooke: Bronzeville and great ambitions

Sam Cooke was here.

Here, in Chicago, on the South Side's Bronzeville, Sam and his younger brother L.C. -- the middle children of eight -- sold the Chicago Defender door-to-door. It was here on 35th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue at the end of the streetcar line -- that a 12-year-old Sam sang Ink Spots songs, while L.C. passed the hat.

Sam Cooke -- the 1950s-1960s pop and gospel star behind "Wonderful World," "Chain Gang" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" -- is still here, in a sense. Though born in Mississippi, Sam spent his formative years in Chicago, singing in various gospel groups and performing for his minister father's congregation at Church of Christ (Holiness) in Chicago Heights.

But Sam had not only bigger aspirations, but a plan, says brother L.C., 72, sitting in Bronzeville's Negro League Cafe.

"He had 12 Popsicle sticks, and he'd stick 'em in the ground," L.C. remembers. "He'd say, 'L.C., this is my audience. I'm going to learn to sing in front of these sticks, so when I get older, I won't be afraid to sing for people.' And that's how he did."

It's this sense of Sam, this force of will and artistic drive, that attracted Peter Guralnick to write "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke" (Little, Brown and Company, $27.95).

Sitting next to L.C. ("it don't stand for nothin' ") in the Bronzeville restaurant, Guralnick says his research brought Cooke into sharp relief, especially when talking to friends and family.

"When they spoke of him, when they quote him -- it's not their voice . . . it's Sam's voice," he says. "He was as fresh to them today as he was then. They were still trying to communicate with him, to understand him. They knew him very well, but he was deep enough and he was complex enough that there were many avenues to explore."

In the follow-up to his seminal Elvis Presley biographies ("Last Train to Memphis" and "Careless Love"), Guralnick reveals Cooke as a civil rights pioneer and recording entrepreneur who, like Ray Charles, infused gospel sensibilities into pop music. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali ("This is the world's greatest rock 'n' roll singer," said the heavyweight champ of his friend) have walk-ons in the 750-page biography.

But Chicago itself is a central character in Cooke's early biography, as well as the Cook family history (Sam added an "e" to the end of his name because he thought it looked "classier." L.C. added the "e" shortly after).

Sam was a product of Bronzeville, "an instigator" who didn't always follow their father's strict dictums against sports and movies, L.C. remembers. Enterprising at an early age, Sam not only sold copies of the Chicago Defender, but persuaded his "gang" to tear the slats off back-yard fences -- so he could sell the pieces to their owners as firewood.

Despite the mischief, Bronzeville of the early 1940s was a tight-knit community.

"Our little circle was Bronzeville, it wasn't Chicago," says L.C. "We had a block that we ruled. Just anybody couldn't come in our neighborhood."

Neighborhood family

Guralnick adds: "Everybody looked out for everybody. It was the same way Jesse Jackson talks about it . . . if your momma and your papa weren't around, you had 12 mommas and papas."

"That's right," L.C. says. "'Cause everybody would whup ya, then take you home, and you'd get whupped again. In my neighborhood, everybody was your momma and your papa."

Guralnick and L.C., now a retired performer who lives in Calumet City, spark off of each other and finish each other's sentences like old friends, reflecting the 15 years Guralnick spent researching Sam's life. After completing "Careless Love," Guralnick spent the last "six or seven years," he says, writing and researching "Dream Boogie."

Though many of the Bronzeville landmarks Sam grew up with have since vanished, Guralnick and L.C. spent time driving around the old neighborhood, including 36th Street and Rhodes Avenue, where Sam was discovered by two teenage brothers in 1947. Lee and Jake Richards recruited the 16-year-old Sam to sing for a fledgling gospel quartet (eventually called the Highway QCs) after hearing him serenade a neighborhood girl with The Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care."

Cooke left Highway QCs in 1950 to record with the Soul Stirrers, a seminal gospel group on a national contract with Specialty Records. Seven years later, he moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, where he jump-started his pop career with the hit "You Send Me."

To L.C., it was all part of a plan Sam concocted when he was 9 years old.

L.C., then 7, remembers Sam saying, "Hey man, I ain't never gonna work."

"I figured out the system," Sam said to L.C. "Look, man, the system is designed to keep you working from Friday to Friday. Come Friday, you're broke. The system isn't designed for you to keep no money. Come payday, you broke."

Sam told his brother, "I ain't gonna be broke, I'm gonna have money in my pocket every day . . . I'm going to sing for a living."

And he did, eventually founding his own record and publishing companies. According to L.C., Sam found his true voice, his emotional release in music. Despite his charm, L.C. says, Sam didn't often express himself well outside his music.

Sam funneled his social conscience and frustrations with civil rights struggles into a final masterpiece, "A Change is Gonna Come" -- just before being shot to death by a night clerk at a $3 motel on the fringe of Los Angeles in 1964. Intoxicated and stoned at 2 a.m., Sam was furiously searching for the prostitute who had robbed him. Enraged by the theft, Sam flew at the female night attendant, who shot him through the lungs and heart with a .22 pistol.

"Lady, you shot me," Sam said.

He died at age 33.

Characteristically, Guralnick writes a detailed account of Sam's final hours but doesn't use the end to define the man. For his part, L.C. is happy to have the whole story told, to have his brother's legacy finally given its due.

No sugarcoating

"Sam wasn't no saint, but we tell it like it was," L.C. says.

But the biography's subtitle remains "The Triumph of Sam Cooke," not "Tragedy of . . . ." Sam should be credited for not only bringing sexuality to gospel music, but charging his rock 'n' roll with gospel sensibilities, Guralnick contends.

"The Lord gave you a voice to sing to make people happy," Reverend Cook told his son during Sam's crossover into pop music. "And if you can make more money singing pop music than you can the church songs . . . don't nobody get saved over singing."

But, in the end, was it singing that saved Sam?

"I guess you could say it was," L.C. says.

Guralnick offers a different interpretation.

"I think [Rev. Cook] would make a distinction," he says. "Sam found his true expression in singing. But he wasn't going to find true salvation."

Remembering Sam Cooke, Bronzeville and great ambitions