Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke was one of the most important soul singers in history -- he was the inventor of soul music. Cooke was one of the most popular performers in both the black and white communities. He was also among the first modern black performers and composers to venture into the business side of the music business, when he founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as an addition to being a singer and composer. Like many artist before him Cooke tackled issues including the struggle over civil rights. Some may even say the intensity of which followed an arc that paralleled Cooke's emergence as a star -- his own career bridged gaps between black and white audiences that few had tried to surmount, much less succeeded at doing, and also between generations; where Chuck Berry or Little Richard brought black and white teenagers together, James Brown sold records to white teenagers and black listeners of all ages, and Muddy Waters got young white folks and older black transplants from the South onto the same page, Cooke appealed to all of the above, and the parents of those white teenagers as well -- yet he never lost his credibility with his core black audience.
In a sense, his appeal mirrored that of the Beatles, in breadth and depth. Sam Cook was born in Clarksdale, MS, on January 22, 1931, one of eight children of a Baptist minister and his wife. Even as a young boy, he showed an extraordinary voice and frequently sang in the choir in his father's church. During the middle of the decade, the Cook family moved to Chicago's South Side, where the Reverend Charles Cook quickly established himself as a major figure in the religious community. Sam and three of his siblings also formed a group of their own, the Singing Children, in the 1930s. Although his own singing was confined to gospel music, he was aware and appreciative of the popular music of the period, particularly the harmony-based sounds of the Ink Spots, whose influence could