Aural Fixations

SAM COOKE
Night Beat
One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club
The Best of Sam Cooke
(RCA/Legacy)
Sam Cooke is largely credited as the man who invented soul music. While that's a challengable claim (by Cooke fan Ray Charles, for one), the former gospel singer and pop icon is certainly one of the heavyweight pioneers. From the late 50s to his untimely death in the early 60s, few could touch Cooke when it came to emitting singles that hit the perfect midpoint between raw R&B and sweet pop. He's retained considerable acclaim for his songwriting and production skills, but his greatest legacy remains his incredible voice. He could wail with the best of them, but what made him special was his taste—he hit just the right notes in just the right way with just the right amount of feeling, avoiding histrionics and blandness both. He's been a huge influence on subsequent R&B and pop vocalists, from Otis Redding to Rod Stewart to even Steve Perry (who seems to have missed the "taste" part). In his heyday, Cooke was called Mr. Soul, and there are damn good reasons for such an all-encompassing moniker.

What's remarkable about Cooke's career is that its high point broke the rules he'd set for himself. Originally released in 1963, Night Beat wasn't merely a batch of singles plus album filler. (Indeed, it spawned no hit singles at all.) It was a concept album, not one with a storyline, but one that deliberately sustained a mood, in the tradition of Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely. A particular inspiration was singer/pianist Charles Brown, whose late-night vibe and smooth, jazzy blues Cooke emulates here. Also, while Cooke was well-known for writing nearly all his material, on this record his pen took a back seat to the talents of others, including five Brown tunes ("Trouble Blues," "Fool's Paradise," "I Lost Everything," "Please Don't Drive Me Away," "Get Yourself Another Fool"), a pair of gospel standards ("You've Gotta Move," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen") and a couple of well-known blues (Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll," Howlin' Wolf's "Little Red Rooster"). Two Cooke originals (the bluesy "Laughin' and Clownin'," his Soul Stirrers standard "Mean Old World") and the haunted "Lost and Lookin'," written for Cooke by a couple of friends, round out a stellar program. Basing the arrangements around Ray Johnson's piano and the organ of a young Billy Preston, eschewing strings and backing vocalists, Cooke constructs a moody masterpiece of yearning, melancholy soul, paying deserved tribute to Brown while updating and expanding on his approach. Of course, it's beautifully sung. Legacy's reissue doesn't add any bonus tracks, as everything Cooke recorded for the project made it onto vinyl. Besides, the timeless, transcendent Night Beat needs no frills to be relevant in any era. [buy it]

In addition to Night Beat, Legacy also puts fresh coats of paint on a pair of more retrospective releases. 1963's One Night Stand! Live at the Harlem Square Club showcases Mr. Soul in the titular club, working the crowd like the master showman he was. Bearing a mix of hits and lesser-known sides ("Nothing Can Change This Love," "Feel It [Don't Fight It]"), Cooke exhorts the crowd to a frenzy, roughening up his voice in a way that will sound very familiar to Otis Redding fans. The Best of Sam Cooke is exactly what's advertised: a collection of the man's greatest hits. Though the disk has only 15 songs (the original twelve, plus three bonus cuts), they're great ones, from "You Send Me" and "(What a) Wonderful World" to "Chain Gang," "Cupid" and "Bring It On Home to Me." (The only thing missing is "A Change is Gonna Come," which wasn't around when the record originally came out, but inexplicably wasn't added as a bonus track.) There are more comprehensive collections around, but this is both a solid starting pack and a nigh-peerless batch of hit singles that not even endless repetition on oldies radio can kill. Michael Toland [buy One Night Stand!] [buy The Best of]