THE LANDMARK TRACK ON THE ALBUM IS YOU
SEND ME. RELEASED IN 1957, IT WENT ON TO
SHIFT NEARLY TWO MILLION COPIES.Cooke in pensive mood at
RCA Studio in Los AngelesSongbook and weave interpretations that
stacked up against old masters such as
Frank Sinatra. Handsome and classy, he
loved Nat King Cole and could croon with
the best of them. As Ray Charles said of his
singing, “Nobody else came close”.BORN IN CLARKSDALE,
MISSISSIPPI in 1931, as the son of
a preacher who soon after his birth had
moved the family to Chicago, Cooke sang
gospel with his brothers and sisters in an
ensemble called The Singing Children from
a young age. He then performed in teenage
gospel group the Highway Q.C.’s, before
joining one of the greatest of all post-war
gospel acts, The Soul Stirrers, replacing
the incendiary shouter RH Harris. Yet
Cooke was never a shouter of gospel, or
any other kind of music. As he wrote in
the sleevenotes of his 1959 album of Billie
Holiday songs Tribute To The Lady: “Even
as I was singing exclusively in church, I was
listening to all of the pop singers, and Billie
Holiday moved me the most.”Cooke was never really a classic album
man, and Hit Kit was just a speedily
assembled selection of singles, half of
them self-penned, that the Keen label put
together as their star artist was heading
out of the door to join RCA in 1959. It’s
a worthy timepiece, however, showcasing
the unfailing beauty of Cooke’s voice, his
ear for melody, and an ability to write songs
with simple, catchy hooks. It’s a well-paced
assortment, too, bearing testimony to the
way Cooke was able to imbue great variety
into his material, avoiding the formulaic
even when at his most commercial. The
only regret is that Wonderful World, one of
his best-remembered and biggest-selling
singles, is absent from the LP, as it was
released after his departure from Keen.
While most of the songs on Hit Kit
sold well at the time, within a decade they
were being written off as tame, the impact
of Cooke’s marvellous voice softened by
tepid arrangements. So it’s important
to remember that while the cooing backing
vocals were distinctly MOR, they servedto frame the melodies brilliantly, and that
it was Cooke’s choice to deploy them. And
while he emoted far less on these songs
than he had done on his earlier gospel
recordings, the tracks show how skilfully he
deployed the stylings he’d used in that fi eld
to telling eff ect on pop soul.
The landmark track on the album is
You Send Me; released as a single in 1957,
it went on to shift nearly two million
copies. It was the song which eff ectively
launched Keen Records, with Cooke having
previously been signed to Specialty as a
member of The Soul Stirrers. It was while
at Specialty that he’d trialled being a solo
artist singing secular material, under the
alias Dale Cook, with the release of Lovable,
a reworking of gospel number He’s So
Wonderful. There was no disguising that
incredible voice, however, and there had
been a lot of anger in the gospel community,
who believed it profane to sing about
earthly relationships. Even though Lovable
had fl opped, Cooke headed back into the
studio for another go. However, when
Specialty boss Art Rupe, a fi rm believer
in gospel and more hard-hitting R&B,
walked into the session and found Cooke
had assembled a white vocal ensemble, the
Lee Gotch Singers, to support him on Yo u JESSRA
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