Springsteen and the Real 'Boss'

By: Greg Mitchelll Okay, after a few grim weeks dominated by Judy Miller, Jack Murtha and Willie Pete, it?s time to take a little cultural break--newspaper angles be damned--just in time for stocking stuffing season. Fortunately, there?s a new Sam Cooke biography, Townes Van Zandt movie, and re-issue of ?Born to Run? (my only gold record) and Bruce documntary, to talk about.

On Thursday, the media marked the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham civil rights bus boycott and paid special tribute to the woman who sparked it, the late Rosa Parks. To get a handle on Sam Cooke?s standing in the 1960s, consider this: According to the new biography by Peter Guralnick, when Parks heard about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the only way she got through it was by listening to Cooke?s 1964 anthem ?A Change Is Gonna Come,? surely one of the greatest songs of the half-century.

I had my own ?A Change is Gonna Come? epiphany this past June, in a completely different but still haunting context (given the hurricane that followed). During our Interactive Media Conference in New Orleans, I joined a group of colleagues doing the usual: leaving one Brennan?s eatery, where we?d had a few drinks, to head for another for dinner. On some darkened street in the Quarter we came across an elderly doo-wop quartet, in full spiffy dress, singing Sam Cooke?s saccharine ?Wonderful World? for donations. Figuring it was a long shot, I asked if they knew ?A Change Is Gonna Come.?

A grateful smile burst across the bulky lead singer?s face, and he immediately broke into the opening: ?I was born by the river, in a little tent? as the others started doo-wopping behind him, pivoting at times and gesturing.

Three minutes later, I was wrung out, due to the amazing performance and the obvious sincerity of it. The lead singer even included the lyric which was excised from the single: ?I go to the movies/and I go downtown/ somebody keep telling me/don?t hang around.?

When it was over we shook hands on this: Sam Cooke was the greatest singer in our lifetime, bar none. Certainly Jerry Wexler and Ray Charles thought so, and that?s good enough for me. Sam was also the first black record label owner, hung out with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali, and died with his pants off, shot in a seedy motel, all of this and more detailed in Guralnick?s book, which is titled for some reason ?Dream Boogie.? I happen to know Daniel Wolff, the author of the previous fine Cooke bio, "You Send Me" (and coached his son in Little League), but the Guralnick book is twice as elaborate.

Here's one newspaper angle: The book makes wide use of clips from black newspapers in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

But what I?m here to tell you is this: With the exception of ?A Change Is Gonna Come,? Sam Cooke?s greatest work came a decade earlier, before he went pop, with the legendary gospel group, The Soul Stirrers, available now in a must-have 3-CD box set from his old label, Specialty, as well as in various single discs. If a white-ass atheist like me can say that, you know it?s got to be good.

For it not only represents the greatest singing of the greatest singer but represents one of the strongest influences on everything that followed in the R&B, soul, and rock fields. Besides the obvious results?-Aretha, Atlantic, Motown, Stax-Volt, Otis and, ugh, Rod Stewart-?you could also say that Elvis at the start was half Hank Williams and half black gospel and blues.

The unfairly handsome Sam Cooke joined the already-famous Soul Stirrers in 1951 at the age of 20, and on the road it was definitely Lock Up Your Daughters time. He could hit the highs, lick the lows and invigorate the in-betweens like no one else. After six years of that, he left to pursue pop stardom; like Dylan going electric, he earned scorn from old fans. But his future was set with the success of ?You Send Me.?

Happily, he never lost his love for gospel, as shown by his last major song, ?A Change Is Gonna Come.? His epic 1963 live performance of ?Bring It on Home to Me? at a black club in Miami?-captured on the "Harlem Square" album and in a lavish re-enactment at the start of the Will Smith ?Ali? movie?-was drenched in gospel. As Guralnick shows, Sam was returning, haltingly, to his roots just before he died.

The Soul Stirrers? discs will show you why, with performances that range from the merely exciting to the truly chilling, such as on ?Were You There (When They Crucified the Lord)? Some include guitar, organ and/or drums and a few rock nearly as hard as Little Richard (another Sam disciple). An eight-minute performance of ?Nearer to Thee? from 1955 must be one of the great live performances ever committed to disc. And so on.

Well, the above was supposed to be just a section in a multi-part review featuring Bruce ("Born to Run" CD and DVD) and Townes, but I guess I got carried away, and I predict you will too?-even the atheists out there--if you try to get into The Gospel According to Sam.