The Legacy of Sam Cooke

“All I ever wanted to be was Sam Cooke” is a quote from Otis Redding. In his even shorter life Otis recorded many songs written by Sam like ‘Cupid’, ‘Chain Gang’, ‘Shake’ and ‘A Change is Gonna Come’.

 Pretty much every (soul) singer in the 60’s and 70’s was influenced by him in some way. Rod Stewart has recorded many of Cooke’s songs.

 Great groups like the Rolling Stones (‘Good Times’) and the Animals (‘Bring It On Home To Me’) recorded his songs which made the charts. The list of all the covers is too long to mention so please look at the individual songpages for more info on that.

 When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was founded in 1986 he was first of only ten inductees. A year later he also made the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

 The 21^st century brought some new releases like a 4 CD box, new compilations (the first really good ones since 1986’s ‘The Man And His Music’) and a 3 CD box containing all his Soul Stirrers work.

On screen, his Harlem Square Club act was included in the opening scene of ‘Ali’ and VH1 showed a one hour documentary called ‘Legend’ which was later released on DVD. The British BBC devoted one episode of their six-part ‘Soul Deep’ series on soul music on him.

 His music seems to be in a little revival when we look at the new CD’s, the remastering of older albums and with the release of a new biography called ‘Dream Boogie’ by Peter Guralnick, who then went on radio and tv to talk about Sam and his music.

 Let’s hope this will continue for a long time.