Chicago – Sam Cooke was here.
Here, in Chicago, on the South Side’s Bronzeville, Sam and his younger brother L.C. – the middle children of eight – sold the Chicago Defender door-to-door. It was here on 35th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue at the end of the streetcar line – that a 12-year-old Sam sang Ink Spots songs, while L.C. passed the hat.
Sam Cooke – the 1950s-1960s pop and gospel star behind “Wonderful World,” “Chain Gang” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” – is still here, in a sense. Though born in Mississippi, Sam spent his formative years in Chicago, singing in various gospel groups and performing for his minister father’s congregation at Church of Christ (Holiness) in Chicago Heights.
But Sam had bigger aspirations – and a plan, says brother L.C., 72, sitting in Bronzeville’s Negro League Cafe.
“He had 12 Popsicle sticks, and he’d stick ’em in the ground,” L.C. recalls. “He’d say, ‘L.C., this is my audience. I’m going to learn to sing in front of these sticks, so when I get older, I won’t be afraid to sing for people.’ And that’s how he did.”
It’s this sense of Sam, this force of will and artistic drive, that attracted Peter Guralnick to write “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke” (Little, Brown and Company, $27.95).
Sitting next to L.C. (“it don’t stand for nothin’ “) in the Bronzeville restaurant, Guralnick says his research brought Cooke into sharp relief, especially when talking to friends and family.
“When they spoke of him, when they quote him – it’s not their voice … it’s Sam’s voice,” he says. “He was as fresh to them today as he was then. They were still trying to communicate with him, to understand him. They knew him very well, but he was deep enough and he was complex enough that there were many avenues to explore.”
In the follow-up to his seminal Elvis Presley biographies (“Last Train to Memphis” and “Careless Love”), Guralnick reveals Cooke as a civil rights pioneer and recording entrepreneur who, like Ray Charles, infused gospel sensibilities into pop music. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali have walk-ons in the 750-page bio.
Guralnick and L.C., a retired performer who lives in Calumet City, Ill., spark off of each other and finish each other’s sentences like old friends, reflecting the 15 years Guralnick spent researching Sam’s life.
Though many of the Bronzeville landmarks Sam grew up with have since vanished, Guralnick and L.C. spent time driving around the old neighborhood, including the spot where Sam was discovered by two teen brothers in 1947.
Lee and Jake Richards recruited the 16-year-old Sam to sing for a fledgling gospel quartet (eventually called the Highway QCs) after hearing him serenade a local girl with The Ink Spots’ “If I Didn’t Care.” In 1950 Cooke joined the Soul Stirrers, a seminal gospel group.
Seven years later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he jump-started his pop career with the hit “You Send Me.” To L.C., it was all part of a plan Sam concocted as a 9-year-old.
L.C., then 7, remembers Sam saying, “Hey man, I ain’t never gonna work.”
“I figured out the system,” Sam said to L.C. “Look, man, the system is designed to keep you working from Friday to Friday. Come Friday, you’re broke. The system isn’t designed for you to keep no money. Come payday, you broke.”
Sam told his brother, “I ain’t gonna be broke, I’m gonna have money in my pocket every day … I’m going to sing for a living.”
And he did, eventually founding his own record and publishing companies. According to L.C., Sam found his true voice, his emotional release in music.
Sam funneled his social conscience and frustrations with civil rights struggles into a final masterpiece, “A Change is Gonna Come” – just before being shot to death by a night clerk at a $3 motel on the fringe of Los Angeles in 1964. Intoxicated and stoned at 2 a.m., Sam was searching for the prostitute who had robbed him. Enraged, he flew at the female night attendant, who shot him through the lungs and heart with a .22 pistol. He was 33.
Characteristically, Guralnick writes a detailed account of Sam’s final hours but doesn’t use the end to define the man. “Sam wasn’t no saint, but we tell it like it was,” L.C. says.
Adds Guralnick: “Sam found his true expression in singing. But he wasn’t going to find true salvation.”
