TV Review: “Sam Cooke: Crossing Over” American Masters (PBS)

I think he did, and I know other artists got more than an hour. Who could possibly be more deserving of a more in-depth program? Sam Cooke was a giant.

You're right. It felt terribly rushed.

I watched Sam and Marvin back-to-back, and it was Marvin that felt skimpy. I've always thought Cooke was hit-and-miss as an artist, with a lot of bad (or maybe just expedient) song choices. And apart from his break from gospel and his womanizing (and where it eventually left him), his life story isn't all that compelling. If it weren't for “A Change Is Gonna Come,” I'm pretty sure the general take on him would be as a lightweight purveyor of watered-down R&B.

The bio treated him as if he were some kind of pathfinder, rather than just one more R&B artist dealing with the chitlin' circuit and the Civil Rights era. In order to do that, they had to go an hour without saying the words “Chuck Berry” and “Ray Charles” (well, they showed Ray's picture once or twice). In fact, Chuck had two Top 5 pop hits before Sam released “You Send Me.” There was some jumping around in the timeline toward the end of Sam's life, which made him look like far more of a trailblazer on Civil Rights than he actually was. All in all, it seemed an exercise in largely unwarranted hagiography–the kind of thing a living, PR-obsessed performer commissions about himself.

Marvin could have used a second hour to tell his story–or at least to embellish all the highly dramatic moments and loony characters. For example, the Tammi Terrell saga goes by in a flash, when in fact her death apparently affected him his whole life.

Hi, Dique. You're absolutely right — but so am I. Here at Popdose, we voted “A Change Is Gonna Come” near the top of our list of our favorite songs of the last 50 years — and I wrote the tribute to its greatness. It would be foolish to diminish its impact on the Civil Rights movement. The song was, as you say, an important “piece of the puzzle”…

But apart from writing and recording that anthemic contribution, Cooke's life was not that of a Civil Rights pioneer, as much as the TV bio we're talking about tried to make him look like one. It's important to remember that “A Change Is Gonna Come” wasn't released until after Cooke's death. That fact makes his story much more poignant — it's nice to imagine that Cooke might have gone on to create many more great and substantial songs like it. But the TV show, while celebrating the music, overplayed his life story.

I probably overstated my feelings about Cooke's music in my previous comment. I love listening to Sam's work with the Soul Stirrers, and “Bring It On Home to Me” is one of the greatest recordings ever. He made a number of terrific singles; I believe, however, that he focused a bit too heavily on crossing over to white audiences and didn't reach his potential frequently enough.

Hi, Dique. You're absolutely right — but so am I. Here at Popdose, we voted “A Change Is Gonna Come” near the top of our list of our favorite songs of the last 50 years — and I wrote the tribute to its greatness. It would be foolish to diminish its impact on the Civil Rights movement. The song was, as you say, an important “piece of the puzzle”…

But apart from writing and recording that anthemic contribution, Cooke's life was not that of a Civil Rights pioneer, as much as the TV bio we're talking about tried to make him look like one. It's important to remember that “A Change Is Gonna Come” wasn't released until after Cooke's death. That fact makes his story much more poignant — it's nice to imagine that Cooke might have gone on to create many more great and substantial songs like it. But the TV show, while celebrating the music, overplayed his life story.

I probably overstated my feelings about Cooke's music in my previous comment. I love listening to Sam's work with the Soul Stirrers, and “Bring It On Home to Me” is one of the greatest recordings ever. He made a number of terrific singles; I believe, however, that he focused a bit too heavily on crossing over to white audiences and didn't reach his potential frequently enough.

I agree with you totally. To, in effect, “over-simplify” Sam Cooke and frame him as as an artist who, were it not for the song “A Change Is Gonna Come”, wouldn’t be anymore relevant than most any other Black artist of his era and in his genre is, to me, a HUGE oversight. After all, the very fact that Cooke was a charter inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the mid-80s can’t be due simply to one song alone.

It’s unfortunate, but perhaps only a particular segment of society will understand the profoundly deep impact a Black man had on musicians as a whole (and Blacks in particular) when he opened his own recording label in 1960. In much the same way, perhaps only a certain group of folk can appreciate a popular and confident Black man opting against the perm and proudly sporting his naps 8 years before it became the mainstream. Fact is, Sam was the first Black in popular music to own his own label and produce his own talent, as a musician himself. Let’s not skip past this point. At a time when artists in general, and Black musicians in particular, were receiving “slave” contracts, Sam Cooke negotiated the rights to some of his masters, he opted to retain his publishing AND find, mold, produce and write for his own artists. At a time when Fats Domino, Jackie Wilson, and Little Richards, among others, called him crazy for “testing” record labels, Sam Cooke demanded respect (and more money) as an artist worth his 2 cents in gold. Sam also was trying to get into movies, but Hollywood wasn’t ready for that. He’d have probably opened his own theatres…lol.

So in effect, the statement “(Sam’s) life was not that of a Civil Rights pioneer…” is more adequately responded to by this question: exactly what do you mean by pioneer? Sam in fact was a pioneer in the music industry, and as a Black man.

Sam changed the way the predominately white-Jewish-male dominated recording industry treated Black artists in this sense: after Sam ushered in the money-generating sound of “SOUL”, Black artists could sing “Black” songs and still receive the marketing, money and promotion of their singles/albums, from their labels, in a way that Nat King Cole, for instance, NEVER COULD. During most of Sam’s pop career (In fact, not until “Chain Gang”), he simply was not given the option to sing “Black” to white audiences. Before Sam, label’s largely dubbed “crossing over” as a Black musician singing in ways easy on white audiences’ eardrums and tastes. Sam helped labels see the marketability in Blacks singing their Black-inspired songs and having non-Black audiences CROSS OVER to THEM. In his later years, Sam Cooke achieved this cross-over, and that is an achievement that catapulted Motown and most every other Black artist of the 60s and early 70s…

Sam wrote many of his hit songs (unlike Elvis), and had the vision to scout out and “break-in” African-American artists before they went to the major labels, in a vision of inter-networking urban studios he dubbed Soul Studios. Unfortunately, he was only able to open one of these urban studios before he was killed.

As someone stated before, Sam’s impact within the gospel world is enough to warrent him an hour-long documentary. As such, he was the leader and first “sex-symbol” of the MOST popular national gospel group, all before the age of 21. In this capacity, his vocals matured and he created a new “sound” in gospel, inspiring the “gospel-sound” onwards, and he wrote some of the hits this group had.

Sam Cooke single-handidly inspired most every Black artist of the 60s and 70s, including Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Lou Rawls, Bobby Womack, James Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Eta James, Michael Jackson, Al Green, just about every Motown artist, including Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations, and others. He’s inspired such white artists as The Police and Sting, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, John Mayer and Rod Stewart.

Many people don’t know that Cooke’s relationship with Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X went past photoshoots and a cute song (for Ali). Cooke was deeply inspired by the Nation Of Islam’s message of Black independence and social/inter-group responsibility…there are claims that Cooke secretly donated to the NOI…(again, I don’t know if that’s fact or not). Ali tried to pursuade Cooke to joing the Nation of Islam, but he remained a sideline supporter.

What is true is that Cooke was a dynamically talented and inspiring singer, songwriter, producer and businessman who profoundly inspired others at a time when his “kind” was indeed a rarity. Sam’s song “A Change…” became the anthem that correctly encapsulated the spirit of an entire people. Notice I didn’t even mention the 29 Top 40 hits he had in 7 years (most of the hits ocurring after 1960s ‘Chain Gang’; also, if ‘Yeah Man’ and ‘That’s Where It’s At’ were adequately released, they’d have been bonafied hits too, so I say he had 31 hits in 7 years …).

Sam’s life story was not “overplayed” in the sende of him being a pioneering, break-down-the-door, take-no-for-an-answer Black man in the Civil Rights era. His music and his thinking was indeed headed more towards overt resistance to Jim Crow and racial discrimination, but in the music world, he was already seen as a trailblazer and pioneer on the side of racial equality and artistic freedom. He simply didn’t do “his own thing” and leave it at that – he called for others to do the same things as he.

I’ll venture out to say this: It’s deeply unfortunate to me that because of who own his masters currently, the work and impact of Sam isn’t as accuratelly and thoroughly known as it should be. Simply put, Sam Cooke’s name, work, and legacy aren’t as big and respected as they should be. As Sam’s great-nephew, Erik Greene (author of Our Uncle Sam) puts it on his website, the following African proverb still holds true: “Until the lion writes his own story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter”.

I don’t know how I neglected to mention this as well…but Cooke also REFUSED, several times, to perform in front of segregated audiences. This shouldn’t be skimmed over quickly. Sam BROKE his contracts with various promoters and lost thousands of dollars by doing so (money that fed him, his family, and his band members). Cooke later made this a ryder in his contract; that is, audiences have to be integrated in order for him to perform, and this influenced other Black artists to do the same). How many people, regular folk today, would lose out on $500 bucks for a socital cause?!?! Sam did this in the early 60′s, lost the equivalent of thousands of dollars, and his move helped to integrate southern auditoriums and social places as much as anything else….Sam was indeed an extremely dynamic man.
 
 

so educated by this,,,astounding….black culture has formed america,,,,