THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 16, 1995 TAG: 9502160024
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
IN JUNE 1959, two young singers came to the Norfolk Arena. Fresh from playing packed venues in Charlotte, Dallas and Atlanta, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson were expected to follow an Arena custom - segregated seating.
Cooke said no. Flush with newfound clout achieved with eight straight Top 40 pop and R&B successes, he refused to perform unless racial lines were brought down. Arena management capitulated, and the show went on, Sam's way.
It was the first time the star would make such a bold move, and far from the last, as ``You Send Me: The Life &Times of Sam Cooke'' (William Morrow, $23) chronicles. The richly detailed new biography by Daniel Wolff charts Cooke's rise from poor Mississippi minister's son to gospel sensation, R&B/pop godhead, music-industry pioneer and a heroic figure among African Americans.
``As times had changed, so had Sam,'' Wolff said by phone last week.
``Norfolk was just the place. It was a largely unheralded event outside the black community. And it didn't hold. The next act, when they faced segregation, didn't follow through. But word got around on the grapevine, and it gave him stature in the community.''
By placing Cooke's achievements in context with the burgeoning civil- rights movement, and working with Cooke associates S.R. Crain and Clifton White and musicologist G. David Tenenbaum, Wolff accomplishes a feat that ranks with Peter Guralnick's 1994 instant-classic volume on Elvis Presley, ``Last Train to Memphis.'' In fact, ``You Send Me'' subtly positions Cooke as a legend equal to Presley among blacks.
One of the too-little-heard tales unearthed here is that of Cooke's debut on ``The Ed Sullivan Show.'' Due to a time shortage, Cooke delivered only one line of ``You Send Me,'' his first crossover hit after leaving the gospel circuit where he had prospered with the Soul Stirrers, before disappearing from the screen. This resulted in a de facto on-air apology from Sullivan and another secret cultural memory.
``The African-American people who were old enough to remember weren't even aware that Elvis was only shot from the waist up, but they remember Sam Cooke being cut off.''
He could be as confusing as Presley, too. Wolff paints Cooke as chameleonic, moving from the upscale Copacabana to Miami's gritty Harlem Square Club to both broaden his audience and stay true to his own bluesier muse. He also explodes the myth that, after his crossover, Cooke was shunned as a sinner by the church-music establishment; the revamped Soul Stirrers frequently recorded for his SAR label.
The reaction to the artist's violent death in 1964 underscores his fragmented appeal. Even some of his closest associates couldn't believe that the handsome, respected Cooke would be literally caught dead in a cheap Los Angeles motel, with a woman not his wife, in the middle of the night.
The final chapters of ``You Send Me'' cast doubt on the official version of Cooke's shooting, as Wolff pictures a shoddy inquest and evidence that went uninvestigated or ignored.
Cooke's demise at 33 put an end to a career whose creativity and daring were still growing, both aesthetically and in a business sense. He controlled his own music publishing at the same time Berry Gordy was building the Motown empire. And while he recorded for Keen and RCA Records, SAR put other young gospel voices such as Johnnie Taylor and Bobby Womack on the road to secular stardom. The recent two-CD anthology ``Sam Cooke's SAR Records Story'' on ABKCO collects his productions and rare Cooke recordings.
``He wanted to be quote unquote mainstream,'' Wolff explained, ``but he also thirsted for a rougher sound.'' SAR and the associated Derby label allowed him to explore more emotionally direct avenues of expression, even as his own singles frequently were woven of a more sophisticated cloth.
``Once you've got 'em in a kind of chronological order,'' said Wolff of Cooke's tracks, ``and you look at two things, his personal life and the social aspect, the revelations start coming.''
Cooke's most lasting song is probably ``A Change is Gonna Come,'' cut a year before his death, and issued as the B-side of his first posthumous release, the dance tune ``Shake.''
``If the man had done nothing else,'' Wolff said, ``he would have a place in history for this.''
Weaving allegory and realism, reassurance and doubt, gospel and blues, into its narrative, ``Change'' was both a response to America's racial schisms and a personal breakthrough for Cooke. Wolff writes that the song might have frightened Cooke as ``an omen of his own passing . . . (or an) emotional and artistic leap.''
``He was also a man in mourning,'' Wolff said. Cooke's 18-month-old son, Vincent, had accidentally drowned the spring before ``Change'' was composed. ``I don't think he would have written it if his son hadn't died. I think it pushed him over a kind of psychic edge. He takes more chances, and he's able to say more.''
Cooke lost much more soon afterward. But his life and legacy, as witnessed in ``You Send Me,'' remain fascinating.
``I knew how revered and popular he was among blacks'' before the book was written, said Wolff. But: ``I don't think I can overstate how important culturally (Cooke) was to all of us.'' ILLUSTRATION: Author Daniel Wolff places Sam Cooke's achievements in context
with the civil-rights movement.
ABKCO
Sam Cooke's demise at 33 put an end to a career whose creativity and
daring were still growing.
KEYWORDS: BLACK HISTORY by CNB