Sam Cooke The Man Who Invented Soul (RCA)

Sam Cooke

The Man Who Invented Soul (RCA)

Sometimes you can tell a book by its cover. The Man Who Invented Soul, bound in the now-standard 'n' handy 4-CD hardback book configuration, is adorned with a hideously lifeless, thrift store-looking cheap oil painting -- the kind found atop rows and rows of stainless steel bookcases belching 25 cent paperbacks and textbooks at the Goodwill -- of one of the greatest voices to erase the boundaries between gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and popular music: Sam Cooke. On the back, the listing of 96 songs looks like a computer printout for water-heater instructions. Inside, following the smoke-and-mirror liner notes -- cursory at best (why not get expert Cooke biographer Daniel Wolff, who is cited?) -- the same credits, expanded with info like year recorded, chart numbers, and production codes (attention Goldmine bean counters), read like they were designed for an army manual. If you have a microscope, that is. And the booklet design -- strictly bush league: mostly pix from one photo session bolstered by a few duotoned archival postage stamps that could pass for passport pictures. The music, well, the music is pure Sam Cooke, possessed of a singular musical talent that makes his sordid death (gunned down by a woman he is said to have attacked at a motel) in December 1964 at the age of 33 an eternal crime. Born the son of a Pentecostal preacher man in the cradle of American blues and gospel music -- Mississippi -- Cook(e) began singing in churches at an early age, and by the time he was 20 had joined the No. 1 gospel group of the time, the Soul Stirrers. Cooke eventually cut his first pop single in '57, "You Send Me," backed with his inspired arrangement of Gershwin's "Summer Time," and the rest, as they say, is VH1's Behind the Music. Disc one exposes "You Send Me" as a rewrite of the standard "For Sentimental Reasons," or perhaps either "Desire Me" and/or "Lonely Island." Disc two is lush with orchestration, from the big bandisms of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" to the full-blown "Baby Won't You Please Come Home," while the third CD piles on the hits ("Having a Party," "Bring It on Home to Me," "Another Saturday Night"), most written by Cooke, who was a hard-working producer and arranger. The last disc combines two LPs from 1963, the somewhat staid Nightbeat and Live at the Harlem Square. Had the packaging of The Man Who Invented Soul been as good as 1994's sublime Sam Cooke's SAR Records Story, 1959-1965, the song selection as tight as RCA's 1-CD Sam Cooke: The Man and His Music, and the live set as good as 1964's Sam Cooke at the Copa, then maybe it wouldn't feel like RCA slapped this sucker together and this would be an altogether better book.