This is also interesting. So's this.

I love me some Sam Cooke.

Just last night I was watching a PBS special on Same Cooke. Interesting guy.

Me too! You Send Me is on my all time faves list.

I've been maintaining a minor Sam Cooke obsession since I was about thirteen or fourteen. I can't link to audio from work (or from anywhere, for that matter) or I'd be putting up his Harlem Square Club (Miami) concert recording, "One Night Stand."

I think this is covered in one of those linked articles, but in '63 Cooke had just returned from playing in Europe with Little Richard (who blew him off the stage with his crazy energy and raunchy stage presence) and was undergoing a change from sweet crooner to wild belter in an attempt to compete with Little Richard and the young James Brown. The Harlem Square Club was one stop on the chitlin' circuit, and you can hear Cooke, before a black audience, singing a (secular) gospel show, raving up the audience, and loosening up to party. His in-between-song patter is inane, but it doesn't matter because that's not the point: he's getting a room full of people, his people, to twist and sing and have a good time before going off to party elsewhere. "Twisting the Night Away" defies you to remain on your couch, and his rendition of "You Send Me" is tremendous; stripped bare of rhythm and structure, it's a cry in the night, he's a begging man, and for the first time that night, his singing isn't effortless, but heartbreaking.

Of course, the record wasn't released until twenty years after his death, because the label thought it might turn off his white audience. Find a copy and give it a listen. It's one of the best live recordings ever, along with Jerry Lee Lewis at the Starclub in Hamburg, Germany, 1964, a wild record from his exile years, featuring a band playing out of its skin and a crowd hepped up on Jerry Lee's ego and manic piano pounding.

Get them both.

oh my heart is happier! thanks hugh! oddly i was just howling love at a bartender last night because he was playing some sam cooke.

Even when his voice is fragged, he's smoother than anyone else, and the way he drops open his mouth and rounds his vowels gives his style an openness that's hard to pinpoint.

Sure, there's Burke and Charles and Presley and Rawls all vying for the crooner crown, but Cooke is #1 in my book.

Someone asked a while ago what single concert I would go back in time to see, if I could. Much as I'd love to see Cooke himself, or VH opening for BS, or the Boss in '74, my answer was and remains: Sam Cooke's funeral. Thousands of grieving fans pushing and crying; Cooke's wife Barbara showing up with Bobby Womack (who came dressed in one of Sam's suits); Ray Charles, Etta James, Lou Rawls, all singing in the heat; a who's who of soul, shocked and remembering their greatest light, bludgeoned and shot to death wearing only a shoe and an overcoat. Tears me up. But that's how I'd spend my time-travel/fly-on-the-wall ticket, for sure.

It was like 14 degrees the day of his funeral, according to that special. A real testament to his fans.

Yeah, supposedly when the crush of onlookers broke the front window of the funeral parlor, the heat inside (ratcheted up by everyone's winter clothes) subsided and everyone could breathe again.

I also love some Sam. Thanks for reminding me...I am not a religious man, but there's something about the way he does Touch the Hem of His Garment that used to give me chills. I'm also not a fashionista, so I'm not sure why that song messed with me so. Love it though.

Sam Cooke is great. Thanks for the mini education Hugh. Cupid, Twisting the Night Away, Wonderful World, all great songs and favorites of mine.