Sam Cooke: “Mr. Soul” between Church and Nightclub

For Black America, emerging from World War II with newfound ambition, hope, anger and determination, the 1950s was a period of great social, human and artistic achievement – as well as of tremendous contrast, conflict and turmoil. In this decade – when the U.S. Supreme Court, amid dramatic and often violent resistance, began to undermine the segregationist and racist structure of Southern society; when the ghettos of Northern cities continued to expand and grow more volatile; and when Black creativity received extraordinary recognition (from the Pulitzer Prize awarded to poet Gwendolyn Brooks to the Broadway success of Lorraine Hansberry’s drama A Raisin in the Sun) – the idea of a deep African-American identity was powerfully consolidated, even as the pursuit of political integration continued.

That identity was symbolized in jazz by brilliant and innovative musicians such as Charles Mingus and Max Roach, and in Black popular music by the protagonists of the passionate and exuberant gospel scene – far more so than by the reigning figures of the official ghetto hit parade: Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, the Platters, the Clovers or the Drifters. Gospel, at the time, was still almost invisible from the perspective of white America (with the notable exceptions of female stars like Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe), yet it permeated the rural and urban African-American landscape – from Atlanta to Chicago, Harlem to Los Angeles – through a vast circuit of churches: the large and powerful Baptist and Methodist congregations (to which Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. himself belonged), as well as thousands of humble but vibrant storefront churches belonging to various Pentecostal sects.

The very concept of “soul” – as an expression of the African-American spirit and the uninhibited creative exuberance of ghetto life – was born in the gospel tradition, with its singing style that was at once fiery, sanguine and virtuosic, its celebratory fervor (religious, yes, but also carnal and existential), and its irresistible blend of pathos, emotion, theatricality and humor.

The male vocal leaders of the gospel movement in those years emerged from the magnificent vocal quartets, whose deep and complex harmonic-rhythmic tensions brought an ancient tradition of eclectic and exciting religious entertainment to full maturity. From the effervescent dialectic interplay of these quartets – performing a cappella, unaccompanied, or with minimal instrumental backing – arose soloists of striking individuality, endowed with unusual power and a lively, modulatory imagination. Some of them, with strong stylistic personalities, intense charisma and exceptional communication skills, became the first true masters and models of soul. Among them were Claude Jeter, leader of the Swan Silvertones, with his plaintive falsetto and ecstatic, mewing improvisations; Julius Cheeks, the fierce and piercing voice of the Sensational Nightingales; the elegant and heartfelt R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers; the restless Sam McCrary of the Fairfield Four; the tough, angular Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi; the vehement and dramatic Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama; the plastic and versatile Ira Tucker and the proud, impetuous James Walker, both of the Dixie Hummingbirds – all of whom contributed to a dazzling and multifaceted spectrum of styles, situations and expressive colors. Their repertoire, a mix of reworked traditional hymns and modern gospel songs, would become a point of constant reference for later generations of soul singers, many of whom were likewise raised in religious quartets.

Passionate, eloquent, theatrical and sensual in both their vocal delivery and stage presence, these tenors and baritones from Baptist and Sanctified churches shaped the most authentically Black musical aesthetic of the 1950s – and left a deep mark on countless secular singers active in ghetto music. Emerging Southern bluesmen like Billy Wright, Junior Parker, and especially B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, infused their stories of eroticism and emotional conflict with an expressive intensity rooted in gospel quartet tradition. And it was in the complex expressive messages of Harris, Tucker or Brownlee that yet other artists found inspiration and a model – those whose ambitions and versatility would lead them beyond gospel, into a more diverse (and, in some ways, more ephemeral) territory influenced by pop.

Among the latter, two singers stood out for their talent, imagination and universal appeal – destined to introduce and define soul as the dominant secular genre of Black America. One was Sam Cooke – known for his elegance, ease and seductive lyricism. The other was Ray Charles – a powerhouse of fiery eloquence, aggressive showmanship and stylistic flexibility. Though Cooke emerged from the very heart of the gospel world (and was its first major defector), and Charles adopted gospel’s formal values from the outside to forge a more personal voice, both were the subject of scorn and bitter criticism from religious circles. Yet their “sacrilegious” actions allowed African-American popular music to attain a new expressive unity and emotional coherence.

Ray Charles – like every Black musician from the South – was raised in close contact with the most intense forms of religious music, though jazz and rhythm and blues were equally formative. Sam Cook (he would later add the final “e” to his surname) was a true child of gospel. Born January 22, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta region, he grew up in Chicago, where his family moved amid the great migration of African-Americans from the Deep South to the industrial metropolises of the North. There, his father became a preacher in a Pentecostal church, the Church of Christ (Holiness).

At the time, Chicago was asserting itself as the capital of a new gospel movement – led by the prolific and visionary composer Thomas A. Dorsey and the magnetic Sallie Martin. Sam, who joined a family quartet called the Singing Children at the age of nine, absorbed this atmosphere of spiritual and musical fervor. His greatest model was R.H. Harris, who had come from Texas to Chicago with the Soul Stirrers in the late 1930s – a tenor of exceptional rhythmic freedom and modulatory elasticity. Sam’s trajectory closely followed that of his mentor. As a teenager, he joined the Highway QCs, a youth group based at the Highway Baptist Church that echoed the Soul Stirrers’ style and served as an incubator for emerging gospel talent. When Harris decided to leave the Soul Stirrers in December 1950, R.B. Robinson – the group’s baritone and the QCs’ musical director – recommended the 20-year-old Cooke as his successor.

Sam began recording with the Soul Stirrers in early 1951 for Specialty Records, the California-based independent label that would dominate the gospel market for the rest of the decade. On early songs such as “Jesus Gave Me Water” and the Thomas Dorsey classic “Peace in the Valley,” his singing was still somewhat immature, as though he were trying to master both the material and the moment. But as Peter Guralnick notes in his seminal essay Sweet Soul Music, and later in his monumental biography Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke (2005), he was already capable of achieving a kind of rhythmic freedom and flow that appeared effortless – a quality Guralnick described as “passion without tension,” an “indefinable depth of feeling wrapped in a cloak of sophistication,” where every nuance – a flick of the eyebrow, a tonal inflection – conveyed meaning. Even then, Cooke’s voice had a distinctive palette, with a “warm, velvety timbre as personal as Harris’s more caustic and pungent one.”

His artistic maturation was swift and steady. In just a few years, on gems like “How Far Am I from Canaan,” “Just Another Day,” “Any Day Now,” “Jesus I’ll Never Forget,” “Pilgrim of Sorrow” (with its bluesy haze and balance of earthly desolation and heavenly hope), and “The Last Mile of the Way” (a dramatic duet with the muscular, spiritual baritone of Paul Foster), Cooke evolved from a hesitant disciple into a supple, emotionally sophisticated performer. His phrasing became spacious and logical; his diction, crystalline. In a 1955 rendition of the evocative “One More River (to Cross),” he floats above the group’s shadowy, hypnotic harmonies like a ghetto crooner – cool, poised, and emotionally resonant. His improvisations – the tortured melismas, the sculpted syllables – revealed a capacity for spiritual fervor and interpretive freedom that captivated gospel audiences across the country.

In one of Cooke’s most moving and accomplished performances, “Jesus Washed Away My Troubles” (1956), he transforms the opening word – “Jesus” – into a long, trembling oscillation, arching into falsetto and evoking a sense of divine illumination. In “I Have a Friend Above All Others,” the opening phrase “somebody knows…” rises in volume on the second syllable, then tapers into a delicate trill. And in a remarkable seven-minute live version of his hit “Nearer to Thee,” Cooke merges composition and improvisation into a passionate, restless tour de force – with dynamic crescendos, ritualistic intensity and his signature yodeling falsetto (wah-oh-oh-oh-oh wah-ah-oh-oh…), all building toward a rapturous climax intertwined with Paul Foster’s thunderous cries.

By the mid-1950s, Sam Cooke had become one of the most beloved and charismatic figures in gospel – an idol to generations of fans and even a sex symbol within the religious Black community. Encouraged by his friend J.W. Alexander (tenor and manager of the Pilgrim Travelers) and arranger Bumps Blackwell, and despite the misgivings of Specialty owner Art Rupe, Cooke ventured into the secular realm in 1956. He recorded ballads like “Loveable” (under the pseudonym Dale Cook), “That’s All I Need to Know” (written by his brother L.C. Cooke), and “I’ll Come Running Back to You.” Though the melodies and harmonies still echoed gospel, the lyrics and settings leaned toward pop – and the gospel faithful were not fooled.

Sam continued to perform with the Soul Stirrers through the summer of 1957. That April, in his final Specialty session, he recorded a dramatic, defiant “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)?” and one of his own compositions, “That’s Heaven to Me,” with an intriguing, modern harmonic structure. But the “betrayal” was complete. By the end of the year, the overwhelming success of “You Send Me” – a romantic ballad that topped both the R&B and pop charts on the Keen label – made Cooke a national star. From then on, he would be known as “Mr. Soul,” and a new era had begun.

Sam Cooke – or “Mr. Soul,” as he would soon be called – did not escape artistic compromises in his transition to secular stardom. “You Send Me” already revealed a simplified, pared-down style – more in line with the graceful sentimentality of its lyrics, and consciously crafted to appeal to the pop mainstream. Many of his subsequent hits, recorded first for Keen (“You Were Made for Me,” “Win Your Love for Me,” “Everybody Likes to Cha Cha,” the charming “Wonderful World”) and then, from 1960, for the powerful RCA under the direction of producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore (“Chain Gang,” a unique, catchy prison-themed novelty song that soared to number two on the charts), confirmed this trend.

Whether in danceable tracks like “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Havin’ a Party,” or “Another Saturday Night,” in blues numbers softened into a sweeter tone like “Little Red Rooster,” in the refined selections on My Kind of Blues (a 1961 album featuring Ellingtonian and Gershwin standards), in venerable folk ballads such as “Frankie and Johnny,” or in the many American songbook evergreens – from Stephen Foster to Lerner and Loewe – that filled his albums (including the elegant Bumps Blackwell–produced Encore, with songs like “When I Fall in Love,” “My Foolish Heart,” and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”), Sam consistently presented himself as a polished, versatile performer. He became a kind of modern-day heir to Nat King Cole – less jazzy in spirit, but infused with the warmth and emotional clarity of the church.

Even when his RCA productions – sometimes too formal, sometimes weighed down by strings and background vocals – limited his expressive range, Cooke’s singing remained exemplary. It was a masterclass in balance: technical control, rich articulation and genuine depth of feeling. Countless young singers and future soul stars – from Otis Redding to Johnnie Taylor – looked to him as their guiding light.

In the meantime, the more independent and entrepreneurial side of Cooke’s personality was coming to the fore. As a producer for his own label, SAR Records, he promoted and recorded promising soul acts like the Sims Twins and the aforementioned Johnnie Taylor – himself a Soul Stirrers alumnus, and a vivid, emotionally charged interpreter of one of Sam’s finest compositions, “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.” These SAR recordings often possessed a rawer, more palpably “Black” quality than Sam’s own RCA output. Cooke also produced his brother L.C., as well as the Valentinos – formerly the Womack Brothers, a gospel group led by his protégé Bobby Womack, who would later (controversially and to many, scandalously) marry Sam’s widow, Barbara.

As a songwriter, Cooke crafted some of the soul era’s most original, moving, and enduring works – songs that have continued to inspire some of the most heartfelt performances in recent decades. The bluesy “Somebody Have Mercy,” the soulful “Bring It on Home to Me” (featuring a young Lou Rawls, former soloist of the Pilgrim Travelers and soon-to-be soul-jazz stylist), the tender ballads “Sad Mood” and “Nothing Can Change This Love” (especially powerful in a posthumously released 1980s concert recording from a Miami club), and the effervescent, celebratory “Ain’t That Good News” – all bear the unmistakable stamp of Sam’s church roots, and rival Ray Charles’s finest pop-gospel fusions. “Ain’t That Good News” would become both the title track and the thematic centerpiece of Cooke’s final studio album.

Among the album’s many exuberant tracks (“Good Times,” “Meet Me at Mary’s Place”), one song stood apart – a slow, introspective soul ballad with superb melodic and lyrical craftsmanship that presaged the political engagement of a new era. “A Change Is Gonna Come,” a kind of secular hymn to the civil rights movement, translated the gospel promise of redemption into the language of real-world suffering and hope. With a measured, deeply moving performance, Cooke gave voice to a quiet, existential anguish – a restlessness that ran beneath the poised elegance of his phrasing.

Tragically, the song would become his artistic testament. On December 11, 1964, in a seedy Los Angeles motel, Sam Cooke was shot and killed by the hotel’s manager under circumstances that remain suspicious to this day. The case shocked those who knew him, and prompted speculation about possible retaliation from the recording industry mafia – perhaps in response to Cooke’s increasing independence and entrepreneurial initiatives.

Just weeks later, with “Shake” and “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke’s voice returned to the Top 10 for the last time. Both songs – along with other gems from his repertoire, most notably the evergreen “Try a Little Tenderness” – would be reclaimed and reimagined by one of his most passionate and original heirs: Otis Redding.