WORDS BY B LEE COOPER & JACK WATKINS
SAM COOKE’S TOP 20 SONGS
Music dominated the brief life of Sam Cooke, from his youth singing in church – and as part of the Soul Stirrers gospel vocal group in his early career – to the R&B and proto-soul hitmaking of his maturity, which ended with his death from a gunshot wound, aged just 33. Cooke was one of the supreme vocal stylists – a key influence on sweet soul – and the ease with which he sang enabled him to cross over from the black charts into the white mainstream in a way rougher-edged soulsters like Solomon Burke found difficult. His shrewdness and intelligence enabled him to use his commercial success to exercise more quality control over his material and career direction than many of his black contemporaries, much like Ray Charles. In this, too, he was a trendsetter.