Sam Cooke | A Greatest Singer
Samuel Cook(January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964),known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer, songwriter, civil rights activist and entrepreneur.
Influential as both a singer and composer, he is commonly known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocals and importance within popular music. He began singing as a child and joined the Soul Stirrers before moving to a solo career where he scored a string of hit songs like “You Send Me”, “A Change Is Gonna Come”, “Wonderful World”, “Chain Gang”, “Twistin’ the Night Away”, and “Bring it on Home to Me”,More info:wiki
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#10 SAM COOKE,More info:abkco
The son of Reverend Charles Cook, Sr, a Baptist minister and Annie May Cook, Sam Cooke was born on January 22, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi; two years later the family moved to Chicago, Illinois. He had four brothers and three sisters – Willie, Charles Jr, L.C., David, Mary, Hattie, and Agnes.
Sam graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in 1948, where he distinguished himself as an “A” student and was also voted “most likely to succeed.” During his formative years, Sam, with his brothers Charles Jr, L.C. and sisters Mary and Hattie, performed as a gospel group, “The Singing Children.”
#9 New Documentary ‘The Two Killings Of Sam Cooke’ Coming To Netflix,More info:udiscovermusic
#8 Sam Cooke At 80: The Career That Could Have Been,More info:npr
It feels strange to suggest that Sam Cooke isn’t appreciated enough. Cooke, a legend of soul, has been celebrated in nearly every way a musician can. He’s been included in lists of the greatest singers of all time, voted a charter member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and awarded a posthumous lifetime achievement Grammy. You can still hear his songs in movies and sing them in karaoke parlors.
But the adulation has an effect of obscuring what’s most enduring about Cooke’s legacy — that he never sat still long enough to become as big a star as he might have deserved.
#7 Leon Bridges struggles with ‘next Sam Cooke’ tag,More info:thestar
Over the past several months, a bona fide fuss has assembled around Leon Bridges’ elegantly retro soul.
Since last year, the Fort Worth, Texas, singer signed a record deal, issued a couple of appetite-whetting videos and suddenly found himself a scorching ticket at Austin’s South by Southwest festival.
The arrival of his debut Coming Home this week was marked by a Tonight Show appearance and tightly packed New York showcase. And this month the New York Times trumpeted Bridges as the “second coming of Sam Cooke.”
Bridges sighs a little when asked about all the attention.
#6 Sam Cooke’s Beginnings in Chicago,More info:interactive.wttw
Sam Cook was six years old when he began singing in public; 27 years later, after he had added an “e” to his last name and won both black and white audiences across the country as the “King of Soul,” his career ended as prematurely as it had begun, when he was shot and killed in the middle of the night at a $3 motel.
Although he died in Los Angeles, the majority of Cooke’s short life was spent in Chicago. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi to a minister, his mother and siblings (he was the fifth of eight children) followed his father to Chicago when Sam was two. The family eventually settled in Bronzeville on Cottage Grove Avenue near 35th Street, blocks from the lake and Doolittle Elementary School, where Sam and his siblings would attend classes.
#5 Sam Cooke: a singer of sheer quality,More info:telegraph
#4 ‘Remastered’ spins a fresh look at Sam Cooke’s legacy,More info:bostonherald
#3 Sam Cooke,More info:udiscovermusic
Though he only lived to be 33 (he was murdered in suspicious circumstances), the man born Samuel Cook left an indelible mark on the world of gospel and soul. So profound was his influence that he was bestowed with the honorific title of King Of Soul.
A pioneer in black music for sure, Sam Cooke, as he was professionally known, paved the way for the boom in 60s R&B. Most biographers have pointed out that Cooke’s sublime styling, his smooth and creamy tenor with accompanying high and low ranges, paved the way for confident soul artists the likes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Otis Redding, but then he was just as revered by Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield, with their differing palettes, and can also be seen (or heard) as a keystone for Rod Stewart and Art Garfunkel.
#2 Sam Cooke,More info:independent
#1 Here’s Something Else!: Kicking It Old School, Sam Cooke Edition,More info:popdose
Sam Cooke, for all his power and grace as a singer, established his strikingly brief legacy during the time of the Hit Single. Which meant Cooke’s most well-known albums of the early 1960s were often dotted with dated filler, tunes in the Broadway style of the day or so-called standards that didn’t properly showcase his direct, emotional range.
That is, except for 1963’s superlative Sam Cooke’s Night Beat, a record that sounds like its title, and was made in that kind of moment — late, and with a small combo, when shadows gather and emotions run deep. This is a recording that holds up from beginning to end, settling into a bluesy atmosphere but moving from balladry to the gospel-rooted originals that were always the fertile soil of Cooke’s too-short career. Night Beat would become his best overall effort, an intimate, then finger-popping affair — worldly and gentle, all at once.
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