During the two years following Sam Cooke’s tragic death in December 1964, RCA Victor released two studio albums, two compilation albums, and eight singles. Over subsequent years, the company issued a live album, five more compilation albums, and two box sets.
The tracks for the first posthumous album, “Shake”, had been recorded in Los Angeles between January and November 1964, produced by Hugo and Luigi with Al Schmitt, with several arrangements by René Hall.
There are eight Sam Cooke songs on the album, along with four standard romantic orchestral ballads from established songwriters. Six of the songs are new, six are taken from previous Sam Cooke albums. Side One includes two songs recorded by Cooke in 1958 at Keen Records, “Win Your Love For Me” (credited to Sam’s younger brother L.C. Cook) and “Love You Most Of All” (credited to Sam’s wife Barbara Campbell but co-written by Cooke, Herb Alpert, Lou Adler and Bobby Womack), both of which are sweet Pop songs that sound rather dated here. Fortunately, the remaining four tracks are more up-tempo with some hints of Gospel. The best of them is “Yeah Man”, with a real sense of excitement. It really is sweet Soul music! Two years after the release of the “Shake” album, the song “Yeah Man” re-appeared, this time called appropriately “Sweet Soul Music”, having been “borrowed” by Otis Redding and Arthur Conley. Following legal action by Cooke’s estate, Sam Cooke was given a credit on the Arthur Conley version!
Side Two of “Shake” has the four romantic ballads book-ended by the two best songs on the album, both written by Sam Cooke. The wonderful “A Change Is Gonna Come” starts things off and the fantastic Soul ballad “(Somebody) Ease My Troublin’ Mind” closes the album in style. These two tracks are proof indeed that Sam Cooke invented Southern Soul; they stand as a fitting tribute to him and are still musically relevant sixty years after their creation.
The album only reached number forty-four on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart, but lovers of R&B music pushed it to number one on the Billboard R&B Albums Chart.
The second posthumous album was released in October 1965. “Try A Little Love” has twelve tracks but only five are new releases. Of the remaining seven, five come from the Keen catalogue and two from the recordings made in New York. Hugo and Luigi produced all twelve songs.
The five new tracks were all recorded in Los Angeles with René Hall in charge of arrangements and conducting the studio band. The title track opens the album. It is a sweetly-sung slow ballad with a sensitive arrangement. It is followed by “Don’t Cry On My Shoulder”, which ups the tempo a little and really swings. Track number three is in similar style. All are beautifully sung with gentle orchestration. The other new tracks open the second side, with “When A Boy Falls In Love” followed by “To Each His Own”. Both are slow romantic ballads. The seven previously-released songs fit the same mould. Everything is done perfectly, but the bar had been set a lot higher by the two Sam Cooke compositions on Side Two of “Shake”. The fans response was not positive, with the album peaking at number one hundred and twenty on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart and not registering at all on the R&B chart. The lack of excitement and the absence of real Soul was obvious to the fans of R&B.
The first posthumous release came before these two albums. It was a single, issued in 1964. The final track from “Ain’t That Good News” to be released on a single was “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Amazingly, it was issued posthumously as the B-side of “Shake”, the title track of the soon-to-be-released posthumous album. Clearly, RCA promoted the A-side, which had been released to drum up expectations for the forthcoming album. “Shake reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart and number two on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. But the B-side was attracting attention too, with chart entries of thirty-one (Hot 100) and nine (R&B). It has slowly come to be acknowledged as one of the important songs ever written, continuing to be played and covered. In the UK the single was awarded gold certification by the BPI. Unsurprisingly, given that success, it was also included on the “Shake” album.
Four more singles followed in 1965, “Another Saturday Night”, “It’s Got The Whole World Shakin’”, “When A Boy Falls In Love”, and “Sugar Dumpling”. All had been previously issued with the exception of “The Piper”, which was the B-side of “When A Boy Falls In Love” from the “Try A Little Love” album. “The Piper” is an unusual lyric for Sam Cooke, delivered as a bouncy Pop song. The first of the four failed to chart, but the next three all enjoyed reasonable success.
Three more singles appeared during 1966, pairing songs from Keen, RCA Los Angeles and RCA New York: “Feel It”, “Let’s Go Steady Again”, and “Meet Me At Mary’s Place”. Only the second charted, reaching a lowly number ninety-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.
The two compilation albums are “The Best of Sam Cooke Volume ll” (released in July 1965) and “The Unforgettable Sam Cooke” (released in May 1966).
Of the later compilations and box sets, one stands out. In February 1986 RCA released “The Man and His Music”, around a month after Cooke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The twenty-eight tracks featured start with Gospel and then move through Cooke’s solo career, ending with “A Change Is Gonna Come”. The album tells the whole story and was supported by the release of two singles, “Wonderful World”/ “Chain Gang” (which earned a silver disc in the UK) and “Another Saturday Night”/ “You Send Me”. The compilation was much appreciated in the UK where it earned a gold disc!
And so to the posthumously-released live album. It was recorded on January 12th 1963 at the Harlem Square Club in Miami, in the African American Overtown area. Surrounded by his Black fans, Cooke clearly felt at ease and able to present his songs in a style that befitted the surroundings. Ten tracks were recorded, mixing songs from the New York and Los Angeles output.
When RCA heard the results, they were not convinced that it would be a good idea to put the album out. The decision-makers at RCA considered that the recordings were too noisy and lacked the smooth appeal of Cooke’s studio albums, so they shelved them and started to look for an alternative venue in which the atmosphere would be less vibrant. It took a while to find a solution. The second attempt at a live album came at the Copacabana Club in New York in July 1964, and that was released before the end of October 1964, a few weeks before Cooke was shot and killed in Los Angeles. It lacks the excitement of the Miami recordings, which were still sitting on a shelf at RCA.
And there they stayed until 1985!
They were found by RCA executive Gregg Geller, who understood their significance: “The fact is, when he was out on the road, he was playing to a predominantly, almost exclusively black audience. And he was doing a different kind of show — a much more down-home, down-to-earth, gut-bucket kind of show than what he would do for his pop audience.” The company were now calling Cooke “the man who invented Soul” and on these recordings Geller found the proof. There were only nine tracks, one of which was a medley of “It’s All Right” and “For Sentimental Reasons”, the first co-written by Cooke and Deke Watson, and the second written by William Best. All the rest are pure Sam Cooke compositions, the songs that he wrote to explore a new Soul sound. His fans had to wait over twenty-two years to hear them. Geller put the album out in June 1985.
In its review, Rolling Stone magazine sums up the album’s true worth: “Cooke was elegance personified, but he works this Florida club until it’s hotter than hell, while sounding like he never breaks a sweat […] when the crowd sings along with him, it’s magic.”
The stand-out tracks are “It’s All Right”, “Somebody Have Mercy” (excellent saxophone solo), and “Nothing Can Change This Love” (that sax again!).
A single was put out to support the album in 1985, featuring two songs from the show: “Bring It On Home To Me” and “Nothing Can Change This Love”. It failed to chart but sold well enough in the UK to earn a sliver disc.
Strangely, there have been three versions of the album. The first is the 1985 release. The second is a re-mix made for inclusion on the box set “The Man Who Invented Soul” in 2000, with the crowd noise turned right down and Cooke’s vocals much clearer as a result. The third remastering took place for the 2005 re-issue of the album, with the crowd participation level set at a point somewhere between the original and the 2000 version.
Whatever version you listen to, you will hear Sam Cooke as a master of Soul music. This album is the one that captures his true greatness!
