Sam Cooke - Morning Listening

Listening to the Sam Cooke 4 CD box set compilation Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul. This album is nearly four and half hours of music. I have always loved the smooth singing voice sound of Sam Cooke. 

So many great songs that are embedded in my radio memory as a young person discovering music in the late 50's and early 60's. A lot of my early music memories were driven by our Aunt Dot our teenaged babysitter when we were little kids. She was always listening to music.

Later I discovered Sam Cooke for myself and realized how many of his biggest hits he had written himself.

I liked that he could do the crossover thing and have a huge white audience but he could also do the black R&B soul music like no other artists. The two live albums really put that into

focus. Live at the Copa from 1964 was Cooke singing well but the music was the lamest kind of soul, soulless actually while playing to a rich supper-club crowd of white people. Then there is the awesome and arguably one of the best live albums ever Live at the Harlem Square Club released in 1985.

Great music.

Sadly his tragic death has been shrouded in speculation, misinformation, conspiracy theories and of course Southern racism.