Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke (29 page)

His own composition “You Were Made For Me” was a poem of which he was justifiably proud. “A fish was made to swim in the ocean,” he begins. “A boat was made to sail on the sea / As sure as there’s a God above / I know you were made for me.” It is plain, it is simple, it is deeply felt. “Darling, we’ll have our quarrels / And you will upset me / But what can I do?” he declares in the bridge, which he voices not once but twice, just as in the Bill Cook song.

You’ve been mine

Ever since I met you

And I’ll never leave you

Who is he thinking of? Does he have anyone special in mind? There is a quiet note here, there is no showing off. Any girl who heard the song might think he was singing to her, but he is singing from somewhere deep down inside; just as with the greatest of his gospel songs, it is his directness of communication, not the tricks of his style, that are the key to his appeal.

It’s hard to say why this and the Bill Cook number were not further explored, even as other, less distinguished material was being focused on. But the three-hour session proved a point, and while the setting might have been more sympathetic (“Forever,” with its unbilled sax solo by Red Tyler, could almost have stood in for a Fats Domino number as interpreted by Sam), the approach better thought-out, in the end they had what they had come for, and Sam had finally done what he had known he was meant to do all along.

From there he flew to New York as planned, where the Soul Stirrers were once again headlining a somewhat truncated lineup that included the Davis Sisters, the Gospel Harmonettes, and the Harmonizing Four, featuring the spectacular lead bass voice of Jimmy Jones. With the addition of Alex Bradford, still riding the wave of success that had begun a year earlier with “Too Close,” the booking was extended through Christmas, and Dolores and her son, Joey, joined Sam in New York. But the marriage was dying; Dolores showed increasing signs of dissatisfaction and depression; and Sam was about to become a father again, as Connie Bolling, a slender, light-skinned girl he had met in Philadelphia through Crain’s girlfriend, Joyce, was due to give birth in early January.

Bill Cook was jubilant as he and Sam talked about the New Orleans session. He couldn’t wait to hear the tapes, he said, but from everything Sam had told him, it sounded as if he and Bumps had achieved the objective they had all been talking and dreaming about for so long. Cook agreed they might really have hit pay dirt with “Lovable,” which Bumps was referring to as a potential “moneydripper.” All he wanted now, as Sam’s manager in the pop field, was to have a chance to start doing his job, to begin promoting Sam the same way he had promoted Roy—and, he was certain, with the same results.

Meanwhile, L.C. had just played Memphis with the Magnificents, the group that the Chicago DJ Magnificent Montague had promoted and produced for Vee Jay Records. Their first number, “Up On the Mountain,” had been a Top 10 r&b hit that summer, and L.C. had joined when Thurman Ramsey, one of the group’s original members, was drafted several months later. They drove down to Memphis in the Spaniels’ green 1956 Mercury station wagon (the Spaniels, who now included Sam and L.C.’s boyhood singing partner James “Dimples” Cochran, were still riding high from their 1954 doo-wop standard, “Goodnite Sweetheart, Goodnite”) and were somewhat disconcerted by their first trip to the South. But nothing was so strange to them as the show on which they performed, Memphis’ all-colored radio station WDIA’s
Goodwill Revue.
Ray Charles and B.B. King were the headliners, but that rock ’n’ roll singer Elvis Presley, who was getting so much attention, also showed up at the Ellis Auditorium, and the crowd went wild when he was introduced—in fact, that was the end of the show. WDIA announcer Nat D. Williams, the show’s organizer and compere and a frequent contributor to the black press, posed the question in his regular column in the
Pittsburgh Courier
: “How come cullud girls would take on so over a Memphis white boy when they hardly let out a squeak over B.B. King, a Memphis cullud boy?” And answered it with another question as to whether “these teenage girls’ demonstration over Presley doesn’t reflect a basic integration in attitude and aspiration which has been festering in the minds of most of your folks’ women-folk all along. Hunh??”

But perhaps even more astonishing to L.C. was what appeared to be Presley’s own unexpectedly democratic attitude. As he did with every other colored performer backstage, Elvis treated the Magnificents with considerable respect (“I’ve got all of your records—‘Up On the Mountain’ and the other side,” he told leader Johnny Keyes with disarming humor), but once he heard L.C.’s name, “he shook my hand and told me he loved my brother—he knew his gospel music—and he talked to me for about twenty minutes about Sam.” It was just one more proof, if proof was needed, of “the basic integration in attitude” that was overtaking them all.

“D
EAR ART,” BILL COOK WROTE
to the Specialty label head in a handwritten letter dated January 6, 1957, but not mailed until eight days later. “Sam was describing the session to me and it sounded like you might have captured the thing that we were looking for.” Sam had told him to expect tapes or acetates sometime after the first, which was why he was writing now, because “I’d like to hear them.” He was delighted to learn of “the new version of ‘Wonderful’ which is something I’d submitted to him here. I’m glad he did it. It should be great. . . .
I’d like to know what your opinion of the new songs and versions by Sam are.
[Also] please advise me as soon as possible if and when you plan a release date on Sam so I can start some D.J. contacts.”

“Hi Bill,” Bumps responded in a neatly typed reply that was dictated to a secretary and furnished both his company affiliation, “SPECIALTY RECORDS,” and his full name, “Robert A. Blackwell,” in the spaces above and below his signature. By now, he wrote, Bill should have the acetate of what Specialty was proposing as Sam’s initial release, which, Bumps felt, “will make a good introduction for Sam. Altho I know we can and will do a better job on our next release—with stronger material.

Sam is definitely a modern Morton Downey [the Irish tenor from the thirties who specialized in sentimental songs and was known as “the man with the choirboy’s (voice)”] and concentrating commercially with this in mind, and securing OLD DOWNEY HIT MATERIAL etc., with today’s POP treatment, should bring Sam to the front—with both the teenagers and housewives.

Sam should also be concentrating on a better and stronger follow-up record, with stronger material. I am also looking and filing away what I feel Sam can do. I would like to know Sam’s availability, and will be back in New Orleans (tentatively) around the 1st of February.

The release date has not been set on the record—but it will be soon—within three or four weeks.

Musically yours

There is no record of Bill Cook’s reaction, but J.W. by now had lost almost all faith in both Art and the record company. “Dear Mr. Rupe,” he wrote from Detroit, on January 22, in a pained lapse into formal expression, “I really hate to make myself a nuisance but things have been going very poor for my group.” They had not worked more than 30 percent of their usual schedule, and “it definitely is not because [lead singer Kylo] Turner isn’t with us.” What they needed, said Alex, was a new release to promote their personal appearances, since in this business “everything is tied together [and] if you miss on one, you’ll hit on the other. [In any case] the group would certainly appreciate your consideration and suggestions on how to better our situation very much.”

He may have regretted asking the question, because on January 24 Art wrote to him care of Newark gospel promoter Ronnie Williams and unloaded feelings that must have been festering for some time. “Here are the facts of life as they exist and you might as well face up to it,” Rupe declared with little regard for the social niceties.

(1) You are not acceptable as the lead singer and should forget about singing lead—particularly on records.

(2) Turner is most definitely missed and many promoters refused to even book you without Turner. As a matter of fact some promoters who have played you without Turner refuse to have you back because they feel they were gypped and you don’t draw without him.

The solution, Art concluded, was obvious: “Either get Turner back and make some good records or do it the hard way with a new lead singer like the Stirrers did with Sam Cook when he first joined them. We have released more records on you, Alex, than on any artist and frankly we do not have anything on the shelf at the moment good enough to do you any good. Hoping that you appreciate the honesty of this letter, I am, Yours very sincerely . . . ”

“It was very kind of you to take time out to answer my letter,” Alex replied with even more strained politeness, rebutting Art’s points one by one and suggesting that if Herald Attractions would release him from his booking contract, he could perhaps do better on his own. He pointed out, too, as he had in his last letter, that “I have a very good [young] lead singer and some very good material.

But if you feel that the group is no longer any service to you, please let me know. . . . Please remember Art that my loyalty and personal feeling for you is definitely the reason that I didn’t always operate on the best business principles with you. The fellows would like to know. Please let me know by return mail.

What hurt even more was the knowledge that Bumps, who could have been an effective ally and whose own agenda Alex had always helped to advance, whatever his personal reservations, had stabbed him in the back and was even now trying to lure Turner into signing a solo contract. (“Sam Cook’s release in the other field will be going out soon,” Bumps wrote to Kylo on January 4. “I am interested in recording you—POP or otherwise—depending on material.”) But Bumps, he had long ago concluded, was a lost cause; Bumps looked out only for himself—and even in that regard, Alex felt, he had a limited perspective.

Ironically, Art had no more faith in his number-one employee, who, he was increasingly coming to believe, was not so much malevolent as “just dumb and naive.” He had checked up on Bumps’ credentials in September and discovered no record of degree credits at either of the schools he had claimed to attend. He had stated emphatically in his notes for Bumps’ new contract of five months earlier that Bumps would “personal manage
only those I approve
—will drop all others [including Little Richard],” and that his 5 percent management fee on Art’s preapproved list would be split fifty-fifty between the two of them. But this was just to protect himself from Bumps’ overreaching. For all of his doubts about Bumps, they continued to share a similar vision of the future, and Bumps, despite his transparent scheming, remained surprisingly malleable to the stringent demands of a boss he continued to call “Pappy.”

In fact, if Art mistrusted anyone, it was Sam Cook, who was clearly playing both ends against the middle with Bumps, Bill Cook, Crain, and, for all Art knew, even poor old Alex. He had observed Cook closely from the beginning, and he had never had the feeling for him that he had had for Crain or Alex or even Alex Bradford, whose inventive attempts to take advantage of his employer amused Art as much as they annoyed him. Other artists like Brother Joe May might blow up over one vexed issue or another, but Art, a nonbeliever, had always been able to palliate them with bromides about their all being “creatures of the Creator [with no] barrier of me being the boss or of us being of different shades of skin.” Or reassure Brother Joe that since “you know that we are in your corner, and we know that you are in ours,” they should both be patient and “wait for the success and rewards that God intended for both of us.” Even Alex, who prided himself on his business acumen, always folded when enough patient pressure was applied. But Sam gave away very little of what he was thinking, he was “an intense guy, and he gave the impression of being a little bit cocky, very sure of himself. Prove it! You gotta show him.” When you talked to him, “he didn’t give an appearance of being nervous . . . he’d really listen and look like he was taking in impressions with his pores as well as with his eyes and ears.” He was, Art felt, a genuine “enigma. He had two sides, his talent and his character.” And given how little of himself Sam ever revealed in his dealings with more experienced colleagues and mentors, the Specialty Records boss had genuine misgivings about the latter. But “his talent was unique and unusual,” and as a businessman with confidence in his own unique and unusual qualities, Art felt he had little choice but to forge ahead.

The Soul Stirrers had misgivings of their own. Crain was concerned about the group’s dwindling record sales, and by now he was well aware of Sam’s pop session, so when Sam started lobbying for an Imperial LeBaron, the new luxury model with the decorative spare on the back, he was understandably reluctant to jump right on his lead singer’s request. “It was the first year they put it out,” Crume said. “It was different than any car on the street, and Sam fell in love with that car, he wanted it in eggshell-white.”

The other Soul Stirrers were no more sanguine about Sam than Crain at this point. They had all seen him hanging around with Bill Cook, and Tony Williams of the Platters appeared to be offering him plenty of advice. But they all tiptoed around the subject until R.B. Robinson brought it up in a group meeting. “Now, Sam,” he said, “if you’re going to stay with us, we can do it. But if you’re not going to be here, man, you know those are big-time car notes —” But Sam just said, “Hey, man, I ain’t going nowhere. Where am I going?” So they got the car, and many nights Sam got to keep it, and he would come by Crume’s house, “and he would say, ‘Hey, man, let’s go for a ride.’ Just to show off. He’d say, ‘I’ll tell you what. Today you be the chauffeur, man, and tomorrow I’ll drive for you.’ And we’d drive down State Street, wouldn’t talk to anybody, just wanted to be seen.”