Dream Boogieing with Sam Cooke

Music biographies (and to an extent, biographies in general) are kind of masturbatory if you know a bit about the subject. I know about Sam Cooke- gospel singer, switched to pop, huge star, “Bring It On Home to Me”, shot in a hotel room, the dominant force in soul music, and hero to Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls and Rod Stewart. But then I read Peter Guralnick’s excellent Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke and was completely blown away by the man.

I’ve loved Sam Cooke for a long time (specifically since I found out that he was the singer of “Wonderful World” and “Cupid”), but recently with the help of this book I was able to really get a grasp of what made him so special.

Musically the guy was gifted. He simultaneously took the black Gospel experience, melded it with a little Harry Belafonte-like calypso and some light rock and roll and created out of thin air a form of black music that was in an attractive enough package for white America to digest.  To read about this happening and also to hear it in his music is grounds enough to count him as an all-time great, but to read about what Cooke did away from the spotlight is pretty damn Herculean.

Segregation was a horrible thing. But one of the things that happened as a result of segregation (to an extent) was a simultaneous black culture in America that existed independently of white America. Dream Boogie showcases this.  There was a Afro-centric news wire (the ANP- Associated Negro Press), black operated newspapers in every major city, and the much vaunted black club scene across America and Sam was in the middle of all of these.

In fact, Sam seemed in the middle of most of black culture in America in the 1950s until his death in 1964. He bubbles up with Little Richard, meets the Beatles, tours with Aretha Franklin and a very young Gladys Knight, and even cuts a single with Cassius Clay (he wasn’t Muhammed Ali just yet).  The guy was, as Reggie Jackson said about himself a decade later, the straw that stirred the drink.

So today I decided to share with everyone a Sam Cooke song. It’s not “Bring It On Home to Me”, or one of his bubblegum smashes. Instead, it’s “Nothing Can Ever Change This Love”, which might be as good a song as “Bring It On Home to Me”.  Listen to Sam’s voice as he sings it- it’s barely tethered to Earth, and yet there is still a little dirt and grit around the edges. He belts out huge whoa-oh-ah-ohs that take your breath away and holds other words and phrases inside of his mouth, almost chewing on them until the right timbre is hit. I’ve never seen a Picasso, I’m not able to watch land being formed as lava reaches the sea, and I’ve never seen life created in front of me, but I have heard Sam Cooke’s voice, which is as close to the creator as an atheist like myself will ever get.

Sam Cooke- Nothing Can Ever Change This Love

Until tomorrow, be good.