Sam Cooke was born on January 22, 1931.

NightTrain

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Jan-22-04 08:10 PM
Original message

Sam Cooke was born on January 22, 1931.

Edited on Thu Jan-22-04 08:19 PM by NightTrain

Another great singing talent of first-generation rock 'n' roll, Sam Cooke got his start performing gospel in Chicago as a teen-ager. He sang with the Highway QCs for a time before being tapped, at the tender age of 19, to replace Reverend R.H. Harris as the lead singer of the legendary Soul Stirrers.

Cooke remained with the Soul Stirrers from 1951-57, during which time the group's records sold like pop hits and their concert appearances rarely had an empty seat in the house. By 1957, however, Cooke was ready to expand his horizons into the burgeoning field of rock 'n' roll.

Under the pseudoynm Dale Cook, he put out a single on Specialty Records called "Lovable," which went nowhere. It was his next release (on the Keen label) that put Sam Cooke on the secular-music map. "You Send Me" hit #1 both on the R&B and pop charts in December 1957.

Over the next three years, Cooke enjoyed a string of hits that included "I'll Come Running Back To You," "Win Your Love For Me," "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons," "Lonely Island," "Love You Most Of All," "Everybody Likes To Cha-Cha-Cha," "Only Sixteen," and "Wonderful World." In 1960, RCA wooed Cooke away from Keen with a lucrative contract. His first release on the label, "Teenage Sonata," produced by the white-bread pop team of Hugo & Luigi, was a horrendous confection that reached only #22 R&B and #50 pop.

For Cooke's next session, Hugo & Luigi decided to stay in the background and let the singer create the sound he really wanted. The resulting single, "Chain Gang," became Cooke's second biggest hit to-date, reaching #2 on both the R&B and pop charts.

Sam Cooke remained a constant presence on the charts through the Kennedy era. His hits from that period included "Sad Mood," "That's It--I Quit--I'm Moving On," "Cupid," "Twisting The Night Away," "Bring It On Home To Me," "Having A Party," "Nothing Can Change This Love," "Send Me Some Lovin'," "Another Saturday Night," "Little Red Rooster," "Good Times," and "Ain't That Good News." Cooke also ran his own record label and production outfit, SAR, through which he wrote and produced the earliest recordings of Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls, Johnnie Taylor, and Billy Preston. At the same time, Cooke quietly supported the civil rights movement and decided to let his hair "go natural," i.e. kinky--a radical move for a black man in early '60s America.

Cooke's life ended the night of December 11, 1964, at the sleazy Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles. He had met a young woman at a party and brought her to the Hacienda for a night of illicit sex. However, when Cooke went to the bathroom, the woman grabbed his wallet and pants (the latter in the hope that he wouldn't give chase) and took off.

When Cooke realized what had happened, he became enraged and, dressed only in his underpants, ran into the motel's office, where the night manager became frightened and opened fire with her handgun. Sam Cooke's dying words were, "Lady, you shot me!" He was 33 years old.

In the weeks following Cooke's death, he enjoyed a posthumous double-sided hit, "Shake" and "A Change Is Gonna Come." Critics have long considered the latter his finest secular recording.

One of the founding fathers of soul music, Sam Cooke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. Had he lived, today would have been his 73rd birthday.