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Wolff's book is great - not a revelatory bio, but it covers all the bases and doesn't shy away from any of the controversies that surrounded him (including his murder). It is *really* sad though - the bit at the end where he describes his funeral and Ray Charles unexpectedly showing and singing "He Was a Friend of Mine" is incredibly moving.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 16:17 (nineteen years ago) link
the "legend" cd sounds great. usually it's like 19 dollars, but i found it at virgin megastore on sale for 10, so i snapped it up.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 16:56 (nineteen years ago) link
three years pass...
two years pass...
Sam Cooke American Masters special on PBS stations tonight--9 pm Eastern on some stations, 10 on others, down't know about elsewhere.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 02:30 (fourteen years ago) link
Some good photos, film and interviews. Not amazing, it was only an hour, but worth watching.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 04:52 (fourteen years ago) link
I think the show might be old. Not sure where or if its showing elsewhere. The Md. PBS station also ran a Marvin Gaye American Masters but alas Comcast in Va took that station off of my basic cable service.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 12 January 2010 13:53 (fourteen years ago) link
eight years pass...
nine months pass...
one year passes...
Just came across Robert Palmer's 1985 review of the Harlem Square Club live album. He interviews Gregg Geller about it - it's pretty banal why it was "lost" - but more impressively, Palmer recounts his own experience seeing Cooke in concert. I'm used to reading about these figures as if they're in the distant, DISTANT past, so it's kind of stunning whenever I come across a critic (albeit one who himself is now dead) who has actually encountered them in the flesh:
"I don't think I'll ever forget seeing him perform in Little Rock, Ark., a few months before the shooting. He put on an eloquent, teasing performance, singing like an angel and driving the women who were crowded around the stage into a frenzy. Near the end of the show, he peeled off one of his elegant little gloves (Michael Jackson and Prince did not start this glove business in pop music) and tossed it into the audience. It landed at the ringside table where I was sitting. A phalanx of ululating women came charging forward to claim the glove and pounced, sending table, chairs and listeners, including me, crashing to the floor under a pile of bodies. That was the sort of magnetism Sam Cooke exuded."
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/15/news/pop-life.html
― birdistheword, Tuesday, 9 March 2021 05:06 (three years ago) link