Sam Cooke One of America’s most popular legendary singers, songwriters, and Gospel and R & B performers who became the role model for many artists such as Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Al Green and even artists from the United Kingdom, Rod Stewart and The Beatles, was to leave a huge mark on the music industry of his time. Sam Cooke was born on January 22nd 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He only added the ‘e’ to his name later in life in an attempt to appear ‘classy’ once he began his recoding career. He was born into a family of seven children with a Baptist minister father, Charles Cook and his mother Annie Mae. In 1933 the family left Mississippi for Chicago. Sam’s first encounter with music was within his own family where he and three of his siblings formed a quartet, The Sibling Singers. As a teenager he became a featured vocalist in his gospel choir and progressed to another gospel group called the Soul Stirrers who achieved significant success with the gospel community.
While with the Gospel group Cooke released secular music under the alias, Dale Cooke. His voice was soon recognized and the Gospel group and Specialty Records gave their blessing for Cooke to sing under his own name. However, they were less than pleased with the type of music Cooke was making unlike another artist on the label, Little Richard . After that Cooke signed with Keen Records and released his first single on that label, “You Send Me”. The single was destined to spend six weeks at number one on the Billboard Pop Charts. Along with his vocal talents Sam also began writing lyrics and music for himself and surprised the music business when he founded his own record label in the 1960’s, SAR Records. Others who signed to his label were Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Womack and The Valentino’s. Around this time Cooke left Keen Records and signed with RCA Victor. He followed this signing with a string of hits including, “Bring it on Home”, “Chain Gang” “Twisting the Night Away”, “Cupid” and “Another Saturday Night”. During his career Sam Cooke had twenty nine top forty hits on the pop charts and more on the R & B charts. In 1962 he released a critically acclaimed LP entitled “ Night Beat”. He wrote many of the most popular songs in the genre of that period. His private life was marred with many problems and at times grief. He married his childhood sweetheart, Barbara Campbell, after she gave birth to their daughter. But prior to that he was married to another woman and had a son. Later in life the son would drown in a swimming pool at the Cooke’s family home. In his life, married or not, Cooke dated any women available to the attractive entertainer, and it is thought that this pattern of behavior was what lead to the tawdry circumstances of his death, his predilection for "professionals," and previous episodes of anger and violence toward women.
Sam Cooke’s illustrious career was brought to an early close when he was shot dead on December 11th 1964 in Los Angeles, California. The story goes, although the facts of the case are still in dispute, that a hotel manager, Bertha Franklin, shot Cooke in self defense when he came to her office at the Hacienda Hotel in South Los Angeles where a dispute took place when Cooke accused the manager of hiding a prostitute he had fought with in his room. The manager reported that Cooke became violent and he was only clothed in one shoe and an overcoat. She claimed she shot him in self defense and the verdict was returned as justifiable homicide. Although the verdict was justifiable homicide the true facts of the case are believed to have been overlook or buried. Cooke’s family have tried to put forth a conspiracy theory on his death relating to a woman, later found to be a prostitute, whom he had taken to the hotel that night while he was drunk, and the hotel manager. It is summarized that the prostitute, Elisa Boyer, took Sam’s clothes and his money and left the hotel room, which infuriated him. When he went to the motel manager she shot him.Nevertheless, no solid evidence supporting a conspiracy theory has been presented to date. However, in Our Uncle Sam: The Sam Cooke Story From His Family’s Perspective, the biography written by Cooke's great-nephew, he discusses little-known facts, glaring inconsistencies, and an alternate scenario to the singer's death. Sam Cooke’s sister, Agnes Cooke-Hoskins, was reported to have said, “My brother was first class all the way. He would not check into a $3 a night motel; that wasn't his style”. After his death many posthumous releases followed including, “A Change is Gonna Come”. The hit single featured in Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X. More recently the single was featured on West Wing, starring Martin Sheen, in a tribute to Cooke. His widow Barbara went on to marry Bobby Womack and Cooke’s daughter married Womack’s brother, Cecil. After the death of Sam Cooke, Motown Records released We Remember Sam Cooke, a collection of Cooke covers recorded by The Supremes.In the 1985 film Witness starring Harrison Ford, the song "Wonderful World" was heavily featured and so gained further exposure. Wonderful World was featured as one of two concurrently running Levi Jeans Commercials in 1985 and became a hit in the United Kingdom because of this, reaching number two upon re-release. Cooke was inducted as a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and in 1999, he was given the honour of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and later in 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number sixty on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. From the gospel years to "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson," Cooke took a path that wasn't possible before he did. His life was tied to the times in which he lived, and in many ways, his story is a reflection of many black Americans of his generation. As Martin Luther King Jr. left the world with a dream, Cooke left behind a song: "It's been a long time coming," he sang, "but I know a change gonna come." ABB |
