Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 39

Record label: RCA Victor

Produced: Hugo and Luigi

Recorded: RCA Victor Studios, Hollywood; February 22–23 and 25, 1963

Released: September 1963

Chart peaks: None (UK) 62 (US)

Personnel: Sam Cooke (v); Ed Hall, Hal Blaine (d); Rene Hall, Cliff White, Barney Kessell (g); Clifford Hils (b); Raymond Johnson (p); Billy Preston (o); Dave Hassinger (e)

Track listing: Lost And Looking; Mean Old World; Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen; Please Don’t Drive Me Away; I Lost Everything; Get Yourself Another Fool; Little Red Rooster; Laughin’ And Clownin’; Trouble Blues; You Gotta Move; Fool’s Paradise; Shake, Rattle And Roll

Running time: 37.35

Current CD: RCA 82876695512

Further listening: The only other album that approaches this intensity is Live At The Harlem Square Club (1963).

Further reading: You Send Me: The Life And Times of Sam Cooke (Daniel Wolff, 1996), a Cinderella story with a Tupac ending; www.samcooke.com

Download: HMV Digital

The sixth note in the musical scale is owned by Sam Cooke. No one has done more for that note in the history of recorded vocal music. While his peers were over-using the flatted seventh and flatted third notes, Sam was smoothly pinning his style right on that pure sixth interval. All the rest just rented their notes; Sam owned his. Many decades after his untimely death, he still does.

Cooke rose from a church background, the heartthrob lead singer of gospel superstars The Soul Stirrers, where he built his dizzying, flawless, effortless style. His transition to pop caused his former soulmates to berate him for converting to ‘the Devil’s music’. Cooke became massively famous as a pop singer and made an unprecedented step over the US colour line. By 1963, with several hits under his belt, Cooke was anxious to show the more mature side of his artistry. Prior to Night Beat, his LPs were filled with singles and weary fillers. Sam wanted an album that didn’t pander to the radio audience, one where he could express what he was moving towards as he grew older. He had no compunction about covering blues shouter Howlin’ Wolf (Little Red Rooster) or big band belter Joe Turner (Shake, Rattle And Roll).

A crack studio band was assembled around his long-time associates Rene Hall and Clifford White. Studio freshmen Billy Preston on organ and Hal Blaine on drums still count these sessions as some of their most mesmerising. On the opening track Lost And Looking, Sam duets with double bass player Cliff Hils while the rest of the band takes five. It stands as one of Cooke’s greatest vocal legacies. Elsewhere, blues and semi-gospel gems are addressed with real feeling, the musical perfection breathtaking.

Cooke’s goal was realised, and the album, out of print for decades, was re-released in 1997 to a legion of new fans.