Sam Cooke - The Best of
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CD Details
Artist: Sam CookeEdition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2005-09-20
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
- You Send Me
- Only Sixteen
- Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha
- (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
- (What A) Wonderful World
- Summertime
- Chain Gang
- Cupid
- Twistin' The Night Away
- Sad Mood
- Having A Party
- Bring It On Home To Me
- Win Your Love For Me
- You Were Made For Me
- Nothing Can Change This Love
Music reviews of The Best of
Music Review: Limited But Foundational
Rating: 4 Stars
For many years Sam Cooke (1931-1964) was best recalled for the sordid circumstances of his death. Although married, Cooke was a noted womanizer, and he met Asian woman Elisa Boyer at a Los Angeles bar, and the two went to the Hacienda Motel on South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. Boyer claimed that Cooke attempted to rape her, that she freed herself, and that she escaped taking his clothing, hoping he would not follow her naked. Cooke, entirely naked except for sports jacket and shoes, went to the manager's office, where he met the manager on duty, Bertha Franklin. Franklin claimed that Cooke demanded to know Boyer's whereabouts, and when Franklin said she did not know the woman Cooke attacked her, and that she then shot and killed him in self defense. It was an ugly ending to a brillant career--and this "official" report may not be entirely true.
Cooke was known to carry considerable cash, often as much as two or three thousand dollars, and rumors eventually arose that Boyer was a common prostitute who lured Cooke and then stole his clothes in order to get at his wallet while she made her get away. There seems to be some substance to this accusation, for not long after Boyer was arrested for prostitution, and although she did her best to fade from the limelight some sources state that she was ultimately arrested and imprisoned for the murder of boyfriend Lewis Reynolds. It was also rumored that Boyer worked with Franklin, the motel manager, to entrap johns, and Etta James and many others who viewed Cooke's body stated that he appeared to have been savagely beaten, an observation that not accounted for in either Boyer or Franklin's testimony. Given the condition of his body, yet another rumor has arisen: that Cooke was deliberately murdered and that Boyer and Franklin's testimony was purchased perjury, bought in order to conceal the identity of Cooke's actual killer.
Whatever the case, Cooke's ugly death seemed to push his recordings out of the spotlight, and it wasn't really until the 1980s that he regained recognition. So for two, three decades, THE BEST OF SAM COOKE was pretty much the only recording you were likely to find at the local record store. In some ways it was not--and even with revisions and bonus tracks still isn't--indicative of what Sam Cooke could do. His range was unexpected, and he had a gift for lifting a song from another genre and dropping it into his own idiom; you wouldn't expect him to do a Bob Dylan song, but he could and did and with considerable success. But THE BEST OF SAM COOKE does give us the side of the singer that most of the public knew during his lifetime: his radio record hits, pop songs like "Having A Party" and "Cupid" and "Wonderful World," cross-over hits that were just as popular with white audiences as with blacks. Here and there, however, you do catch a slightly different inflection: "Bring It On Home To Me" is a classic of the then-emerging soul style, and Cooke's take on the Gershwin classic "Summertime" is bested only by Janis Joplin. Although the recordings seem to have been remastered, in my opinion they could stand another remastering--but that's really just a matter of gloss. This is the Sam Cooke that we remember, the man with that truly lucious, super-smooth voice that echos the likes of Nat King Cole and pushes the boundaries of what was possible with the music of his day.
Whenever you have a "Best Of" collection you will always have an argument about what should and shouldn't be included, and there is a truly glaring omission in this one: any collection of Cooke's recordings, be it pop, R&B, soul, or anything else, HAS to include "A Change Is Gonna Come." This one doesn't, and for that reason I deduct a star from my rating. Nonetheless, this is a great place for someone who isn't knowledgeable of Cooke's work to begin--it will make you want to hear more.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
In Memory of Roscoe, 1999-2011, Faithful Companion
Description of The Best of
Sam Cooke, The Best of Sam CookePop CDs
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