Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke

Copyright © 2005 by Peter Guralnick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

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Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company, October 2005

First eBook Edition: October 2006

PAGE I:
Courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum/Hatch Show Prints

TITLE PAGE:
Photograph by Jess Rand, © Michael Ochs Archives.com

PAGE XII: George McCurn (Oopie), probably Jesse Whitaker (also of the Pilgrim Travelers), Sam Cooke, ca. 1957.
Courtesy of Carol Ann Woods

PAGE 1: Sam Cook.
Courtesy of ABKCO

THE AUTHOR IS GRATEFUL
for permission to include the following previously copyrighted material:

“Dream Boogie,” from
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes,
copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Excerpts from
The Fire Next Time,
© 1963, 1962 by James Baldwin. Copyright renewed. Published by Vintage Books. Reprinted by arrangement with the James Baldwin Estate.

“I Too Hear America Singing,” © 1960 by Julian Bond. Copyright renewed. Used by permission.

Lyrics from “Another Saturday Night” written by Sam Cooke. © 1963, renewed 1991, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Bring It On Home To Me” written by Sam Cooke. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Chain Gang” written by Sam Cooke. © 1959, renewed 1987, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “A Change Is Gonna Come” written by Sam Cooke. © 1964, renewed 1992, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Cupid” written by Sam Cooke. © 1961, renewed 1989, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha” written by Sam Cooke. © 1959, renewed 1987, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Havin’ a Party” written by Sam Cooke. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Jesus Be a Fence Around Me” written by Sam Cooke. © 1960, renewed 1988, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Keep Movin’ On” written by Sam Cooke. © 2000 ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Laughin’ and Clownin’” written by Sam Cooke. © 1963, renewed 1991, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Lost and Lookin’” written by J.W. Alexander, Lowell Jordan. © 1966, renewed 1994, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Meet Me at the Twistin’ Place” written by Sam Cooke. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Nearer to Thee” written by Sam Cooke. © 1955, renewed 1983, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Nothing Can Change This Love” written by Sam Cooke. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “The Piper” written by Sam Cooke. © 1964, renewed 1992, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” written by Sam Cooke, Betty Prudhomme, Beverly Prudhomme. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Stand By Me Father” written by Sam Cooke, J.W. Alexander. © 1959, renewed 1987, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “That’s Heaven to Me” written by Sam Cooke. © 1959, renewed 1987, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “That’s Where It’s At” written by Sam Cooke, J.W. Alexander. © 1963, renewed 1991, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Twistin’ the Night Away” written by Sam Cooke. © 1962, renewed 1990, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “(What a) Wonderful World” written by Sam Cooke, Herb Alpert, Lou Adler. © 1959, renewed 1987, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Yeah Man” written by Sam Cooke. © 1964, renewed 1992, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “You Send Me” written by Sam Cooke. © 1965, renewed 1993, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “You Were Made for Me” written by Sam Cooke. © 1957, renewed 1985, ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Lyrics from “Lead Me On” by Deadric Malone. © 1960, 1988 by Universal-Duchess Music Corporation/BMI. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Excerpt from the
Amsterdam News
. Copyright © 1964 by the
Amsterdam News
. Used by permission.

Excerpt from the
Atlantic City Press
reprinted with permission of The Press of Atlantic City.

All photographs are copyrighted by the photographer and/or owner cited, all rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-316-05515-4

Designed by Susan Marsh

The “Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company” name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue: “The QCs Are in the House”

The Singing Children

“The Teen Age Highway Que Cees, Radio and Concert Artists”

Soul Stirring

The Further Education of Sam Cook

“Lovable”

How He Crossed Over

The Biggest Show of Stars for 1958

Sam, Barbara, and Linda

Having Fun in the Record Business

Another Country

Boogie-Woogie Rumble

Another Saturday Night

Scenes from Life

Independence Day

Long Time Coming

The Piper

Uncloudy Day

Aftermath

Notes

Bibliography

A Brief Discographical Note

Acknowledgments

Praise for Peter Guralnick’s

Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke

“The splendors of [Guralnick’s] book—its percolating narrative, meticulous research, and profound identification with its subject—make it a worthy successor indeed to the Presley twofer. . . . Guralnick’s got more empathy in his pinky than most writers have in their entire bodies and has always displayed an amazing gift for putting himself in the subject’s shoes.”

— James Marcus,
Newsday

“Guralnick writes prose like Cooke wrote songs, with a minimum of outward fuss belying a fanatical attention to detail. Both singer and biographer, in short, make it look easy.”

— Matt Konrad,
Ruminator Review

“Unsurpassable. . . . The writing is as relaxed, graceful, and a¤ecting as a superior Sam Cooke performance. . . . The author is equally at home with the fine points of the gospel road, the machinations of the record industry, and the sweeping political and racial tumult that was a backdrop to Cooke’s meteoric career. . . . To use a gospel-music term Guralnick turns the house out.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“A masterpiece of research and writing,
Dream Boogie
gives us a Sam Cooke [who is] glorious, flawed, but remarkable in his capacity to keep going back into a creative space, no matter what loss hovers around him. In that space, he becomes an alchemist of the most remarkable type, turning even his anguish into art.”

— Warren Zanes,
San Diego Union Tribune

“Guralnick casts a penetrating eye into the darkness. . . . He makes all other music historians look like skimmers.”

— Michael Corcoran,
Austin American-Statesman

“Guralnick, as in his biography of Elvis Presley, displays a feel for the culture that gave rise to the musician, and his account is a revelatory portrait of the rough-and-tumble yet familial world of black show business before and during the civil rights era.”

—
The New Yorker

“This is simply the best music book of the year.”

— Greg Haymes,
Albany Times-Union

“Guralnick, American popular culture’s most passionate, rigorous and eloquent biographer, chronicles Cooke’s life and career . . . with the grace and consideration that his subject so richly deserves.”

— Laura Miller and Hillary Frey, Salon.com

“Engrossing. . . . A respectful, vibrantly human picture of a widely influential, multilayered man. . . . The book really crackles in the chapters that detail Sam’s time with the famed Soul Stirrers and his crossover into the secular field. [Guralnick] pulls you onstage and backstage during the chitlin-circuit tours. . . . You feel the energy of the shows, inhale the funk.”

— Roshod Ollison,
Baltimore Sun

“Rich in detail, deeply insightful, sensitive to the complexity of both Cooke’s triumphs and tribulations. Peter Guralnick has illuminated the spiritual and cultural world of gospel and soul in which Sam Cooke thrived and pioneered.”

—Leon Litwack, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

“To Guralnick ‘what was most extraordinary about Sam Cooke was his capacity for learning, his capacity for imagination and intellectual growth,’ which means he was always in transition, best understood by what he had not yet become. [At his death] he had built an empire on myth, pride, and suspended antagonisms, and without Sam it was all gone. All but the music.”