Who Was Sam Cooke? Even an Impeccably Researched Biography of the Black Music Pioneer Can't Answer That Question, Writes Keith Bruce

Summary

---

SAM Cooke would have been 75 next year and so is ripe for reassessment. The plain fact of the matter, however, is that Cooke's legacy has never really been properly assessed, never mind revised.

This is a fascinating gap in the generally over-catalogued annals of popular music. While Motown merits multiple histories and the Stax/Volt/Atlantic era is well documented, Cooke stands apart and largely alone.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Who Was Sam Cooke? Even an Impeccably Researched Biography of the Black Music Pioneer Can't Answer That Question, Writes Keith Bruce

There is a clue to why this is in an almost throwaway aside in Peter Guralnick's superb life of the soul man. When Martin Luther King was shot, he tells us, Rosa Parks reached for Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come to soundtrack her mood.

While conspiracy theories still surround his premature dea...

See the full content of this document

---