Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke

by Peter Guralnick

  277 He had played the Royal Peacock: Atlanta Daily World, January 15, 1959.

  277 a BMI songwriting award for Sam’s hit: According to the Kansas City Call, February 20, 1959, the awards ceremony was held at the Hotel Pierre in New York on February 25.

  278 He formalized the partnership: BMI wrote to J.W. on March 10, 1959, with a new agreement stipulating that the three-man partnership would be recognized as dating back to December 1, 1958.

  282 the Palms of Hallandale, a converted drive-in: The description comes from Gart, First Pressings, 1955, p. 55, and Etta James and David Ritz, Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story, p. 98.

  282 Dolores had died in an automobile accident: Fresno Bee, March 23, 1959; Los Angeles Sentinel, March 26. According to the divorce papers, Dolores had been living in Los Angeles in August 1958, but the Bee had her in Fresno for the last two years of her life.

  283 “The Grim Reaper has been shadowing [Sam]”: Birmingham News, April 25, 1959.

  283 He told Farley he had written some new spiritual numbers: J.J. Farley to Art Rupe, April 8, 1959.

  283 a cute little routine that “ran the audience wild”: Amsterdam News, April 25, 1959.

  284 “a connoisseur of men”: James, Rage to Survive, p. 89.

  284 He . . . held out for a $2,500 guarantee: Sam ended up with $3,195 for the week under this arrangement, receiving half of the reported $1,388.45 gross over $20,000, according to Apollo Theater records, Schiffman Collection, Achives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Given that the show earned out its guaranteed advance, this is the same amount he would have received under the William Morris proposal, but I think Sam would have said that it was the principle that counted.

  290 on some nights, “Sam would come out, and Boom!”: “Eddie Floyd: Stax Is Back” (no further information available).

  290 Jackie was her “teen idol”: Gladys Knight, Between Each Line of Pain and Glory: My Life Story, p. 93; all additional quotes from Gladys Knight are from this source.

  294 she signed a paper relinquishing all rights: The paper was dated July 8, 1959. It was signed by both Barbara, as Barbara Campbell, and Sam Cooke, without the e.

  294 at last nearing a resolution of his legal problems: Documents and memoranda, Specialty archives.

  294 Bumps . . . was to receive $10,038.70: Agreement between Specialty Records and Robert A. Blackwell, October 15, 1959.

  295 “a new idea in entertainment programming”: This “new idea” was written up in “Soundtrack with ‘Chazz’ Crawford,” California Eagle, June 25 and September 24, 1959.

  296 he had yet to receive even a statement: From the lawsuit filed as B. Wolf v. Rex Productions, Inc., No. 732700, California Superior Court, October 19, 1959. All subsequent information on Sam’s claims, and Keen/Rex’s response, stems from these records.

  296 anything against the Siamases: J.W. always referred to John Siamas as “an honest fellow.”

  296 “We should talk to them about recording”: The story here is the way J.W. always told it. Leroy Crume’s version is similar but somewhat more dramatic. Suffice it to say that in Crume’s version Vee Jay offered the Soul Stirrers a $10,000 signing bonus, and the group was very much leaning toward that offer when Sam flew in to Atlanta to present his case. He balked, however, at speaking with the entire group, leaving that to Crume. In the end the result was the same.

  297 “Recipients of letters . . . written on good stationery”: Walter E. Hurst and William Storm Hale, The Music Industry Book, p. 3143.

  297 The label was called SAR: J.W. credited Barbara with persuading Sam to drop the idea of including the others when they didn’t pitch in. Interestingly, when the business was incorporated, on March 9, 1960, it was stipulated in the incorporation papers that stock could be sold or transferred only to Charles, Clif, or Jess Rand, in addition to the three principals.

  300 “James W. Alexander,” wrote Walter Hurst: Hurst, The Music Industry Book, pp. 3111, 3115.

  300 a quick visit to New York: Little Anthony recounted how he had been using “a [set] closer with a gospel feel [and] George Goldner told me to put some lyrics to it,” in Dennis Garvey, “Little Anthony and the Imperials,” Goldmine, April 15, 1995. It was Goldner, said Anthony, who “sent over” Sam Cooke, because of the success that the Flamingos, another of Goldner’s acts, had had with Sam’s “Nobody Loves Me Like You.”

  302 he had been in Reno with Sammy Davis Jr.: Barbara recalled it as Las Vegas, but Sammy Davis Jr. played Mapes Casino in Reno from ca. August 26 to September 7.

  302 his “pleasing and relaxed manner”: Variety, July 8, 1959.

  302 “You have to be more than just a straight singer”: Variety, September 23, 1959. J.W. recalled this as the one time that Sam employed his full tap routine.

  303 “one of the brightest and best-paced reviews”: Variety, September 30, 1959.

  303 The wedding on Sunday: I’m not sure if Sonny Vincent is the same as Sonny Benson, who is mentioned in the October 18, 1958, Defender story on Sam by Ernestine Cofield, “Close Look at Sam Cooke: From ‘Rags to Riches’ Story of Young Chi Club Singer.” L.C. Cooke says that Sonny Vincent was Sam’s friend but Duck was best man. The photo in Sepia, January 1960, shows Crain as best man. Barbara and her twin sister, Beverly, debated the guest list to no conclusion in my interviews with them. But I can say with assurance that other than myself no one much cared who the official best man actually was.

  305 a four-star review: Billboard, November 2, 1959.

  305 Alan Freed even played “Stand By Me Father”: “On November 27, 1959, Alan Freed vanished from New York’s airwaves,” John Jackson wrote in Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, p. 260. Like nearly everything J.W. told me in our initial interviews over twenty years ago, when I had no real idea of what he was talking about, this checked out almost perfectly to the day.

  305 his first dramatic role: Davis appeared in “Auf Wiedersehen,” on the General Electric Theater, in 1958, according to Donald Bogle, Prime Time Blues: African Americans on Network Television. He subsequently appeared in “Mission,” a drama about the Buffalo Soldiers, which aired on Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater at just about this time, according to Bogle.

  306 so he could rehearse with Sammy: All of the details in this account are from my interviews with Jess Rand. The Atlanta Daily World, November 8, 1959, reported that Sammy was rehearsing for his new dramatic role while playing the Sands. He headlined at the Sands from November 4 to 24.

  306 the harsh realities of show-business segregation: See “Las Vegas—The Swingingest City,” Sepia, December 1960, and Wil Haygood, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., p. 303. Las Vegas was finally desegregated in March 1960 in the aftermath of the filming of the first Ocean’s 11 (starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.) at the Sands. The Sinatra-led Rat Pack undoubtedly played a role, with the Sands, partially owned by Sinatra, the first casino to end its segregated practices in the face of a publicity campaign led by Dr. James B. McMillan, the city’s only black dentist, and Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. The other casinos continued to hold out until March 25, the day before the first threatened demonstration. It was at this point that desegregation was generally declared under an agreement signed at the Moulin Rouge and subsequently referred to as the Moulin Rouge Agreement.

  306 Hugo and Luigi . . . had been hired by RCA: “Victor A.&R. Policy Beams ‘Open Door,’” Billboard, March 2, 1959.

  307 he had been treated with racial condescension: Clyde Otis, Clyde McPhatter’s friend and producer, and one of the only black record executives at the time, said of Clyde’s views: “It was his militancy that made him have problems with Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Their perception of him was different than the way he wanted to be perceived” (Colin Escott, Clyde McPhatter: A Biographical Essay, p. 33). When I asked Ahmet Ertegun about this, he ascribed Clyde’s views to eccentricity and “paranoia.”

  30
8 “for quick commercial consumption”: Cash Box, October 10, 1959.

  308 Siamas agreed to pay Sam a lump sum: Court documents, B. Wolf v. Rex Productions, Inc., as above.

  308 he had decided to do without . . . William Morris: Sam’s resentment of William Morris was vividly recalled by Jess Rand and Sam’s brothers. Dick Alen, the Universal Attractions agent to whom much of the William Morris booking was farmed out, recognized that sometimes “Sam and Crain would just book themselves. We cared and didn’t care. You look the other way.”

  309 he would be touring with L.C.: Jet, November 5, 1959.

  310 Sam gladly lent his name: Atlanta Daily World, December 6, 1959.

  310 the crowd went wild: Paul Foster referred to this in his interview with Lee Hildebrand as “a cheerful welcome.” Crume spoke extensively of Sam’s continued popularity with the gospel crowd and of the many times he appeared with the group both to help them out and for his own satisfaction. In fact, it became such a commonplace occurrence that the group felt let down when Sam refused to join them onstage at the Met in Philadelphia not long after the Atlanta program—but Sam said he would just watch from the wings, it was time for them to do it on their own.

  310 a Frank Interlandi work called Suffragettes: Sam continued his art collecting and extended his collection of Interlandis. His sister Mary referred to his having acquired a third “Indrisano” painting in an ANP item that ran in various weeklies toward the end of October 1960. You can see Sam’s wall of paintings in pictures of both the Leimert Park apartment and the house in Los Feliz that he and Barbara later moved into. He remained an enthusiastic art collector, Barbara said, visiting the Beverly Hills art galleries frequently whenever he was at home.

  311 Mary . . . came out at Sam’s expense: The Carolinian, September 26, 1959, January 2, 1960.

  313 he sent out a card: Jess Rand kindly made a copy of the card for me.

  HAVING FUN IN THE RECORD BUSINESS

  315 The two cousins sat facing each other: I should say that virtually my entire account of Hugo and Luigi’s colorful, and long-lived, partnership is based on my interviews with Luigi Creatore alone, due to Hugo Peretti’s death in 1986. The only interview with Peretti of which I’m aware appears in Gerri Hirshey’s 1984 Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, and, in the broadest terms, certainly, it can be said to echo Luigi’s account—but I wish I were able to supply something of Hugo’s independent voice. Session tapes bear out his integral role in the New York sessions and his absence from the Los Angeles one.

  316 “The Great Creatore”: Professor Harold Hill, the rascally hero of the musical comedy The Music Man, recalls that memorable day when “the Great Creatore, W. C. Handy, and John Philip Sousa all came to town,” in his signature number, “76 Trombones.”

  319 “Chain Gang” stemmed from a very specific scene that Sam and Charles had witnessed: The November 10, 1960, Jet refers to Sam having “collaborated with his brother Charles” to write the song. As to its hybrid style, in “Recipe for Success,” an article under his own name in the 1962 Radio Luxembourg Book of Radio Stars, Sam writes that “Chain Gang” was “a typical example of my retention of the spiritual style of singing.”

  322 Kylo showed up in a state of such insobriety: J.W. spoke to me often about Kylo Turner, both his talent and his insufficiencies, and I listened to one of the instrumental tracks, “Wildest Girl in Town,” on which Kylo did overdub a vocal. Daniel Wolff, too, describes how “impressed” Johnnie was with the string section in Daniel Wolff with S. R. Crain, Clifton White, and G. David Tenenbaum, You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, p. 225.

  322 Sam ran into Johnnie Morisette: Nearly all the biographical material, and all of the quotes, are from Tim Schuller, “The Johnnie ‘Two-Voice’ Story: Johnnie Morisette,” Living Blues 49, winter 1980-81. See also Opal Louis Nations, “Superman: The Johnnie Morisette Story,” Rock & Blues News, October-November 2000.

  323 “Under the Personal Supervision of Sam Cooke”: I have taken a bit of poetic license here. This credit is on Kylo Turner SAR 102, but Johnnie’s single, when it came out two release numbers later, simply said “Produced by Sam Cooke and J.W. Alexander.” I’m not sure what the credit for the Soul Stirrers record in between was, because I’ve never seen it.

  324 a full-page ad in Billboard: Billboard, February 15, 1960.

  324 another lawsuit against the Siamases: B. Wolf v. Rex Productions, Inc., No. 741782, California Superior Court, March 16, 1960.

  327 a “hot dispute with [the] dance managers”: Paul C. McGee, “Auto Crash Kills Rock-Roll Ace,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 18, 1960. See also “The Strange Flaming Death of Jesse Belvin,” Sepia, June 1960.

  327 “Did Racism Kill Jesse?”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 5, 1960.

  327 “They try to knock us down”: The Carolinian, April 2, 1960, et al. (ANP syndication).

  327 nineteen-year-old drummer Leo Morris: Morris is today the noted jazz musician Idris Muhammad.

  332 “Being on a major boulevard . . . made this a good address”: Walter E. Hurst and William Storm Hale, The Music Industry Book, p. 3142.

  332 unless he was on the road: The California Eagle, July 7, 1960, for example, made a point of informing its readers that J.W. Alexander was just back “from the east.”

  332 going pop just after her eighteenth birthday: Norfolk Journal and Guide, February 27, 1960. J.W. spoke a great deal about Aretha and Sam. So did Sam’s brothers L.C. and Charles. Aretha herself appeared to be under the misconception that Sam was trying to get her to sign with RCA—or perhaps this is just a distortion of memory fostered by Columbia executive John Hammond’s belief at the time. “I had been told . . . that Sam Cooke was determined to sign Aretha to RCA Victor,” Hammond wrote in his autobiography with Irving Townsend, John Hammond on Record, p. 348. The result, he said, was that he “signed her quick.” But there is no question that when Sam and J.W. thought about signing Aretha, it was to their own label, SAR.

  332 “Crain lived in Chicago”: Hurst, The Music Industry Book, pp. 3116-3117.

  333 “a spoiled little brat”: Etta James and David Ritz, Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story, p. 64.

  333 “like a little kid playing grown-up”: Hirshey, Nowhere to Run, p. 102.

  334 the “chain of devilment”: “Little Willie John Grows Up,” Tan, February 1961.

  335 Little Willie John was a gambling fool: In addition to his sister’s more circumspect testimony, everyone spoke of Little Willie John’s gambling proclivities, from Charles and L.C. to Billy Davis, Solomon Burke, and Etta James, who wrote in her memoir, Rage to Survive, about Willie terrorizing the tour manager, Nat Margo.

  335 the airport reception that greeted them: Jet, August 11, 1960, as well as Idris Muhammad interview.

  335 “I burn with ambition”: “Boy Singer Makes Good,” New York Journal-American, August 5, 1960.

  337 the violence “that gave Negro concerts black eyes”: Elgin Hychew, “Dig Me! . . . ,” Louisiana Weekly, August 13, 1960.

  337 a direct ban on all rock ’n’ roll revues: Marcel Hopson, “2 Wounded in Wild Shooting Spree at City Auditorium,” Birmingham World, July 20, 1960.

  337 “The commotion started”: “Jazz Concert Ends on Near-Riot Kick,” Louisiana Weekly, July 23, 1960.

  337 these “young people . . . who are willing to risk verbal abuse”: “Clyde Hails Young Freedom-Seekers,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 9, 1960.

  338 “plans had been made to run a rope”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, August 27, 1960.

  338 “The SAM COOKE crowd . . . did not fully dig”: Elgin Hychew, “Dig Me! . . . ,” Louisiana Weekly, August 13, 1960.

  340 Johnnie Taylor got into an automobile accident: Paul Foster told a somewhat different story to Lee Hildebrand, which involved Johnnie getting busted for smoking dope at the Evans Hotel as well as the automobile accident.

  340 he preached his first sermon at Fellowship Baptist: Lee Hildebrand liner notes to the three-CD set Joh
nnie Taylor: Lifetime (Stax 4432); Paul Foster, in his 1984 interview with Hildebrand, recalled Taylor’s first sermon, in Shreveport, while he was still on the road with the Stirrers. “He worshiped his Book,” Foster said.

  340 “The Reverend Johnnie Taylor (Formerly with the Soul Stirrers)”: Atlanta Daily World, September 4, 1960.

  340 Paul Foster took over the lead: Foster spoke of this in his 1981 interview with Ray Funk. According to him, someone named “Felt” replaced Johnnie Taylor for a minute. This may well be the same person that Crume referred to as the “little Holiness guy.”

  340 Sam had an audition set up: Joe Ligon, like June Cheeks, is a little hard to figure for the Soul Stirrers sound. He was, and remains, a hard singer. In any case, his group, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, had its first Peacock Records session within a month and achieved stardom within a couple of years, becoming one of the biggest and most emotionally riveting quartets from the sixties to the present day.

  341 “Well, we was at the Shrine”: J.W. remembered it as the Olympic.

  345 at once “relaxed and hectic”: “Sam Still Cookin’ on New RCA Victor Album,” Michigan Chronicle, April 1, 1961.

  346 where he had fucked up: Leo has continued to think to this day that it was Clif White who wanted him out. No one else I spoke to would venture an explanation.

  347 Cassius Clay . . . jumped up onstage: Louisville Defender, September 29, 1960. Everyone remembers meeting Clay around this time—Sam’s brothers, June Gardner, Lloyd Price, Billy Davis, Leroy Crume, and Norman Thrasher, to name a few—and everyone remembers him as a good, eager kid.

  348 “Sam was in and out”: Harry Bacas, “Top Tunes—‘Sad Mood,’” Washington Sunday Star, n.d.

  349 “All people are alike to us”: James Booker, “‘We Are All Brothers’ (Exclusive): Castro Talks,” Amsterdam News, September 24, 1960.

  351 It was midnight when he arrived: François Postif, “New York in Jazz Time,” Le Jazz Hot, December 1960. The translation is mine, with much help from Ellen Mandel. I should point out, too, that the explicit description of miming masturbation (to which Postif alludes only with reference to its “disgusting” nature), stems from my own observation of the act three or four years later, and my checking with Hank Ballard about it.