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Drawing on his love of both Billie Holiday and
Nat King Cole, Cooke’s intimate vocal style lit
up a wealth of crossover gospel and pop hitsBOX OF DELIGHTS
To mark the 90th anniversary of Sam Cooke’s birth, ABKCO have released Sam Cooke: The
Complete Keen Years (1957-1960), a 5CD boxset that includes his fi ve originally released
albums on the label, along with session information and an insightful essay by Michael
Corcoran. Cooke’s self-titled Keen debut LP was released in 1958, and included his
interpretations of standards and recent pop hits alongside the inevitable You Send Me.
Encore, which came out the same year, was very much standards territory, while Tribute To
The Lady was a fl awed homage to Billie Holiday, who died the same year. The ABKCO reissue
of Hit Kit here adds eight bonus tracks, though one of the best and biggest of them, the
classic Wonderful World, turns up on The Wonderful World Of Sam Cooke (1960).Send Me, he reacted with fury. As a result,
a severance deal was agreed, with Cooke
leaving Specialty along with his producer
Bumps Blackwell, taking with them the
master tapes of the sessions as part of the
pay-off. You Send Me, released under the
name Sam Cooke on the start-up Keen label,
went on to top both the R&B and pop charts,
and even spent a week on the British charts
at the start of 1958.
You Send Me was the fi rst soul number
to break out of the R&B market and cross
over into the pop fi eld. Cooke’s trademark
“whoa-oh-oh-ah” was an improvisational
technique he’d hit upon while in The Soul
Stirrers when he’d gone for a note that
was too high for his range. This conveyance
of emotional ecstasy was one of the ways in
which he inadvertently created a template
for the many singers of sweet soul who
followed him down the years.
The follow-up single (I Love You) For
Sentimental Reasons had been a No.1 pop
hit for Nat King Cole in 1946. Who else
but Cooke could make a number so closely
associated with an older master ballad
singer sound so distinctly his own? His use
of repetition was quite brilliant, his voice
seeming to fl oat and glide over the melody.
It was rewarded with Top 20 placings on the
Billboard pop and R&B charts.
You Were Made For Me was another
song in the romantic mode. Despite it only
making the Top 30, when interviewed
in 1962 Cooke said it was his personal
favourite among all of his songs. On the
fl ipside, and also making the Top 30, was
Lonely Island, which had a restlessly loping,
somewhat bluesy vibe. Keeping the Cole
connection going, it was penned by the
eccentric, mystical Eden Ahbez, the writer
of another of Cole’s most memorable songs,
Nature Boy.SOME TIME BEFORE becoming the
king of Tijuana brass, a young Herb Alpert
had started working as an assistant A&R
man at Keen with his friend Lou Adler.
Alpert would later recall the enigmatic
quality of Cooke, and how he had a larger
than life quality about him, a “kind of
stardust” that at the same time “could suck
up all the oxygen in the room”. Alpert and
Adler penned Cooke’s next release, a gentle
ballad titled All Of My Life, which deserved
better than its fate of missing out on the
charts entirely.
Perhaps realising the need for something
more upbeat, Cooke’s self-penned Win YourJESS Love For Me changed gear. By the late
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Hit Kit