Sam Cooke is hard to capture in a biography not because he hid a lot of mysteries, but because he just packed so much into 33 years and 10 months.

He was best known to the world at large for catchy pop-radio hits like "Havin' a Party." He is still held in awe by the gospel world for his early-'50s recordings with the Soul Stirrers. But he could jazz up standards like "Summertime," go to town on a Fats Waller tune and write a bittersweet anthem like "A Change Is Gonna Come."

At the same time, as Peter Guralnick illustrates in "Dream Boogie," Cooke was shaped by deep personal conflict over sin and salvation, as well as the public tension between the black world and the white world of his day.

Cooke's general approach to any challenge was to learn the rules fast and use them to beat the people who made them. He started his own label and controlled his music, as much as any artist can. He moved easily among white folks yet felt frustration, especially after his first civil-rights arrest, that their institutions systematically excluded people of his color.

Then, set against these higher thoughts and sometimes lofty actions, Guralnick finds an old-style high-living star who let the good times roll until they rolled him into his grave.

Guralnick argues persuasively that feet of clay didn't diminish Cooke any more than they diminished Elvis, the subject of an earlier Guralnick biography.

Laying out that argument, however, makes "Dream Boogie" a dense read. Between Cooke's business deals and the army of forces tugging at his musical soul, this book is nowhere near as breezy as a Cooke pop song.

But there is a reward for staying the course: Understanding Sam Cooke means better understanding the postwar America in which he sang, lived and died.

Originally published on November 13, 2005