Mr. Cooke

I bought a best of Sam Cooke on Sunday. Quite a few years ago I heard a radio documentary about him on National. Actually, the first Sam Cooke song I heard was Chain gang but it was a cover by a New York reggae guy called Shinehead. I can remember seeing the video on Radio With Pictures and the chorus getting stuck in my head.

Probably my other favourite song by him is Cupid. I love singing that chorus to myself in the shower and imagining I have a voice as sweet as his (sweet, but with a little bit of rough in it).

The song I've been listening to over and over though is A Change is Gonna Come. Everything about the music in this song should make me hate it. Infact, when you hear the opening it almost sounds like Mantovani - all sugary strings and flourish - but it settles straight away to the steady pulse of the bass and the wonderful opening lines:

I was born by the river

In a little tent

Oh, and like the river

I've been running ever since

It's been a long time coming

But a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

And then the lyrics deepen. How hard it is to hear a man, a religious man, say these lines, and know that by the time the song was released he was already dead:

It's been too hard living

But I'm afraid to die

Cause I don't know what's out there

Beyond the sky

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17267529

I don't believe in God myself, but I do believe that people are capable of extraordinary things, and that they can be carried there by inspiration. Without inspiration I have no poetry and no songs, my tongue is dumb and my heart is dull - with it I can sing my little songs. Sam was filled up when he wrote this song; it may have been God, it may have been anger; it may have been love, but he was filled up. We may be food for worms my friends but we can pull beauty out of the wreckage.