The Retro Blog

Born in Mississippi in 1931 to a Baptist minister, Sam Cook had a pretty good gospel singing career going by the time he hit his teenage years. By the mid 50s, his record label was pressuring him to release pop songs to broaden his fan base. He released a song called “Lovable” under an alias, Dale Cooke, but his easily recognizable voice gave him away to his gospel fans, many of whom felt betrayed. He was booted from his gospel group, but it probably didn’t matter much because in 1957 he released “You Send Me” which made is to number one on the Billboard charts. Here he is awkwardly lip singing the song to a bunch of white teenagers:

On December 11, 1964, Cooke met a woman named Elisa Boyer at a club in LA. They went to a motel and at some point Boyer ditched him, taking most of his clothes with her. She later called the police, claiming she had escaped after being kidnapped by Cooke. An enraged Cooke thought Boyer was hiding in the motel office so, still half naked, he broke in and after a struggle was shot dead by the motel owner, Bertha Franklin. It was ruled a justifiable homicide, but many people still want the case reopened. Elisa Boyer’s story was called into question as it was found that she had likely robbed Cooke. Her reliability took a blow when she was later arrested on prostitution charges. A fringe group of people (that weirdly includes Etta James) believed that there was a conspiracy to kill Cooke, although no evidence to support this has been found.

Sam Cooke had one final hit, though, and it was to become on of the most memorable songs of the Civil Rights movement. “A Change is Gonna Come” was performed on the Tonight Show, but the tape was destroyed and thus it seems that footage of Cooke performing the song is hard to come by. The song is still popular, and was quoted by President Obama in his victory speech.