Sam Cooke Albums (14)
What The Critics Say
Another repackaging of disparate material from Cooke's catalog with only nine tracks. None of the hits, but Cooke's delivery of such standards as "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home" and "I Fall in Love Every Day" are all top-notch. Cooke even pens some of the songs here, namely "If I Had You" and "You Belong to Me." The arrangements by, varyingly, Sammy Lowe, Rene Hall, and Billy Mure often swing, but rarely rock like the combos on his singles, as the album was aimed mainly to those who saw Cooke as a pop/swing vocalist more than a rock & roll one. ~ Ted Mills, All Music Guide
'The Man Who Invented Soul'
Release Date 1/1/1968
Tracks 12
Label RCA Victor
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What The Critics Say
Although the title is a bit misleading, the songs and vocals are the real deal. Not every Sam Cooke album from the '60s was great, but every one had plenty of great performances, and that was also the case with this one, even if there's a recycled feeling about several numbers. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide
'The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke'
Release Date 1/1/1966
Tracks 16
Label Keen
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What The Critics Say
Here are 16 Sam Cooke sides recorded for Keen, including "There I've Said It Again," "When I Fall in Love," "Ol' Man River," "Around the World," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha," "Someday," "Mary, Mary Lou," "Only Sixteen," and, of course, the classic title song. ~ Roots & Rhythm Newsletter, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sam Cooke had been killed the previous month with a current single, "Shake," ready for release. A brilliant up-tempo song with dazzling vocal acrobatics and a great beat, it was issued less than two weeks after Cooke's death and soared into the Top Ten, but there was no accompanying LP, and Cooke had not left behind enough unissued studio material to create one. Instead, starting within days of Cooke's death in order to get this album out for January of 1965, RCA reached back as far as six years, to Cooke's sides for Specialty records and the Keen label ("Win Your Love for Me," "Comes Love"), up through songs from early 1964's A Change Is Gonna Come album and the handful of numbers he'd finished late in the year. They threw on the shortened single version of "A Change Is Gonna Come," as edited for the B-side of "Shake," to create the first in an ever-weaker series of pastiche albums in Cooke's catalog. This actually isn't a bad selection of material, and some of what's here was among his latest sides, thus representing some facet of where his music was heading during his last year alive, in what amounted to an unfinished career in an unfinished life, in an unsettled time. It's just not a terribly relevant album in terms of anything it says about Cooke's music, apart from its diversity over time. Most of the material on this album has reappeared in more recent years on either The Man Who Invented Soul box or the Keep Movin' On CD. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
'The 2 Sides of Sam Cooke'
Release Date 1/1/1964
Tracks 13
Label Specialty
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What The Critics Say
This 12-song release splits its time between Cooke's early gospel sides as a member of the Soul Stirrers ("The Last Mile of the Way," "Were You There," "Touch the Hem of His Garment") and his early attempts at crossing over into pop music, including "Lovable," which was originally issued under the name of Dale Cooke to avoid upsetting his gospel fans. A major highlight is "Jesus Gave Me Water," Sam's first recording, done when he was 19 years old. Top-notch liner notes from Barret Hansen (aka Dr. Demento) make this a great little package well worth checking out. The CD is a straight-up reissue of the original vinyl album from 1970. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For decades, Sam Cooke at the Copa was a frustrating record. One of a handful of live albums by any major soul artist of its era, it captured Cooke in excellent voice, and was well-recorded -- it just wasn't really a "soul" album, except perhaps in the tamest possible definition of that term. Playing to an upscale, largely white supper-club audience, in a very conservatively run venue where he had previously failed to impress either patrons or the management, Cooke toned down his performance and chose the safest material with which he could still be comfortable. In place of songs like "Feel It," "Bring It On Home to Me," or even "Cupid," which were part of his usual set, he performed numbers like "The Best Things in Life Are Free," "Bill Bailey," and "When I Fall in Love" here. True, his renditions may be the versions of any of those songs that any R&B fan will like best, but they always seemed a poor substitute for what's not here -- not just the songs that he didn't do, but the intense, sweaty presentation, as much a sermon as a concert, the pounding beat, and the crowd being driven into ever-more frenzied delight. All of that is missing, and for decades fans had to content themselves with the contradiction of a beautifully executed live album featuring what might best be called "Sam Cooke lite" -- the release of Live at the Harlem Square Club solved that problem, giving us a real Sam Cooke concert, and one of the great soul albums of all time. In the wake of the latter's release, Sam Cooke at the Copa became much more valuable as a representative of that other side of Cooke's sound and career -- juxtaposed with "Twistin' the Night Away" were "Frankie and Johnny," "Try a Little Tenderness," "Tennessee Waltz," "This Little Light of Mine" and his performance of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (the song that inspired his own "A Change Is Gonna Come"), most of which, if he'd done his usual set, most likely wouldn't exist today in concert versions. By itself, this is still not a representative album, but paired with Live At The Harlem Square Club, it is an irreplaceable document. In June of 2003, Sam Cooke at The Copa was reissued in a brilliant sounding hybrid CD/Super-Audio CD that runs circles around all prior editions of the record. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
'Ain't That Good News'
Release Date 1/1/1964
Tracks 12
Label Specialty
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What The Critics Say
The last of his studio albums released in his lifetime, Sam Cooke's Ain't That Good News offers a lot of superb material, pointing in several directions that, alas, were to go largely unexplored. The central number is, of course, the earth-shattering "A Change Is Gonna Come," with its soaring gospel sound and the most elaborate production of any song in Cooke's output. The rousing though less substantial title track also came out of a gospel tradition, as does Cooke's treatment of "Tennessee Waltz," which is one of his finest adaptations of contemporary pop material. "Falling in Love" was the work of Harold Battiste, an old friend of Cooke's who had recently re-entered his orbit and was partly responsible for encouraging the singer in exploring the New Orleans sound that was evident on "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" and "Meet Me at Mary's Place." And then there's "Good Times," a bittersweet, introspective party number, and the pensive successor to "Twistin' the Night Away." There are a few moments where the spell is almost broken by the intrusion of what seems like pop material, but even Cooke's version of "The Riddle Song" is worth owning, as a glimpse of how he could turn a folk song into a something so quietly soulful that its origins disappeared. With the exception of "Another Saturday Night," which had been released as a single early in the previous year, Ain't That Good News comprised the first material that Cooke had recorded in the six months following the drowning death of his 18-month-old son Vincent; it was also the first album that Cooke recorded and released under his new contract, which gave him greater freedom in choosing repertory and sidemen than he'd ever had, and so it offered a lot of pent-up emotional and musical expression, and, as it turned out, was tragically unique in the singer's output. Ain't That Good News was reissued in June of 2003 as an extraordinary audiophile-quality hybrid CD/Super-Audio CD edition by ABKCO Records, with full music and session credits. The sound on that edition literally blows any prior edition of the album, or any earlier CD release of those songs. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
'The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers, Vol. 1'
Release Date 1/1/1964
Tracks 12
Label Specialty
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What The Critics Say
This 12-song compilation by The Soul Stirrers features the lead vocals of Sam Cooke in a pure gospel format. This material, recorded before Cooke began tackling pop songs in late 1956, is considered by many aficionados to be his best. Songs include "Nearer to Thee," "One More River," "Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone," "Any Day Now," and "Peace in the Valley." ~ Roundup Newsletter, All Music Guide
'Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963'
Release Date 1/1/1963
Tracks 9
Label RCA
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What The Critics Say
For anyone who thought they knew Sam Cooke's music based on the hit singles, this disc will be a revelation. This is the real Sam Cooke, doing a sweaty, raspy soulful set at the Harlem Square Club in North Miami, FL, on Jan. 12, 1963, backed by King Curtis and his band, a handful of local musicians, and Cooke's resident sidemen, guitarist Clifford White and drummer Albert "June" Gardner. To put it simply, it's one of the greatest soul records ever cut by anybody, outshining James Brown's first live album from the Apollo Theater and easily outclassing Jackie Wilson's live record from the Copa. Cooke's pop style is far removed from the proceedings here, which have the feel of being virtually a secular sermon. The record opens with the frantic, desperate chant-like "Feel It," followed by a version of "Chain Gang" that has all of the gentling influences of the single's string accompaniment stripped from it -- Cooke's slightly hoarse voice only adds to the startling change in the song, transformed from a piece of pop-soul into an in-your-face ode to freedom and release. "Cupid," perhaps the most sweetly textured song that Cooke cut during the 1960s, gets the full soul treatment, with horns and Curtis' sax up front and Cooke imparting an urgency here that's only implied in the studio rendition. "Twistin' the Night Away" gets two hot King Curtis sax solos, the highlights of a pounding, rippling performance with a beautifully vamped extended ending (with the drums, bass, and White's guitar wrapping themselves ever tighter around the central riff) that never would have made it to the floor of the Copa. "Somebody Have Mercy" leads into a long vamp by Cooke, a brief, soaring quotation from "You Send Me" that could easily have been a high point in sheer intensity -- and then Cooke and the band crank the tension and the spirits several notches higher with the greatest version of "Bring It on Home to Me" ever done by anybody. It all ends with a version of "Having a Party" that manages to be both soothing and wrenching at the same time, Cooke luxuriating in every nuance as the crowd joins in singing, reaching a higher pitch to the gently swinging tune, the drums kicking in harder, the rhythm guitar rising up, and Curtis' sax and the horns rising up slowly while Cooke goes on with his singing, which is more like preaching and the group sounds like it could play the riff all night. It's one of the cruel ironies of the recording business that this unique and extraordinary concert recording went unreleased for almost 22 years, in favor of the more polished (but also more antiseptic and duller) Sam Cooke at the Copa. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
