|
Peter Guralnick
author of
Dream
Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
_______________________________________________________
He was the biggest star in gospel music before he ever
crossed over into pop. His first single under his own name, "You Send Me,"
was an historic success, going to number one on the charts and selling two
million copies. He wrote his own songs, hired his own musicians, and started
his own record label and music publishing company. At a time when record
companies treated black artists like hired help, he demanded respect and
a recording contract equal to that of top white artists of the day.
And Sam Cooke connected, in songs like "Wonderful World,"
"Chain Gang," "Another Saturday Night," and "Having a Party" - seemingly
effortless compositions that still sound fresh today. In a biography that
for the first time tells the full story of Sam Cooke's short, blazing life,
prizewinning author Peter Guralnick captures a personality so vivid, so
appealing, that it is almost impossible not to fall under its spell. At the
same time, Dream Boogie re-creates in remarkable detail the astonishing
richness of the African American world from which Sam Cooke emerged, and
the combination of style, wit, and resiliency that was necessary in order
to survive and overcome the pervasive prejudice of the day.
Dream Boogie tells a story at once tragic and
true: Sam Cooke's rapid rise to stardom; his troubled marriage and relationships
with women; his triumphant recordings and - along with Ray Charles - his
reinvention of rhythm and blues as soul music; the joy he brought to live
performance and the rolling parties of the road tours; and the senseless
waste of his death by shooting at the age of thirty-three.#
In a December, 2005 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Peter Guralnick talks
about his book and Sam Cooke's epic American life.
Interview Topics
Surprises about
Sam Cooke the author encountered
Sam as a young church singer
A member of the Soul Stirrers
Sam's success as an onstage
communicator
Looking beyond gospel music
The rise of secular
music in the record business
Obstacles
to overcome when moving his music into the streets
Recording under the name
of Dale Cook
Songs Sam wrote credited
to L.C. Cook
Moving to Keen Records
Appearing non-threatening
to whites
Taking a stand on civil rights
On being married to Barbara
Sam's RCA record deal
His business ambitions
The cirumstances of Sam's death
About Peter Guralnick
*
"And my baby leave home
'Cause things ain't right
Oh, but I get to feeling - ha ha - so all alone
And I dial my baby on the telephone
And I tell her, "Listen here, operator,
I want my b-a-a - aby,
Onnnn, operator, I want my baby."
Finally the operator get my baby on the telephone
And I tell her, "I got something to tell you, honey."
The minute I hear my baby say hello
S-s-s-s-something start to move deep down inside of me
And I tell her, "Listen to me, baby,
I know I didn't treat you right sometimes
And I want you to know one thing" |
He has them now. There's no doubt about it. With all the tried-and-true methods
of his gospel training, he has drawn out the tension until it is almost
unbearable, people are screaming, they are crying out for release, the level
of emotion almost visibly rises, the audience becomes his congregation.
| "I just want you to know one thing
And that's…
Darling,
You-u-u-u-uuuu, ohhhhhhh…you SEND ME
Oh-ohhhhhh, you send me
Ha Ha, that's what I want to tell you, baby,
O, oh-oh-you-ou, awww, you send me
Aw, let me tell you one more time
Oh, yo-u-u-u-u-u
Oh, baby…you send me
Oh-whoa-oh-ohohhhhhwowohhhh - Ha ha -
Ohhhwhooawhoaoh
Honest you do" |
- Sam Cooke
courtesy Joe McEwen
"I write songs that start slowly and then work in little by little to
this pounding beat. That is where the excitement is. But I still have my
religious beliefs. Our forebears thought you couldn't sing [both] pops and
spirituals, but I have rationalized this. I can do anything I want and still
have my religious beliefs. My philosophy of life is: Do whatever is best
for Sam Cooke."
- Sam Cooke
*
You Send Me
_________________________________________________________
JJM Your book is an amazing combination of entertainment
and scholarship, and a great vehicle on which to revisit the culture that
Sam Cooke was such an integral part of. You wrote, "The Sam Cooke that I
discovered was a constant surprise." What sort of surprises did you encounter
during this process?
PG It was the kind of surprise that you encounter
when you essentially remove all preconceptions, whether your own or those
that are imposed on you. It is the kind of surprise that you would find when
looking with fresh eyes at any of the people to whom you are drawn in real
life and discover the various and sometimes contradictory layers that exist
in all of us. These are the layers that are essentially set aside when we
reduce our perspectives to either judgment or anecdote. The kinds of things
that I discovered about Sam don't necessarily reveal themselves in an interview
format, but, as an example, one of the things I discovered was his deep interest
in reading. While I knew he read, my research for the book led me to an
understanding of the depth of his interest – the kinds of things he
read and what he presumably took out of them – and to set this in the
context of someone who is in the process of constantly evolving.
| JJM The depth of his reading was amazing.
He was really into African American history, and James Baldwin seemed to
be a favorite of his.
PG I recently saw John Hope Franklin a couple
of times during my book tour. On one occasion he spoke after Bill Clinton
and before me in the House chamber in Austin, Texas. By the time it was my
turn to speak, the chamber had emptied out substantially! When I spoke, I
talked about how people frequently ask me what Sam Cooke would be doing if
he were alive today, and how I believe he would unquestionably be doing something
great – he might be mayor of Chicago, for example, or he might be the
head of a major record company – but if I were asked what he would be
doing on this particular day, I was sure he would have been there listening
to President Clinton and John Hope Franklin, being reinvigorated, re-inspired,
and recommitted to the movement and the idea that there really can be progress,
even in the face of some of the disheartening developments of recent years.
Later, I told John Hope Franklin that his 1947 book, From Slavery to
Freedom, is what first triggered Sam's interest in black history.
Getting back to your question concerning what surprised me about Sam –
this was not necessarily a good discovery, but it was certainly surprising
to learn that, despite the sense you get of him that he was always controlled,
smooth and sophisticated, his temper could flare up in certain situations,
whether it was at the Palm Café with Jess Rand, when a guy came up
to him and challenged him to prove that he was indeed Sam Cooke by singing
him a song, or at the Holiday Inn in Shreveport, which he was turned away
from because he was black. Those kinds of things were surprising – not
on any grand scale, but they were surprising. And while I would like to think
that the book might approach a grand scale, it can only do so if the specifics
hold up. |
courtesy Carol Ann Woods
"At the heart of the story is a man who, while creating some of
the most memorable pop songs of a generation, in addition to a universally
recognized civil rights anthem, was himself as complex, uncategorizable,
and sometimes unreadable as his work was transparent. Exploring this hidden
side of Sam Cooke was as much of a challenge, and as rewarding in its own
way, as seeking out some of the vanished touchstones of a world all but lost
to mainstream history."
- Peter Guralnick
_____
That's Heaven To Me
|
courtesy Barbara Cooke and ABKCO
The Highway QCs (Sam Cook is front left)
*
"Hey, I thought I had a personality. But Sam had the personality.
He could charm the birds out of the trees."
- Sam's brother L.C. |
JJM
How did Sam stand out among the other young church singers?
PG From the testimony of people who knew
him as a sixteen or seventeen year old, or as a young quartet singer
with the Highway QCs, it is clear that he stood out as a remarkable person
in a remarkable world. As a singer, he stood out in a number of ways. When
J.W. Alexander was manager of the Pilgrim Travelers – as successful
a gospel quartet as there was at that time – he picked Sam out from
among the Highway QCs not just on the basis of his talent but on the basis
of his personality, as someone who, as J.W. said, was just so damn likable.
This was despite the fact that he was not yet fully in control of his voice,
nor had he achieved the technique for which he would later become known.
But he communicated something to everyone in that audience. Another outstanding
aspect was his ability to improvise on a theme – essentially to rearrange
Bible verses in an original way, improvise on the melody, and always come
back in exactly the right place, which was something he could do even when
he was with the QCs. |
| JJM
What did it mean to be a member of the Soul Stirrers at that moment
in time?
PG When Sam joined the Soul Stirrers, it
was a big step up. As wide a path as the QCs cut – not just in Chicago
and the Midwest but in Memphis too, and without a recording contract –
there was nowhere else for them to go. The Soul Stirrers, on the other hand,
were one of the major gospel quartets, and one of the few who recorded for
a major independent company. R.H. Harris, the Soul Stirrers’ lead singer,
was a primary influence on a wide array of vocalists, from a screamer like
Archie Brownlee to a crooner like Sam Cooke, who replaced Harris in the Soul
Stirrers. Joining the Soul Stirrers meant you were now part of an extremely
well established group that was part of major programs. To use a baseball
metaphor, it was like moving from the minor leagues into the majors, where
you are confronted with the glare of publicity at every stage.
JJM Did Sam’s stylistic breakthrough
occur while singing with the Soul Stirrers?
PG Yes, although his performance of
"How Far Am I From Canaan? " at his first Soul Stirrers session is a pretty
good indication that he had achieved a style of his own with the QCs. That
performance features a fully developed Sam Cooke style, although Art Rupe,
the owner of Specialty Records, didn't much like it and never released
Sam’s original version. But Sam's performance differed radically from
the way Harris would have sung it and I think represents pretty accurately
the way Sam sounded with the QCs. He developed his yodel in 1953, which is
what distinguished his sound most of all stylistically – it became an
almost all-pervasive mannerism, particularly in his early years in pop music.
It was probably an adaptation of Harris' yodel, which was more of a falsetto
leap, something that was natural to Harris but wasn't natural to Sam. So
Sam created this kind of ululating “Whoa-oh-oh” sound as a substitute. |
courtesy Specialty Records
The Soul Stirrers, c. 1952. Sam is top left
*
"You know, a voice comes along every so many years that just captivates
the people, and [Sam] had one of those voices. After Sam got through upsetting
the house, there wasn't nothing you could do."
- Bob Tate
_____
Peace In The Valley
|
courtesy estate of Clif White
Sam Cooke, onstage
*
"I have an intense desire to make all of my audiences happy."
- Sam Cooke
_____
One More River
|
JJM He was also incredibly successful as a communicator.
You point out that he sang so directly to his audience that they couldn't
help but feel as if he were singing just to them.
PG Yes. To go back to what we were taking
about before, that is the one element that can never be taught or learned.
You either have it or you don't. One of Elvis’ earliest influences,
Jake Hess, the great lead singer with the Statesmen gospel quartet, told
me there were lots of singers more virtuosic than Elvis Presley, but there
were none who could communicate with an audience the way that Elvis did.
Sam Cooke had that same appeal, where every member of the audience, male
or female, felt that they were being sung to directly. Even on record, there
is that same sense of warmth and communication. For instance, R.H. Harris
is a great singer, and you can't listen to him without being moved, but it
is a different kind of communication than Sam's in that he simply doesn't
have that kind of warmth. Johnnie Taylor was a great singer who actually
sounded almost identical to Sam, but Sam's criticism of him was that there
was always a certain coldness to the way he connected to his audience, both
in person and on record. Not everyone would necessarily agree with that,
but the point is that there is this kind of calculation that is very much
a part of a singer's appeal to his or her audience. |
| JJM What was his stage presence like while
he sang with the Soul Stirrers?
PG He was a standup singer. The Soul Stirrers
were a group of standup singers who never went in for acrobatics or showmanship
in the way that, for example, the Pilgrim Travelers or even the Five Blind
Boys, who, despite being blind, performed with tremendous drama and showmanship.
On the other hand, starting with R.H. Harris, the Soul Stirrers presented
themselves as standup singers, and that is the tradition in which Sam grew
up, and it continued to be the centerpiece of his appeal. A contemporary
of Sam's, Jackie Wilson, performed with an incredible amount of showmanship,
but Sam's approach was to stand up at the mike and put everything into his
articulation of the words, communicating with the audience just by the intensity
of the way that he sang.
JJM Jackie Wilson's approach seemed to be
more one of "in your face," which was probably more threatening to white
society than Sam's approach.
PG To a degree that's true, but remember
that Jackie Wilson had a lot of crossover hits, and was very ingratiating
to a mixed audience. I would say that James Brown was more threatening in
that sense. His shows of the mid-sixties were the greatest theatrical experiences
I ever had – they were comparable to an August Wilson play in their
scope, and almost exclusively performed before a black audience. Jackie Wilson's
showmanship is what got him back on Ed Sullivan seven or eight times
at a time when Sam, for whatever reason, rarely appeared on Ed Sullivan.
It may have been that appearing on the show required a bargain Sam was unwilling
to make. |
courtesy LeRoy Crume
Soul Stirrers, 1956
*
"Once he made up his mind, he seems to have had few second thoughts.
His father told him he owed no loyalty to the Soul Stirrers; just as with
the QC's, it was simply a matter of self-interest: 'I said, now, listen,
that's not your religion. That's your job; you do that for a living. The
Lord gave you a voice to sing to make people happy. And if you can make more
money singing pop music than you can the church songs that you're singing
-- don't nobody get saved over singing'."
- Peter Guralnick
_____
I Don't Want To Cry
|
I Got A Woman
*
I Got A Woman
*
Lucille
*
Lawdy Miss Clawdy |
JJM
When did Sam Cooke begin looking beyond gospel music?
PG The success Ray Charles had with "I Got
a Woman" in 1955 had a cataclysmic effect on both the gospel and R&B
worlds. Charles' recording offered an opening for vocalists to present music
in a new way. "I Got a Woman" is based on a gospel number, "It Must Be Jesus,"
and the recording caused a tremendous stir at the time in both the sacred
and secular worlds. Ministers were preaching against this "sacrilege," but
it offered a commercial and artistic opportunity for singers that simply
could not be ignored. The effect it had on Art Rupe, the head of Specialty
Records, was not to change the sound of the Soul Stirrers, but to seek out
his own Ray Charles. Ultimately the person he found was Little Richard, who
sounded very much like a combination of Alex Bradford and Marion Williams,
with his ecstatic whoops but very secular message.
By the end of 1955, Little Richard was a pop star in that crossover mode,
and that’s really when the pressure came down on Sam to go in that
direction. The pressure came from three different directions. From Bumps
Blackwell, who was his A&R man at Specialty; from Bill Cook, the Newark
disc jockey who saw enormous crossover potential in Sam, and who functioned
as his manager of sorts in 1955 and 56; and from J.W. Alexander, who felt
that gospel was only holding Sam back in what he could ultimately accomplish.
But Sam wrestled with this for at least a year-and-a-half, and it represented
a rare moment of self doubt, because the thing that held him back was not
so much religious inhibition – after all, his father had always taught
him that a person is not "saved" by what they do for a living – but
rather an uncharacteristic concern about whether or not he could make it
in the secular world. What if he crossed over and didn't make it? Could he
ever go back? I think that kept him on the fence for a long time, but eventually
he made the decision.
JJM You wrote that "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price -- released
by Art Rupe of Specialty -- was the first breakthrough R&B song, and white
record stores began to carry it because, according to Rupe, "Market demand
dictates where the product goes." How soon after this did record companies
recognize this could become a full-fledged trend they could profit from?
PG I picked out "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" as a
kind of signpost, but I’m sure there are others that can be cited. Certainly
from that point on, you have this ineluctable drift toward what Elvis Presley
started doing and what rock and roll is supposed to be. Around 1953, predictions
started appearing in the music industry trade publications about a new type
of music that eventually came to be labeled rock and roll, and symptoms of
it were becoming more and more evident – although at the time it wasn't
possible to know exactly what form this new music was going to take.
What we are talking about here are two different types of crossover, the
one with Lloyd Price to a white market, and the second, on the heels of that,
the introduction of a pure gospel sound into R&B, which then benefited
from its crossover into the white market. It was clear to everybody in the
business at the time that something was happening, but they didn’t
necessarily know where it was going to end up. Which is why this whole idea
that rock and roll – which is really just a marketing term – was
born on a specific date is silly because it was part of an evolution that
grew out of the rise of the independent record companies, more money being
available to teenagers after World War II, and a greater and greater degree
of social mobility and, eventually, integration. |
| JJM On Sam's effect on women who watched
him perform, you wrote, "To J.W. Alexander, observing it all with something
more than dispassionate curiosity, 'The young girls would scream, the old
women would scream. In the churches.' What, J.W. naturally asked himself,
if Sam were singing about love?" What did Sam have to overcome in order to
move his music from the churches out into the streets?
PG He had to overcome an inner struggle and
confront his fears about moving out on his own, the concern that if he were
to fail, he might not be able to go back. He was writing pop songs from at
least 1956 on – he recorded most of them in New Orleans at his first
pop music session in December 1956. That was the session that his first pop
release came out of,
“Lovable ,”
which was released under the name of "Dale Cook." But with the exception
of “Lovable,” he had written the songs originally with the idea
of having Bill Cook submit them to Roy Hamilton and the Platters, so he could
become a pop songwriter, not a pop singer. Again, I think this is just part
of that inner debate he was having with himself, and an uncharacteristic
reluctance to make the bold move – a rare instance in his life where
he didn't simply say, "Ok, that's it. I’m moving on to the next stage." |
Michael Ochs
Archives
Sam and friends, 1958
*
"He had a little aura about him. He was better dressed, sharper
than the other guys and had bigger fan response. Sam was the only guy whose
voice would sound like an instrument, he made it sweet like nobody had before,
and he was so pretty, and so dynamic, that he would mesmerize the women,
women would faint, actually fall out, when he would walk down the aisle."
- North Carolina gospel DJ Jimmy "Early" Byrd. |
"Gospel was my favorite type of music, not for religious reasons
but because of the feeling and the soul and the honesty of it. To me it was
pure, it was adulterated, and that's why I reacted to it."
- Art Rupe, President, Specialty Records
_____
Jesus Gave Me Water
*
"We were sad that he had to leave the fold, because we thought
it [gospel] was going to go back to the old way -- I mean, it's still all
right to make people shout, but don't do nothing fancy. Don't do anything
that looked like it could be rock 'n' roll. [At the same time]...everybody
was afraid. That's just the way we were taught. If you betray God, stop serving
Him and start singing the devil's music, then something terrible's going
to happen to you. So everybody was just waiting on the day."
- Bobby Womack |
JJM
His decision to record under the name of Dale Cook was because of that
risk. He felt if he failed on his own, he could come back as Sam Cooke.
PG Yes, which is an extension of that inner
debate. I don't know whether that idea was his or Art Rupe's or someone else's,
but he somehow must have rationalized that if it didn't work he could always
say it was some cousin or some distant relative who had recorded that music!
JJM I suppose he could have possibly got away
with that during that era.
PG Everyone knew it was him, and right away,
because the recordings had all of his vocal characteristics and mannerisms,
and it was a translation of the gospel single that the Soul Stirrers had
out at the time,
"He's So Wonderful ,"
which was the highlight of every one of their shows. It was kind of a funny,
almost quixotic attempt to escape detection, but, as J.W. eventually told
him, he had to take his head out of the sand and "be Sam Cooke," and that
is who he became.
JJM
There were issues around the songs that he wrote. While under contract
to Rupe, songs he wrote were actually credited to L.C. Cook .
PG Yes, and that became the subject of a
lawsuit and considerable controversy. He signed the songwriter’s contract
the day before his first full scale pop session in June of 1957, which was
probably the first real songwriter's contract he ever signed. While he had
signed off on songwriter's rights as a member of the Soul Stirrers, this
was a specific songwriter's contract in which he gave half of his mechanical
royalties to the publisher, which was essentially Specialty Records and Art
Rupe.
Following the quarrel he had with Rupe over the sound of
"You Send Me
," he and Bumps Blackwell left Specialty and, over the course
of the summer, signed with Keen Records – which was not yet even a label,
nor was it even named. By the time they put out his record in September of
1957, just a few months after that initial session, he had come to realize
that he had signed away one of his principal sources of income. It was at
that point that he recognized that songwriting and song publishing were the
foundations for any money he hoped to make in the record business –
something which people going into the record business today would be well
advised to learn.
It was also at this point that he realized he could not get out of the
songwriting contract he had signed with Rupe, but, of course, he knew it
was only “Sam Cooke” who had signed that contract. In other words,
the agreement required only Sam Cooke to share songwriter’s royalties,
and because no documentation existed to show he had written these songs,
he very conveniently “remembered” at this point that it wasn't
he that had written "You Send Me," but rather his brother, L.C. A lawsuit
that went on for close to a year ensued, and eventually authorship of "You
Send Me" was awarded to L.C. |
| JJM
When he left Specialty, why did he settle on Keen Records rather
than a more established company?
PG Essentially there had been a struggle
over who was going to manage Sam Cooke. Bill Cook believed that he was Sam's
manager right up until the time Art Rupe gave Sam's recording contract to
Bumps Blackwell, which in effect made Bumps Sam's record company. Bumps then
marketed that contract to John Siamas’ unnamed label, doing so in exchange
for a high-level position with this new label, one that he considered to
be an ownership position – though actually didn't turn out that way
for him. But he sold Sam on the label, so essentially it was Bumps consolidating
his position with Sam, not just as his A&R man and producer, but as his
manager as well. He felt they would have their best shot at success by going
to this new label because they would get all the company’s attention
in the way of promotion. But the move they made was done as much in support
of Bumps Blackwell's career as Sam's. |
Michael Ochs
Archives
Sam, with Bumps Blackwell
_____
Chain Gang
|
"'I want to be black. I'm not going to desert my people. But to
cross over, you must appeal to that market.' I said, 'What's so important
about that fucking market?' He said, 'Bobby, you listen to the [r&b]
radio station. When you turn the corner, that station will go off the air,
and you go right to a pop station. That's how powerful it is. And white people
are not gonna come to the black side of town'."
- Bobby Womack, on a conversation he had with Cooke about crossing
over
_____
Little Red Rooster
*
"I have always detested people, of any color, religion, or nationality,
who have lacked courage to stand up and be counted. As a Negro I have --
even in the days before I began to achieve some sort of recognition as a
performer -- refused jobs which I considered debasing or degrading."
- Sam Cooke
_____
A Change Is Gonna Come |
JJM
You wrote that Sam told his brother, "If you had all that slick
stuff in your hair, the white man was going to think you were slick, he wouldn't
trust you around his daughter." Sam felt that not appearing threatening to
whites was a key to his success, didn't he?
PG He felt that was one key to his success,
yes, but another aspect was racial pride, pride in who he was and where he
had come from. He cut his hair shortly after the huge success of "You Send
Me," stopped wearing it in a process and started wearing it natural. Which,
of course, went directly against the prevailing trend of the time. So it
was two things, really: racial pride and the idea of presenting himself in
a clean-cut way. But in general, Sam always tried to present himself as someone
who the white man would not be afraid to invite into his home, because then
his records would also be welcome in those homes.
JJM
He also tested limits on segregation quite early. As an example, he
drank from a "whites only" drinking fountain in Birmingham early in his career
that resulted in a police assault.
PG Yes, and around the same time, he went into
a "whites only" park in Memphis while he was there with the QCs, and got
picked up by the police.
Both of these incidents represented the same thing, and the disrespect and
racial indignities he suffered were a difficult thing for him to contend
with all his life, not just when he was eighteen or nineteen years old.
JJM He also refused to play separate performances
for blacks and whites. Was he among the first performers to take this stand?
PG Sam was an emotional person who not only
experienced and thought about things deeply but also read widely, which served
to broaden his horizons. He found the conditions under which a person of
color lived at that time – whether they were traveling widely as he
was, or if they were simply living in a brownstone on the south side of Chicago
– increasingly unsupportable. His experience was not unlike that of
James Baldwin, someone who was not just a contemporary but who shared much
the same experience, as a preacher's kid, and someone that Sam eventually
came to know. The point is, he felt the experience very deeply.
In 1961, Sam refused to play a show in Memphis where the seating was not
only divided, but heavily restricted as well. The NAACP called these conditions
to the attention of Sam and Clyde McPhatter, who were the headliners on the
show, and they refused to play despite threats and intimidation. The specific
threats to Sam were that his car would be seized or that he would be thrown
in jail, but he and Clyde still refused to play under those conditions. |
| JJM Did he have concerns about how his
stand on an issue like this could potentially alienate his white audience?
PG Yes, he cared very much about that. This
was a situation where his concerns as a human being simply overwhelmed the
way in which he approached his role as an entertainer. He was always concerned
about alienating a substantial part of his audience, and some of the early
pop work he recorded – like "You Send Me," for example – were
bleached-out versions of his gospel style, and this was done very intentionally.
The majority of his early hits – whether on Keen or RCA – are
essentially inoffensive novelty songs that feature very little of the gospel
sound on which his style is based.
It wasn't until he recorded
"Bring It On Home To Me " in 1962 that he began to restore some of that explicit
gospel sound to his recordings. I mean, it was always there in his live
performance, because he continued to play predominantly on the "chitlin’
circuit." But at the same time, he calculated the effect that his music had
and attempted to record it in a way that would appeal to the widest possible
audience. His idea was to appeal on a universal level without selling out,
but you can see the calculation and the extent to which his own sense of
dignity was offended in Memphis – measured by the fact he was willing
to take a stand in a situation where he risked serious financial consequences
and the alienation of a large part of his audience.
An interesting footnote to the Memphis story is that in its immediate aftermath,
the next R&B act to play Memphis was Ray Charles, who had just done a
similar thing in Augusta, Georgia, where he refused to play for a segregated
audience. So that when Ray Charles came to Ellis Auditorium that summer,
it was the first fully integrated show to play there. This is one of the
few instances where you can point to the direct result that came out of that
kind of protest. |
courtesy Joe McEwen
"Sam brought a whole new element to gospel. He started bringing
young people into the church to the point where it was like a rock 'n' roll
show, chicks pulling up their dresses, and he's going out in the crowd and
rubbing some girl's leg while he's singing, and she jump straight into the
air!"
- Bobby Womack
_____
Twistin' The Night Away
|
courtesy estate of Clif White
Barbara and Sam
*
"Everyone looked at him like he was their fucking savior, everywhere
he went he was an object of admiration and adoration -- and yet he couldn't
muffle the growing discontent, the helplessness he felt at his inability
to control not so much the world around him as his private world, the inner
world that was revealed to no one but him."
- Peter Guralnick
_____
I'll Come Running Back To You
*
photo Jess Rand,
Michael Ochs
Archives
At home, 1960
"They had all thought she wasn't good enough for him, Sam's friends
and business associates, the Cooks with their damned prejudice-ass attitude,
they had never thought she was good enough for their Sammy, and now he had
gone and proved them all right. If there had been anything to the marriage,
everyone would be saying, why couldn't she keep him at home? There was no
way for her to answer back. She knew things about their all-American boy
-- but it was just like it had always been. Every time she tried to say anything,
he always had the last word. He was just doing what he wanted to do. Everyone
knew that. And her? She had never known what she wanted. Except Sam."
- Peter Guralnick
_____
You Were Made For Me
Sugar Dumpling |
JJM
Sam Cooke was incredibly likable, but there is a side of him
that is very hard to understand. He had great concern for so many people,
yet treated his wife like hell. To put it mildly, he was a terrible husband.
PG I’m not sure that Barbara would say
that she was a model wife, either.
JJM True, but he was the one who asked her
to marry him, and this was after he had already fathered children with other
women at a very young age. Why did he decide to marry Barbara?
PG You can see the how much she loved him
from childhood on, and the way that she continued to try to find ways to
reunite Sam with her and their daughter, Linda. But nothing seemed to succeed
until she finally announced that she was about to move in with someone else,
and then to her great surprise Sam finally proposed!
I’m not trying to defend Sam's actions, but I would say that this is
just one more example of the contradictions that exist in human behavior.
In every one of us – sometimes in more extreme forms than others –
there are elements of ourselves that are definitely at odds with the elements
that we would choose to represent us. In Sam's case, this was certainly one
of them. But I should point out that it is more rather than less characteristic
of the entertainer’s life, black or white, sacred or secular.
JJM Yes, and the preachers as well. The Reverend
C.L. Franklin, for example, had similar issues.
PG Sam wrote an almost heartbreaking idealization
of domestic life in
"Nothing Can Change This Love ," a song that appears to present a perfect kind
of love yet is totally undercut by the way he presents it. In a way it’s
all about the distance between real life and the idealized version. I’m
not trying to defend Sam's behavior, but I think he was genuinely torn. He
wanted that idealized domesticity, but it was certainly not the way he led
his life or the way that he treated Barbara, and at the end of his life,
I don't think he honestly knew which way to go. While he had a commitment
to a sense of family – particularly to his daughter Linda – his
life and Barbara’s were certainly going in opposite directions.
JJM This is in the category of psycho-babble,
but isn't it also possible that he had issues with Barbara because his father
didn't approve of her?
PG No, that is not where I would go with
it. Sam's father was very stern – but also very fair – and his
stern side led all of his children to rebel against him in one way or another.
But I don’t think that had anything to do with Sam’s marriage.
In most respects, Sam had a pretty sure sense of where he wanted to go, but
not in his relationship with Barbara. I really do think that he retained
a love for her right up to the end, but it wasn’t the kind of love that
could sustain itself in real terms. So I’m not sure he knew exactly
what to do. I think he was definitely exploring the idea of divorce, but,
you know, it was like so many marriages that continue because neither party
is quite prepared to leave, and I would say that is pretty much where Sam
and Barbara were at the end. From the standpoint of who wanted what, I think
Barbara would have given up virtually anything for Sam's love and approval,
for a place in his life.
|
| JJM
Another interesting aspect of this story was the direction taken by
Allen Klein, a brilliant strategist and business person who entered into
Sam's life and negotiated a groundbreaking agreement on his behalf with RCA
Records. You wrote that the deal was "virtually guaranteeing a label commitment
that no R&B artist other than Ray Charles had ever received." Was this
deal a template that other artists and labels would subsequently follow?
PG I think so, yes, although I am not the
person to describe it because I never studied it enough to have a definitive
answer. But Allen certainly sought to follow it in a variety of ways, including
his subsequent work with the Rolling Stones and Beatles.
JJM Basically, he set up an independent record
company that was distributed by RCA. I was frankly surprised that this deal
was the first of its kind in the record business...
PG It may not have been. Somebody told me
that Paul Anka's deal with RCA – which was a production deal –
provided a precedent for this and was the reason that RCA could agree to
it, although I could never confirm that. Even if there was a model for it,
though, I don't know of another deal quite like the one Klein worked out
for Sam, just like I don't know of another deal like the one Ray Charles
had with ABC.
JJM The deal seemed to be a huge risk for
the RCA executive, Joe D'Imperio, to take.
PG I would say that it was done on the basis
of D'Imperio's belief in Sam. An interesting thing about the way in which
Allen Klein works is that, much like Colonel Parker, his dealings were always
based on personal belief, long-term commitments, and close associations.
The people he dealt with thirty and forty years ago continue to be the people
with whom he deals today. He never could have made the deal with Bob Yorke,
the RCA executive who, according to Sam, was not returning his phone calls
at the time. When Yorke was replaced, D'Imperio came in, and he and Allen
hit it off from the start, because they both believed in Sam. Allen was
indefatigable in his advancing of Sam, and if D'Imperio had not been receptive
to the approach he was advocating, he very likely would have taken Sam to
Columbia Records. |
courtesy of ABKCO
Allen Klein, J.W. Alexander, and Sam, 1964
*
"Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don't worry
about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they'll take advantage
of you."
- Rev. Charles Cook, Sam's father
_____
Shake
|
courtesy Carol Ann Woods
Sam in the offices of SAR Records
*
"My goal is to someday be in the same singing league with Harry
Belafonte, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. But whether I achieve my goal or
not, I have organized my career on a business-like basis and I know there
will be well-paying jobs waiting for me, even if my records stop
selling…If, in the future, I can't find anyone who will pay me to sing,
I'll still be in a position of getting paid when others sing."
- Sam Cooke, 1960 |
JJM
Near the end of his life, Sam made a triumphant appearance at the
Copa – which was quite a different result from the first time
he appeared there. At the time, he was talking about his interest in continuing
to sing, but also making some business ambitions known as well…
PG People talk about bifurcated personalities,
but in Sam's case you would have to talk about trifurcated, quadrifurcated
– or even twenty-furcated! His ambitions seemed to go in every direction.
I always remember how my mother used to tell me when I was a kid that I couldn't
do everything, and I was highly indignant, because – why not? All these
years later I’m inclined to agree with her, although I guess I’m
still a little bit indignant. Sam, though, was someone who continued to believe
he could do everything, from playing the Copa and Vegas and making movies
to running his own record company. His announced intention at the end of
his life was to get off the "chitlin’ circuit." He dismissed his band
and began to cut back on his personal appearances, restricting them to the
supper club circuit, and he had also signed a movie contract with 20th Century
Fox.
Dick Clark asked him at one point what would give him the greatest satisfaction,
and he said it would be if all the artists he was associated with had hits.
That was part of his plan: to concentrate more and more on SAR Records, the
company he and J.W. Alexander owned, focusing in particular on the Valentinos
– Bobby Womack and his brothers – who he believed had the potential
to become big pop stars. But at the same time, he was going in all these
other directions as well. The last night of his life, he had dinner at Martoni's
with Al Schmitt, his A&R man at RCA Records, and they talked about a
gut-bucket blues album he wanted to make, along the lines of Muddy Waters,
Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker. So he was not going to limit himself! |
| JJM
It is believed that Sam was killed during the early morning hours in
the office of a Los Angeles motel. He struggled with the motel manager, Bertha
Lee Franklin, after being robbed by the woman he was in the motel with. Franklin
shot Sam as he apparently lunged at her. Were you able to uncover any new
information about the circumstances of his death?
PG Not really. I had access to the private
investigator's report, which had never been available before, and while a
good number of additional details were either brought out or confirmed as
a result of this access, there didn’t seem much doubt that the official
story of his death was fairly close to the truth. The way it happened was
one of the ways in which Sam led his life. It wasn't a contradiction, in
terms of either where or how it happened. Sam was enraged because of the
way he felt he had been “played,” and he just wasn’t going
to accept that kind of treatment. All of the circumstances of his death conformed
to the view of virtually every person I spoke with to whom he was close –
I mean, it conformed to their view of Sam. As J.W. said, it was just a tragic
waste. At the same time, within the broader context of the black community
as a whole, almost no one believed he died that way – and they still
don’t – because Sam was such a shining light. It couldn’t
have happened that way because it shouldn’t have happened that way.
JJM Allen Klein suggested that Sam was not
killed by an act of adultery, but was a victim of a violent crime, which
is the view many people wanted perpetuated.
PG Allen's point was simply to shift the
emphasis for a variety of reasons – public relations, for one –
but also because he loved Sam and truly believed that Sam was not so much
the perpetrator as the victim. |
"[I would] rather be the creative producer in the control
room than be the worn-out singer in a bistro spotlight."
- Sam Cooke
_____
Another Saturday Night
|
JJM He had an awful lot of alcohol that
night…
PG Again, you can see a similar reaction
when he was turned away from the motel in Shreveport, so I don't know that
alcohol is the answer so much as Sam's rage at the idea of being treated
in this manner, of being disrespected in this way. In Shreveport he absolutely
refused to leave, he just kept screaming at the night manager of the motel.
His brother Charles, who was a very tough guy, was telling Sam they had to
go. So was S.R. Crain, his road manager and the founder of the Soul Stirrers.
Barbara was telling him they needed to get out of there because these people
were going to kill him, but he just said, "They’re not going to kill
me. I’m Sam Cooke." Her reply was, "Honey, to them you’re just
another nigger."
The point is that in that situation he just flashed, and while I don't mean
to compare the seriousness or gravity of the two situations, he flashed at
the Hacienda Motel in pretty much the same way. His father had taught him,
his father had taught all his children, never let anyone disrespect you on
the basis of color, economics, or anything else, and Sam always stood up
to people, he always stood up for himself on that basis. There were numerous
other instances where you could say his behavior was reckless in that regard.
If he had been killed in Shreveport, he would have been seen, correctly,
as a martyr of the civil rights movement – but it would have been for
much the same reason.
_________________________________________________________
"It didn't matter who he was up against, because he didn't do it as a
competitor. All these Baptist sisters would sit down at the front, and they
would scream. We would laugh at them because we were kids, but they were
serious. They would yell things like, 'Sing, honey. Sing, child,' and I often
wondered what was going on in some of their minds. Maybe I didn't need to
know. But you know what? Sam never allowed it to distract him. If he saw
he had your attention, he could sing directly to you and almost be whispering.
And when he got through, you would feel that he was talking to no one else
in the room but you. [But then] the whole building would go up in smoke!"
- Mable John, sister of "Little" Willie John
_____
Just For You
*
Dream
Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
by Peter Guralnick
About Peter Guralnick
JJM Who was your childhood hero?
PG Probably both my father and grandfather,
for a variety of reasons -- mostly because they represented a kind of certainty,
uprightness and character, as well as a sense of exploration and an openness
to self-expression that I very much admired.
*
Peter Guralnick is widely regarded as the nation's preeminent writer on
twentieth-century American popular music. His books include Feel Like
Going Home, Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music, Searching for Robert Johnson,
the novel Nighthawk Blues, and a highly acclaimed two-volume biography
of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love.
Sam Cooke products at Amazon.com
Peter Guralnick products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
This interview took place on December 5, 2005
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Arthur Kempton, author of Boogaloo, and Dixie Hummingbirds biographer Jerry Zolten
_______________________________
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
# Text from publisher.
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