Sam Cooke’s Wonderful Voice Survives

By ROB PATTERSON

I sometimes dream of having talents beyond the range of those I possess. For instance, I love to sing, and I’ve got a pretty good voice. But try as I might to vocalize like some wondrously adept and expressive singers whose skills I admire, neither my natural instrument or abilities approach the way they can hit emotional bullseyes in the ways they deliver a song.

One of those singers at the top of that list is Sam Cooke. His voice was as sweet as the finest, purest honey, and as supple as a butterfly in flight.

I also wish I possessed his gifts as a songwriter that knitted together elements from pop music, gospel and R&B into smartly poetic and deliciously melodic classics like “You Send Me,” “Wonderful World,” “Chain Gang,” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Bring it on Home to Me” and his posthumous civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Alas, like so many others who may have tried, I’ll never come close.

The Netflix film “The Two Deaths of Sam Cooke,” part of the streaming service’s ReMastered series, provides a overview of his life and career and asks questions about his killing at age 33 in 1964. Born in Mississippi, he was an infant when his family moved to Chicago. His first musical success came as a gospel singer when he joined The Soul Stirrers, a group he much admired. In 1957, after seven years with the act, Cooke quit to start making secular music.

His first release, “You Send Me,” went to #1. One commentator in the doc calls Cooke “the father of soul music.” He certainly helped define soul and bring the R&B sound to a wider audience by scoring hits on the pop charts and playing prestigious venues like New York’s Copacabana while also touring the black “chitlin’ circuit.”

He later became both a music business and African-American entrepreneurial pioneer by starting his own song publishing firm and record company. Cooke also became involved in the civil rights movement.

Alas, when his finances needed attention, he hired an accountant named Allen Klein in 1963 to manage his musical affairs. Cooke later discovered that Klein, later notorious for his management of both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, had bamboozled him into signing over ownership of his songs and recordings. That would be the first “death” the film’s title refers to.

Then there’s Cooke’s actual death, shot by the manager of a fleabag Los Angeles hotel where he had gone with a woman. The doc explores the hazy and questionable circumstances around the incident such as whether he tried to rape the woman with him, if she had robbed him when she fled the hotel room with Cooke’s clothes, and then when he approached the hotel manager if he had gotten violent with her, which an investigation said made her shooting justifiable.

The film also speculates, as some suspected, that Klein – whose perfidy Cooke discovered – had arranged his killing. Alas, we shall never know.

To quote a phrase Cooke used in “Wonderful World,” “what I do know is” that what was lost was the certainly major contributions as an artist, music businessman and activist. And that his musical legacy sounds as (to borrow from Cooke’s lexicon again) wonderful as ever, maybe even more so in contrast. (I recommend his album “Live at the Harlem Square Club” as a good place to start enjoying the full Cooke experience.) This much I also know: Cooke’s music makes me swoon with delight. That feeling from his music is truly timeless.

Populist Picks

Music Album: “Ghost Box” by Suss – All-instrumental music that melds ambient and old-school Country & Western to create psychedelic soundscapes that bring to mind a collaboration between Ennio Morricone and Brian Eno. Not background but backdrop music that summons up Southwestern landscapes seen through a kaleidoscope.

Music Documentary: “The Passing Show – The Life & Music of Ronnie Lane” – Touching look at the bassist, songwriter and singer with The Small Faces and Faces who then went solo and pastoral, touring the UK like a circus in a tent, before multiple sclerosis led to his decline and death.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2019

Populist.com