Soul master stirred the masses with a voice made in heaven

by HilI Dahl

 (From Goldmine #578, September 20, 2002)

Although the title of RCA Victor's sumptuous four-disc Sam Cooke box set

The Man Who Invented Soul might have smacked of oversimplification - Ray Charles can easily make the same claim, and Jackie Wilson and Clyde McPhatter were there for its blessed birth too -there's no way that soul music would have developed in the heavenly directions it did without Cooke.

Cooke's posthumous profile is currently higher than in many a moon. VH-l recently devoted an hour-long VH-1 Legends to his tragically  truncated career; Writer Peter Guralnick is preparing a new Cooke biography (Daniel Wolff previously wrote an excellent 1995 bio, You Send Me: The Life & Times Of Sam Cooke); and Guralnick penned liner notes for Abkco's new Cooke CD Keep Movin' On, a splendid overview of the late singer's final year of recording that boasts a previously unreleased title track.

Four decades after his senseless shooting death, Cooke's impact continues to resonate.

"He was going to be one of the major stars of all time, because he had all the stuff," said fellow R&B great Jerry "Iceman" Butler. "He had the looks. He could do anything."

Born Jan. 22, 1931, in Clarksdale, Miss., Samuel Cook (the "e" came later) was the fourth child born to the Rev. Charles Cook and his wife Annie May. The Cooks left the Mississippi Delta for Chicago in 1933, settling in Bronzeville, a bustling African-American community on the South Side: At nine, Sam prepared for his future by singing to an imaginary throng in his backyard.

"He would stick these sticks in the ground," said his brother L.C. "He had 12 sticks. And he would stick'em in the ground, and then he would sing! So one day I asked him, I said, 'Man, what are you doing?' So he said, 'L.C., look -I'm always going to sing. I'm never gonna have a job.' So I looked at him, and I'm seven years old, and he's nine, and he's telling me this. "I’m gonna sing all my life. That's how I'm gonna make my living. That's why I've got these popsicle sticks here. That's my audience, so I can get accustomed singing to an audience!'" The prescient lad also harmonized in his family's gospel group, The Singing Children.

"My older brother Charles was the lead singer," said L.C. "My sister Mary, she was also a lead singer, and my sister Hattie was a baritone. Sam sung tenor. Sam didn't sing lead. My brother Charles sung the lead. And I sung the bass. I was the youngest. Charles wouldn't let him sing lead. Charles had no idea that Sam could sing like he could."

To earn a few coins, Sam would croon a cappella on a street corner.

“At 35^th and Cottage Grove, it was the end of the streetcar line.” Recalled L.C. “All the people would get off. So what me and Sam would do, we would go down on the corner, and Sam would sing. And I would pass the hat around while he was singing. And this is where we made out little extra money to go to the show and everything.”

The Singing Children broke up during Cooke’s sophomore year at Wendell Phillips High School, but he never stopped indulging in his favorite pastime.

“He was singing in the choirs at school. Sam always sung. That’s all he loved to do,” said L.C. “You know who he always loved? Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots. [He] was Sam’s idol.”

But gospel was his passion. Cooke joined The Highway QCs, a young quartet named after the Highway Baptist Church (what the QC stands for is a mystery).

“The manager’s name was Mr. Copeland,” recalled L.C. “They knew about Sam singing, so Mr. Copeland sent for Sam one day to come to their rehearsal.”

As the QCs established themselves on the South Side, they caught the ear of Soul Stirrers. Formed in 1922 in Trinity, Texas, by Senior Roy Crain, their first lineup eventually disintegrated. In 1933, Crain joined another group in Houston and brought the name along. Rebert H. Harris came in as lead tenor in 1937 – the same year they relocated to the Windy City. Through their recordings and tours, the Stirrers became gospel stars. A few of them dropped by a local church one day in 1947 and had Cooke front a number, before long, Stirrers baritone R.B. Robinson was the QCs tutor.

“Every time the Soul Stirrers would be in town, he would come and rehearse with the QCs,” said L.C. “All the time, he was grooming Cooke for the Soul Stirrers, [Robinson] told me, ‘Well, I knew that R.H. Harris was gonna quit sooner or later. And I always had Sam in mind to sing with the Soul Stirrers, ‘cause I knew what a good singer Sam was. That’s why I used to come by and rehearse with the QCs.’”

In September 1950, Harris announced he was leaving, and Robinson nominated Cooke to take his place.

Soul Stirrers were signed to Los Angeles-based Specialty Records. When label owner Art Rupe learned that Cooke had replaced Harris, he was less than ecstatic. That Crain hadn’t informed him of the switch until they showed up for a March 1951 date in Hollywood didn’t help. Rupe reluctantly gave them the green light; by session’s end, 11 a cappella selections had been commited to posterity, notably an upbeat “Jesus Gave Me Water” with Cooke’s confident lead floating above the Stirrer’s harmonies. It sold more than 65,000 copies, erasing Rupe’s doubt about the new recruit.

Their next two 78s, “Come, Let Us Go Back To God,” sold respectably. But it was at personal appearances that Cooke’s boundless charisma fully radiated. Gospel music had its first genuine matinee idol.

“Oh, my! The women would throw their hats, rip the buttons off their blouses, screamin’ and yellin’, saying ‘Sing, Sam baby, sing!’ Oh, it was really something,” said Mable John (like Cooke, she first sang in a family gospel aggregation, The United Five, with her brother Little Willie John before emerging as Berry Gordy’s first R&B chanteuse at Tamla).

“Young, sexy and could sing! It’s one thing to be young and sexy, but young and sexy and can sing too?”

“Because he was young, certainly he attracted young people,” agreed Butler. “But then when you start talking about that, you’ve got Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin caught up in that same ball of wax. I think his thing was that he was a young male, which gave him a little edge on the other two.” The Iceman first saw Cooke on a mid-50s program at Chicago’s Du Sable High School. “I can still see him,” said Butler, “and that’s a long time ago.”

Perhaps because of his days with the Singing Children, Cooke was quick to help young performers. During a 1952 program at Cleveland’s Temple Baptist Church, the little Womack Brothers were recipients of his largesse.

“We were there trying to get them to let us perform, so maybe that would be a break for us. And we were being turned down by Crain, who was the manager of the Soul Stirrers and the other old heads,” recalled Bobby Womack. And we were being turned down by Crain, who was the manager of the Soul Stirrers and the other old heads,” recalled Bobby Womack in 1999. “The old heads said, they don’t go on first. They don’t play anything. We’re professionals.’

“[Cooke]  was the one who said, ‘No, no, no, no, they’re gonna sing. And not only that: After they sing, I want their mama to get back there with the biggest purse she’s possible got.”

Thanks to Cooke’s intervention, Mrs. Womack satchel ended up stuffed with $73 in blessed donations.

Cooke’s signature “yodel” – a delicate vocal curlicue that endured long after he went secular and was widely copied – first surfaced in early 1953 during a show in California.

“He told me he was singing one time, and the song was so high for him. And he said he just started yodelling,” said L.C. “After that, it got to be his trademark.”

“Nearer To Thee,” cut in Chicago in February of ’55, was a brisk seller for the Stirrers.

By the middle of the next year, Sam was eyeing the pop field – but not before soliciting Rev. Cook’s counsel.

“I think somewhere back in his head, he always had it that one day he would sing popular music,” said L.C. “When he turned to go to pop, he came to my father before he did it. And he asked my father, in his opinion, would it be all right? My father told him this: He said. ‘Look, Sam, God gave you a voice. Now, as long as you use it in the right way, God will be pleased with you. So therefore, you have my blessing,’”

On Dec. 12, 1959, Cooke entered Cosimo Matassa’s New Orleans studio with Specialty A&R man Bumps Blackwell for his first secular session. This was the same funky facility where Fats Domino and Little Richard laid down their rock ‘n’ roll anthems, and much the same backing cast was assembled: drummer Earl Palmer, bassist Frank Fields, likely saxists Lee Allen and Red Tyler. Cooke reworked the Stirrers’ lilting early ’56 single “Wonderful” into a pop mode as “Lovable,” his gritty vocal attack spiced with a barrage of yodels over smooth doo-wop shading. Flipped with Tyler’s mid-tempo “Forever,” the two sides hit the streets in January of ’57 on Specialty under the paper-alias of Dale Cook.

The ruse fooled few, sold little and indicated Cooke’s days as a Soul Stirrer were drawing to a close. A Chicago session in April included the inspiring Cooke original “That’s Heaven To Me.” Instrumentation for gospel quartets had expanded – the Stirrers were backed by guitarist Leroy Crume, Willie Webb on organ, Evelyn Gay on piano, and L.C. on drums.

“They didn’t have no drummer, and Sam said, ‘Hey man, you can keep a beat!’ I said ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘Well, you can earn this money!’”

Blackwell and Cooke harboured grander aspirations than conventional R&B stardom: They coveted pop pre-eminence. On June 1, 1957, they went into Radio Recorders in L.A. with the recently relocated Palmer on drums, arranger Rene Hall, and guitarist Cliff White. As a child, White led blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson around the streets of Dallas before taking up his guitar himself and touring with The Mills Brothers. Whit remained Cooke’s personal accompanist until the end. “He wouldn’t sing without Cliff,” noted L.C.

Blackwell contracted a white vocal group for the date – a major departure from Specialty’s standard R&B approach. When Rupe unexpectedly strolled into the studio and realized the pure pop direction that Cooke and Blackwell were exploring, he went ballistic and fired Blackwell. But once Rupe cooled out, everyone got back to business.

On the slate were a gospel-tinged treatment of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” and a beguiling original that gave Cooke’s mellifluous pipes plenty of room to roam over White’s guitar and the whitebread choir chiming in like refugees from Your Hit Parade. It’s title was “You Send Me,’ and it came off fine.

Still furious a few days after the session was completed, Rupe brashly proposed a deal that he would soon regret: In exchange for giving up the royalties Specialty owed Blackwell on his Little Richard productions, the label would hand over to Blackwell Cooke’s masters free and clear, along with the singer’s contract. Blackwell took him up on the offer. After all, if Rupe wasn’t interested in Cooke as a pop crooner, Keen Records – a fledgling L.A. company headed by Greek businessman John Siamas and future Del-Fi Records founder Bob Keene – certainly was.

In September, Keen issued “You Send Me” under the assumption that its flip side “Summertime,” was the potential hit. Cooke used his real name this time, adding the “e” to its end for reasons that remain murky.

“Some people say it was because he was superstitious,” said L.C. “But he never told me that.”

However, “You Send Me” overwhelmingly grabbed the DJ’s spins. Its momentum spread from the R&B arena to the pop field, undeterred even by a chirpy Teresa Brewer cover. “You Send Me” ended up being the country’s #1 pop record for most of December, reigning for six weeks at the top of the Billboard’s R&B charts.

Reportedly, because of the brouhaha between Rupe and Blackwell, L.C. was registered as the writer of “You Send Me” to keep Specialty’s publishing arm from profiting (BMI’s Web site now lists Sam as the song’s creator).

Rupe got a taste of revenge when he took Cooke’s “I’ll Come Running Back To You,” overdubbed the same white chorus and scored a #1 R&B hit in 1958.

“You Send Me” is the lone original on Cooke’s eponymous Keen debut LP. The swinging “The Lonesome Road,” “Ol’ Man River” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’” benefit from minimal accompaniment, White’s jazzy guitar a prominent ingredient. “So Long,” “The Bells Of St. Mary’s” and “Danny Boy” are ethereal in their pristine delicacy.

In the midst of Cooke’s first blast of success, he was booked for a Nov. 3 appearance on Ed Sullivan’s legion of fans eagerly awaited his network television debut, but Sullivan babbled so long with actor Rod Steiger that he only managed to deliver the first line of “You Send Me” before the show abruptly ended, the CBS eye rudely obliterating his image. Blacks across the country phoned in to protest, and Sullivan rescheduled Cooke a month later. This time he sang “You Send Me” all the way through. Before he encored with  “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons,” Sullivan apologized.

Cooke’s pop crossover had grievous ramifications among the gospel faithful.

“It was very hard, ‘cause a lot of people figured like this: ‘Well, he’s singing devil’s music!’ People were not as broad-minded then as they are today, where they would accept it,” said L.C. “Even the Staple Singers talked about him, Mahalia Jackson, a whole lot of people talked about him. Yeah, they didn’t like that, because Sam was as big as you could get in gospel.”

“Whatever he was singing, it was all right with me,” said Butler. “But to the old ministers and to the sisters on the mourning bench and to the deacons and the fathers and the mothers of the church, it was sacrilegious that he would take this good voice that God had given him and sing all this secular music.”

Airplay was splint evenly between the two sides of Cooke’s first Keen follow-up, his revival of Deek Watson & His Brown Dots’ 1945 waxing “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons” marginally besting “Desire Me” in early ’58. The same happy fate befell Cooke’s next Keen single that spring, his own charmer “You Were Made For Me” and a jazz-tinged “Lonely Island” both vaulting into the R&B Top 10. Meanwhile, Rupe tried again with a pairing of “I Don’t Want To Cry” and an engaging “That’s All I Need To Know.” This time the gambit failed.

During the mid-60s, Lou Adler would produce gold with The Mamas & The Papas and Johnny Rivers. In June of ’58 he was a fresh face at Keen, brought aboard by Blackwell and charged with helming a Cooke session. Along with high-school pal Herb Alpert, Adler wrote half of Cooke’s next single, but their mellow “All Of My Life” stiffed. Fortunately, Cooke brought in the bongo-spiced calypso “Win Your Love For Me.” First credited to L.C. but now credited to L.C. but now listed under Sam’s name at BMI, it soared to #4 R&B late that summer and garnered plenty of pop spins.

The aptly named 1958 LP Sam Cooke Encore went heavy on standards, this time in a more expansive setting. The sagebrush oldie “Along The Navajo Trail” boasts a Big Band arrangement, as does Cooke’s romping rendition of “Mary, Mary Lou,” cut the year before by Bill Hailey & His Comets (oddly, Cooke reprised it for his elegant TV turn on the Arthur Murray Dance Party in late 1960, perhaps because it was only his number suitable for jitterbugging).

Cooke shifted pseudonymous credit for the bubbly “Love You Most Of All,” his last hit of the year, to his girlfriend, Barbara Campbell. They would marry the next year, after Cooke survived a horrific Nov. 10, 1958, auto accident outside of Marion, Ark., that killed chauffeur Eddie Cunningham and left Lou Rawls – lead singer for the Pilgrim Travelers, then trying to follow Cooke’s lead into the pop market – in a coma for five and a half days.

“It took me about, I guess close to a year to fully recover, ‘cause I had a brain concussion,” noted Rawls in a 1981 interview. Cooke got lucky – a few glass slivers in his eye but nothing life-threatening.

The tour had bravely attempted to bridge the gap between sacred and secular.

“We sang background for him,” said Lou Rawls. “We would open the show doing gospel music. It wasn’t really hard gospel. It was called more or less inspirational music. And then we would go off, change clothes and come back and back him up on his pop things.”

Yearning to control the business side of his affairs, Cooke joined forces with J.W. Alexander of those same Pilgrim Travelers, who had his own publishing company, KAGS Music. The two permanently sealed their new partnership with a handshake.

“He was a big influence on Sam’s life,” said Womack. “He taught Sam a lot, and Sam trusted him.”

“Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha,” Cooke’s first hit of 1959, floated up to #2 R&B and may have been inspired by his notorious lack of dancing agility.

“Everybody gave me the credit for being better on state,” said L.C. “But I couldn’t outdo Sam, let’s face it, ‘cause Sam could stand flat-flooted and kill you dead!”

Dancing wasn’t the concept behind Tribute To The Lady, a full-length Billie Holiday homage that backed Cooke with an expansive orchestra whose ranks included West Coast jazz greats Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, and Buddy Collette

In the summer, Cooke scored big (#13 R&B, #28 Pop) with the enchanting “Only Sixteen,” again temporarily credited to Campbell. This time, the mixed choir was replaced by an all-male group.

“It was me and George McCurn, who was the bass singer with the [Pilgrim Travelers],” said Rawls. “The way these things would happen, it wasn’t anything that was planned. He would say, ‘I’m having a recording session. Why don’t you guys come by?’ You know, “Why don’t you come over?’ And I’d go in and sit around, and he would be in there going over a tune or something. And I would go in and stand around and I would just kind of fall in and start singing along with him. And the producers would go crazy and turn the mic on and record it, and I wasn’t even aware of it!”

Cooke, Alexander, and Soul Stirrers founder Crain (Cooke’s road manager since late ’57) audaciously launched SAR Records in 1959, its name a combination of their initials (Sam, Alexander, and Roy).

The idea of a black artist starting his own label was cutting-edge. Black-owned companies such as Duke/Peacock in Houston, Fire/Fury in Harlem, Chicago’s Vee-Jay, and Berry Gordy’s fledgling Tamla in Detroit were still relatively rare, though Lloyd Price had briefly helmed his own KRC logo in 1956-57. Debuting with a Soul Stirrers 45 in late ’59, SAR would issue another eight in 1960, including secular offerings by L.C. (who had already recorded for Checker) and Johnnie Morisette. SAR would offer Cooke an alternative creative outlet.

“He would take all his ideas and put ‘em on his artists in SAR,” said L.C. “He’d give us all the material to work with, and then if we didn’t do the songs good enough to suit him, then he’d turn around and record ‘em himself and get a bigger hit.”

Alas, SAR was too small for a star of Cooke’s magnitude to record for himself. There was a dispute with Keen over royalties, and when the smoke cleared, Cooke signed a pact with RCA Victor at the beginning of 1960. He was assigned to producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore. The pair previously helmed Jimmie “Honeycomb” Rodgers’ hit streak at Roulette before joining RCA and producing Della Reese’s “Don’t You Know” and the Isley Brothers’ raveup “Shout.”

Their initial collaboration with Cooke was a letdown. “Teenage Sonata,” cut at RCA’s studio A in New York, wasn’t fated to go down as Brill Building bard Jeff Barry’s greatest composition, even Cooke couldn’t bring the languid ballad to life. It racked up disappointing sales as his first RCA single. But Cooke salvaged the late-January session when he pulled “Chain Gang” from his portfolio. This was no slick adaptation of a prison work song, despite its rhythmic group grunts – it was pop-slanted R&B with a typically memorable hook. Cooke wrote it after he and Jackie Wilson drove past a shackled work crew in the hot Georgia Sun. “Chain Gang” rocketed to #2 on both the Pop and R&B charts late that summer.

While “Teenage Sonata” was stiffing, Keen unearthed Cooke’s entrancing “Wonderful World” and nailed a #2 R&B/#12 Pop smash. Penned by Cooke, Adler, and Alpert, the latter still a ways from forming The Tijuana Brass (Campbell is cited as sole author on the original 45), its splendidly sparse arrangement is augmented by Rawls’ voice backing Cooke’s guileless vocal.

Hugo & Luigi steered Cooke to bland MOR on his first RCA albums. Cooke’s Tour (destination songs similar to Ray Charles’ The Genius Hits The Road) and Hits Of The 50’s (The Platters’ “The Great Pretender” is as close to R&B as he ventured; “Cry” and “Mona Lisa” are typical) were far removed from the earthy SAR catalog. The title of Swing Low, Cooke’s first album of 1961, indicated a return to his gospel roots, but there was nothing sacred about “Twilight On The Trail” (his vocal purity on “You Belong To Me” borders on the devotional). For My Kind Of Blues, Cooke explored “Trouble In Mind” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out,” cushioned by Sammy Lowe’s brassy, Count Basie-ish orchestra.

The mournful, self-penned “Sad Mood” closed out 1960 for Cooke in solid fashion. Cooke didn’t write “That’s It – I Quit – I’m Movin’ On,” which sold respectable in early ’61 for him, but his impossibly sweet “Cupid,” was a Top 20 hit in both markets that summer. This was Cooke the incurable romantic, right down to the whoosh of the chubby cherub’s arrows. Cut on Cooke’s adopted L.A. home turf, “Cupid” was arranged by veteran guitarist Rene Hall.

“Sam wouldn’t do nothing without Rene,” said L.C. “He loved Rene Hall. He was a great arranger.”

Backing vocals on “Cupid” were by the Sims Twins, who gave SAR its first hit when their incendiary “Soothe Me,” written by Cooke, peaked at #4 R&B in late ’61. Another new SAR recruit, Johnnie Taylor, formerly of The Highway QCs and Soul Stirrers, made his secular bow with “A Whole Lotta Woman.”

Cooke’s throbbing “Feel It” petered out at #56 Pop that autumn despite a danceable groove (its goose bump-inducing flip “It’s All Right” slipped onto the Pop hit parade in its own right). Cooke was now delving into rockin’ territory; this was the era of Chubby Checker, Joey Dee, and the Peppermint Lounge, and Cooke chimed in with “Twistin’ The Night Away.” L.A.’s session aces – Palmer on thundering drums, bassist Red Callender, and saxist Jackie Kelso – cooked while Cooke described a swinging society soiree. In late March 1962, “Twistin’ The Night Away” became Cooke’s first R&B chart-topper in almost four-and-a-half years and cracked the Pop Top 10.

Everything on Cooke’s album of the same name was tailor-made for the dance floor – especially “Camptown Twist” and “Twistin’ In The Kitchen With Dinah,” which sounds like something Checker might have tossed off as filler. Overall, however, the set is one of Cooke’s most consistent, revisiting “Soothe Me” and “A Whole Lotta Woman” as well as the driving Cooke/Rawls collaboration “Movin’ And A Groovin” and a pungent cover of Lattimore Brown’s bluesy 1960 Excello label release “Somebody’s Gonna Miss Me.”

“I was in Nashville. I was just sitting in my room, and the idea came to me. I was just singing the melody ‘Somebody’s Gonna Miss Me,’ just the chords, and Lattimore Brown helped me write the lyrics,” said Arthur Adams of the latter’s genesis. “I always admired Sam, because he just had such a unique voice. A great voice, really. I was already imitating him, singing some of his songs at the club, so that melody came kind of natural.”

Cooke apparently heard Brown’s platter on WLAC, Nashville’s clear-channel R&B radio powerhouse. “WLAC would go all over the South and Southwest. They were travelling, and everybody listened to WLAC,” said Adams, who met Cooke only once and had no idea he was going to cover the song until he heard Cooke’s version.

“It blew my mind! I was very excited,” he exclaimed. “In fact, I even wrote to RCA and asked them, were they going to put it out on a single?  They told me they had no intentions of putting it out as a single.”

1962 was a monster year for Cooke. An April 26 Hollywood session elicited two seminal self-penned smashes, “Having A Party” and “Bring It On Home To Me.” Pressed back-to-back, the carefree “Party,” with lyrical tips of the cap to Barbara George’s “I Know” and saxman Kurt Curtis’ “Soul Twist,” went to #4 R&B and #17 Pop that summer, while the call-and-response-rooted soul classic “Bring It On Home To Me” – an uncredited duet with Rawls, then staking his own claim to stardom over at Capitol – bested it at #2 R&B and #13 Pop. Ernie Freeman’s church 88s ignite the latter’s intro, Cooke’s rough-edged interplay with Rawls the very definition of soul.

That fall, Cooke nailed another two-sided smash, both of them originals. “Nothing Can Change This Love” restored Cooke to his balladeer role in front of opulent strings and gave him a #2 R&B/#12 Pop seller; the burr-edged upbeat blues “Somebody Have Mercy” almost equalled it at #3 R&B. He was now one of RCA’s most successful acts – when they assembled The Best Of Sam Cooke that same autumn, it blasted up to #22 on Billboard’s Pop album charts.

SAR was also motoring along nicely in ’62. Morisette’s “Meet Me At The Twisting Place” charted nationally, and Cooke convinced the young Womack Brothers to make the secular leap. Changing their names to the Valentinos, their “Lookin’ For A Love,” a rousing adaptation of the gospel standard “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” crashed the R&B Top 10. But their pop rebirth caused serious repercussions within the close-knit Womack clan.

“My father was totally against it,” said Womack. “Sam couldn’t even reach my father that way. My father talked to J.W. Alexander. They’re both Masons, and also I’m one. If you understand anything about Masons, you don’t make commitments and [then] don’t fulfil ‘em. He said, ‘Don’t hurt my boys. Don’t let ‘em get hurt.’”

Cooke cut one of the hottest live recordings of the era in January ’63 – too hot for RCA to unleash at the time. Laid down at the huge Harlem Square Club in North Miami, Cooke preached from a pulpit that reeked of sex, sweat and soul. Sax blaster King Curtis led a combo that included guitarists White and Cornell Dupree and New Orleans-trained drummer June Gardner as Cooke rocked the house with “Feel It,” “Twistin’ The Night Away” and “Having A Party.” RCA finally rescued the tape in 1985 from banishment in its vaults.

No matter where Cooke pulled material from, he made it his own. “Send Me Some Lovin’” was a Crescent City blues ballad when Little Richard debuted it in 1957 on Specialty; Cooke’s #2 R&B/# 13 Pop hit remake in early ’63 was a sumptuous soul-sender, a choir echoing his every line. That June, Cooke was perched atop the R&B charts with his own playful “Another Saturday Night,” its up-tempo beat stoked by ace L.A. drummer Hal Blaine (the sax solo was handled by Plas Johnson, whose horn graced countless ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll hits). Later that summer, Cooke’s brassy, bombastic adaptation of the ancient “Frankie & Johnny” went to #4 R&B and #14 Pop.

Before year’s end, Cooke grabbed hold of Howlin’ Wolf’s lowdown Willie Dixon-penned blues “Little Red Rooster” and escorted it uptown over an ultra-relaxed groove. Despite its overt blues grounding. “Little Red Rooster” was a #7 R&B seller and just missed the Pop Top 10, stalling at #11. The hit could have been L.C.s had he heeded his brother’s call.

“He said, ‘L.C., do you know the song “Little Red Rooster”?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Sam, but I don’t want to be labeled a blues singer.’ And that’s why I refused it,” claimed L.C. “So Sam said, “Well, I’m gonna do it!” So as soon as he did it and got he a hit, he called me back and just laughed!”

“Little Red Rooster” hails from Cooke’s extraordinary Night Beat album, waxed in late February ’63 with an all-star L.A. cast: pianist Ray Johnson, Blaine on drums, White on guitar, and young Billy Preston – then recently pacted to SAR’s new Derby subsidiary – manning the organ. Displaying impeccable taste, Cooke cruised through several mellow blues gems associated with pianist Charles Brown and swung Big Joe Turner “Shake, Rattle And Roll.” Cooke’s sorrowful “Laughin’ And Clownin’” and a driving “You Gotta Move” stand tall beside them.

Night Beat was Cooke’s second album of ’63. Mr. Soul is a much more conventional affair, dominated by luxuriantly orchestrated pop standards. Yet there was enough space to revisit Brown’s “Drifting Blues” and Turner’s “Chains Of Love.” Cooke shared the RCA LP 3 Great Guys with Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka; Cooke’s “I’m Gonna Forget About You,” “Talkin’ Trash” and “I Ain’t Gonna Cheat On You No More” got lost in the shuffle. SAR cooled off in ’63, but Derby connected with Mel Carter’s wistful “When A Boy Falls In Love,” cowritten by Cooke.

Tragedy struck that June when Cooke’s 18-month-old son drowned in the family’s front-yard pool. Cooke’s marriage to Barbara was faltering as well. But his fiscal outlook was growing brighter. Cooke hired accountant Allen Klein as his manager, and Klein got Cooke off the chitlin’ circuit and into mainstream venues. Klein also engineered a lucrative new deal that placed Cooke’s output in the hands of their own newly formed Tracey Ltd., though RCA would still be his label.

The struggle for equality was raging in the South, and Cooke and his R&B-belting peers helped pull down the barriers.

“During this period, the audience was segregated. Segregated by a rope – you had white people sitting on one side of the rope, black people sitting on the other side of the rope. I mean, stupid stuff,” said Butler. “And the fire department said, ‘Now, please don’t jump off the stage, because it creates a ruckus, and we don’t want to have a problem.’ Well, Sam – you could just see the gleam in his eyes. As soon as he got on the stage, he was gonna jump off that bad boy. And he did. And they caught him in mid-air and threw him back up on the stage! We laughed and squalled about that all the way to the next town!”

The first time Cooke headlined Jules Podell’s Copacabana in Manhattan in 1958, he bombed. His heavily hyped return engagement six years later was a different story: “He torched the prestigious New York nightspot. Hall conducted guitarists White and Womack and Gardner on traps (augmented by the Copa’s house orchestra), producer Al Schmitt taping the July 8 show for imminent RCA release.

Cooke’s set list was a far cry from the rough-edged Harlem Square set, featuring crowd-pleasers such as “Bill Bailey” and “If I Had A Hammer,” though he did slip in a spine-chilling treatment of Bob Dylan’s politically charged “Blowin’ In The Wind.”

The ring if hip banjo kicked off the cool swinger “Good News,” a #11 Pop hit for its writer during the first months of 1964. The soul-soaked mid-tempo invitation “Good Times” – a compelling example of Sam duetting with himself via the magic of overdubbing – matched the previous hit a few months later. On the flip of the latter sat a thrilling up-tempo overhaul if the country standard “Tennessee Waltz” that registered its own strong Pop chart showing at #35. All three were highlights of Cooke’s Ain’t That Good News LP, along with “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day” (introduced by Johnnie Taylor on SAR in ’62) and “Meet Me At Mary’s Place” (ditto by Morisette).

But the set’s masterpiece is “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Cooke’s epochal response to Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” and the Civil Rights struggle. Give a grandiose violin-and-brass-enriched arrangement by Hall, Cooke testified to his eternal hope that someday everyone could live together in harmony.

“It was the right song for the time,” recalled Butler. RCA issued it as a single 11 days after Cooke’s death, first pairing an agreeable “Cousin Of Mine” with a riveting Sam & Sam duet, “That’s Where It’s At,” waxed a year before by the Sims Twins for SAR.

Cooke had the world on a string as 1964 neared its end. He had taken his pal Cassius Clay into a studio to produce a lighthearted “Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here” by the boxer for Columbia Records. Cooke had also cut Hugo & Luigi loose, promoting Schmitt to the producer’s chair. The Valentinos’ punchy “It’s All Over Now” on SAR had been turned into a British invasion smash by the Rolling Stones. Cooke also stockpiled the pounding “Shake,” “It’s Got The Whole World Shakin’’” and “Yeah Man,” potential blockbusters all, for RCA.

The he picked up the wrong damn woman at a party. We’ll never know precisely what happened in the wee hours of Dec. 11, 1964 – the official version is hard to reconcile – but there’s no refuting the end result: Cooke lay dead inside a seedy motel in Watts, shot to death by its manager, who claimed Cooke had attacked her after his companion absconded with his clothes (his wallet was missing as well). The Los Angeles Police Department showed little interest in a thorough investigation, and a coroner’s quickie inquest raised more questions than it answered (an injustice repeated when rocker Bobby Fuller was found dead in Hollywood less than two years later).

At the time Adams had recently relocated to L.A. He lived at 92^nd and Figueroa – very near the Hacienda Motel.

“I was playing at the 49er Club. When I came home, he had gotten killed. My wife told me when I got home, ‘You know Sam Cooke got killed next door?” I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Yeah, he got killed next door!’ I couldn’t believe it.” Said Adams, now a top L.A. blues guitarist.

“They had a viewing of his body at People’s Funeral Home on Central Avenue, and they announced that the public could go see him. So I went and I stood in line. I never will forget it. I passed by and saw his body. It was a long line. You had to stand in line and wait your turn to view the body.”

A second service in Chicago was chaotic – 6,000 mourners trying to view Cooke one last time. He was buried back in Los Angeles at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Cooke’s first posthumous RCA single coupled “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come,” both sides proving massive hits in the wake of his death, #7 and #31 respectively, “It’s Got The Whole World Shakin’” (#41) and “Sugar Dumpling” (#32) were solid sellers later that year. There were tribute albums from the Supremes on Motown (We Remember Sam Cooke) and King Curtis (who was stabbed to death in New York City in 1971 at age 37) for Capitol (King Curtis Plays The Hits Made Famous By Sam Cooke) and heartfelt songs of farewell such as Johnny Copeland’s “Dedicated To The Greatest” on Wand and Bobby Harris’ “We Can’t Believe You’re Gone” on Atlantic.

Cooke’s influence on Otis Redding was huge – Redding waxed seven Cooke-written songs for Volt, three on his Otis Blue LP: “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “Wonderful World” and a piledriving “Shake”. With Redding masterminding in Muscle Shoals, Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” rewrote “Yeah Man” as a name-check of soul luminaries, and it went gold on Atco in 1967, reaching #2 on both the Pop and R&B charts.

Butler paid tribute to Cooke, Redding, and Jesse Belvin on his ’68 Mercury LP The Soul Goes On, while Rawls’ Muscle Shoals – cut 1970 Capitol Album Bring It On Home consisted largely of his late friend’s classics (its title track was a minor hit, #96 Pop).

Cooke’s unmatched vocal purity swayed a slew of young vocalists, none more than Louis Williams. As lead singer of The Ovations in Memphis, he sounded like a reincarnated Cooke.

“I loved Sam Cooke so. I just idolized him. So I just wanted to sing everything he put out,” said Williams. “I heard some Soul Stirrers things. Then when he put ‘You Send Me’ out, boy! That flipped me and the whole world!”

Williams’ lead on “It’s Wonderful To Be In Love,” The Ovations’ first hit for Goldwax in 1965, was a breathtaking Cooke homage.

“Sam had a tune called ‘Wonderful,’ a spiritual,” Williams said. “I started writing a couple of lines, some lines on ‘It’s Wonderful To Be In Love.’ And me and [fellow Ovations] Nathan [Lewis] and Lee [Jones] just finished it up.”

When The Ovations guested on a Redding-hosted episode of The!!!!!Beat in 1966, they performed a supercharged “Twistin’ The Night Away.” Their biggest hit was the ’73 remake of “Having A Party” on MGM (#56 Pop).

For those lucky enough to have crossed his path and the rest of us who have only his music to remember him by, Cooke’s legacy looms large.

“Sam was a major influence. More so than an influence, he was a big brother to me,” said Womack. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about him, and I miss him. I just want to represent him well, what he taught me.”

Said Butler, “There was no limit to what he could have done.”

“If you listen to every singer today, every singer’s got a little bit of Sam Cooke,” said his brother L.C.

Fortunately, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.