Sam cooke biography dream boogie by langston

But then by that time he had had to take a stand on so many things - coming up from near-total segregation on tours in the deep south as a child through big tours that still couldn't get served at most roadhouses to segregated stadiums in Memphis as a popstar. Did he have to take a stand in his music now as well? Until his death he wondered about the wisdom of releasing his now most-famous song.

And his death? Guralnick investigates this, like everything else, thoroughly. For me it is not important, though the scenario - the prostitute, the cheap motel - was certainly not out of keeping with the rest of Sam's often lonely, sad life. Sam Cooke was shot by the landlady of an L. Guralnick's other great achievement - the 2-part page biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love - is also a sad, sad tale.

It is probably that other opus that is the greater achievement, not just for its size but because we sense that Elvis is the author's first love. But we all know so much about Elvis. Yes, Sam was a businessman, but he lived for the moment, and when he died his legacy was left in disarray, and his legend faded. Guralnick resurrects him. At the end of Portrait of a Legend Guralnick includes a short track entitled '8 Bars of Soul', an excerpt from an interview by a then-prominent black disc jockey in which the DJ asks Sam to 'hum 8 bars of what soul represents'.

And Sam lets loose, but quietly, and his melody, though mundane enough at first, seems at some point to cross into some otherworldly mode, a place beyond culture, beyond gender, beyond time, before resolving on the Major tonic that now sounds as if foreign. And the DJ says, 'Sam Cooke's yours. He'll never grow old. Sara Dallmayr.

As with any biography, or historical book for that matter, a wise reader has to be on guard for inconsistencies, the potential for emotional spin or sway from the writer and those interviewed, and keep an awareness that this is a tale woven and relayed out of the delicate, sifting threads of memory as well as the paper facts, photos, and videos captured.

What is presented is a version of the truth. Since I've been drawn so deeply into the life and music of Sam Cooke recently, it's become extremely important to me to examine every possible angle I can. The style of writing took me awhile to latch onto. Sometimes it felt a bit information dump-y, with run on sentences so long in pages that seemed to have very little to do with Sam Cooke.

I am not speaking of the civil rights and race aspects, more just facts about people that didn't seem to have much to do with the story of Sam. Did I need to know that John Siamis and his brother made airplane parts when they moved out to California? I discovered this sam cooke biography dream boogie by langston in a particularly painful run-on sentence.

Not sure how this adds onto Sam's story. Another difficulty was reading peoples' versions of events about Sam presented as fact. I mean, I eventually came to understand that I had to read all of it with a grain of salt, and basically discard what could not be proven as one person's perspective. But does every reader know to do this, especially some of the more troubling relaying of events?

I have no doubt that Sam was not perfect, because none of us are, and he had many worlds resting on his shoulders at any given sam cooke biography dream boogie by langston. What I've come to do, is what Sam suggested: observation, baby. Just be the observer as best as you can. Try to understand and relate to the times and circumstances.

This does not mean that I didn't cry my eyes and heart out at the end, and have to bite back my anger. But the best part of this book, which is greatly detailed and examines many sides and angles almost to a fault at times when you wonder, "now why did we go here? It's like you begin to understand why you hear what you do in his music and understand it better.

In fact, I basically fell in love with Sam Cooke as I have read about him. I respect his interest in people, the world, where and why he took his music in the direction he did. I wish he had written books himself and that I could read them, over and over. I wish I could watch him perform now, those eyes magnetic and charisma intact, on a stage, singing remnants of a disco Sam phase, and a collaboration in the 80s that sent him charging up to 1 on the charts.

This incomplete arc of his life is painful to imagine, and yet his 33 years here were richly spent and given. Back to the book, though, I've veered off track in my passion. The racial aspects are tough to read but vital, especially now. Many dreams still are swept under the rug and still festering. You can't throw a rug over a pile of shit and say, "It's gone.

I consider Sam Cooke to have been extremely brave, with a sense of righteousness and proper indignation that was ready at the drop of a hat to say: "I'm not buying it. Try again. You can already tell that despite his "flaws," Sam Cooke sent an arrow right into my heart. Day Rusk. Author 6 books 6 followers. I placed the vinyl yes, vinyl on my record player and discovered a singer whose tone and creativity absolutely surprised me.

What Guralnick provides us with is a complex picture of a man who in many ways was impossible to define. Despite his rise to notoriety singing Gospel music across the States, Cooke and many of those who did, also indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle, their fame giving them ample opportunity to seduce young women; Cooke did, and from an early age, seemingly sired many illegitimate children.

As Guralnick tells it, Cooke was a driven man, who took the risk of turning his back on the Gospel world to embrace the Pop world, and did so with much success — but he also did so ruthlessly. Despite his wholesome public image, Cooke was never faithful to any one woman, and, when he needed to be in business, put his own interests over others.

And while this was so, he also demonstrated a sense of loyalty to others as well — in other words he was a complex human being. Dream Boogie humanizes Sam Cooke, while his music seems Heaven sent. While he is not as well remembered as some other performers of his day, and did see his life cut short in a tragic, pointless way, this is a wonderful biography of a man, whom if you have a deep love of good music, you must seek out and listen to, because no matter who or what he was, and how we choose to view or judge his actions throughout his life, his music is his true legacy — and what a legacy that is.

This book is extensive. I almost know too much about Sam Cooke after reading all some pages. Rather, I know more than I wanted to know about everyone else in his circle from the time he was born. Some of the stories from these package tours they went on are just unreal. There's also really good research into more obscure musicians, dee jays, and behind the scene players.

I've always felt ambivalent about Sam Cooke. Some of his work is so bland and corny and yet some of it is raw soul genius. I feel he was almost cursed by his talent. This book drives home the point that Cooke was so good looking and had such a great voice from early childhood that he could, without effort, do almost anything he wanted musically, get any girl, charm anyone and get away with anything; which isn't as interesting to me as someone who's flawed and has to make the best of it.

Bookmarks Magazine. Jack Wolfe. How bout it! I wonder though if Guralnick's first drafts didn't have a different title-- something like "Dream Boogie: the Enigma of Sam Cooke. More curiously, the mysteries of his life and death don't take the form of a Rashomon-style "different people saw different things" deal. Almost everyone Guralnick interviewed and he interviewed EVERYBODY, from close musical associates to distant family members to random fans who got Sam's autograph in Cleveland in says the same stuff about Sam: that he was smooth, confident but not cocky, incredibly brilliant, occasionally temperamental but mainly warm and funny, with the ability to make you, as listener or acquaintance, feel like the only person in the room.

The person Sam was, in other words, was the uncommonly handsome, suave-as-fuck, ladies' man's man grinning at you in every picture of him ever taken in none of which he ever looks like anything but the coolest man in the shot. Okay, so maybe that guy is not the sort you'd expect to call everyone "fucker" a word in every other line somebody remembers Sam sayingor to have dozens of women lining up outside his bedroom for five minute quickies, or to insult a cop, or befriend a cast of characters including great heroes like Muhammad Ali and notorious villains like Allen Klein.

But even those perhaps more unsavory or more surprising elements of Sam's character were evidently well-known by his associates, and they comfortably cohere with the larger story that Guralnick is trying to tell. And yet, even with all these details, Sam Cooke remains sort of unknowable, to us. His peers talked about it too: how he'd clearly be feeling something, but not saying it-- how he seemed to operate on another plane than mere mortals.

Certainly, this "god-like" quality is detectable in the best of Sam's music i. But his distance from "us" is also seen in the sadder, less distinguished parts of Sam's story, like his treatment of his wife, Barbara, and his bizarre, shockingly under-investigated death. Is the deeper, darker Sam we only fleetingly get a glimpse of the "real" Sam?

That we still don't really know is what makes "Dream Boogie" both tantalizing and frustrating. Some of the things Guralnick finds most beguiling about Sam are not necessarily the things that first spring to mind when you hear, oh, "That's Where It's At" for the first time. Certainly, Sam's drive-- for artistic achievement, sure, but also popularity and financial success-- would be a part of any decent Cooke biography.

But Guralnick spends probably about two hundred pages here on Sam's business dealings-- his ins-and-outs with Specialty and RCA and all kinds of producers and managers and flunkies-- that don't necessarily make you wanna, like, move. While there's definitely some inspirational value in watching Sam tell off a bunch of white record label losers who have no idea what to do with a truly unprecedented talent and eventually start his own indie, the pioneering SARthere's also something sort of depressing to me, anyway to see Mr.

Soul being reduced to, oh, a Black Capitalist. Again: hard to say if that's Guralnick or Cooke's doing or mine! There are definitely places in the book where Guralnick makes his disappointment known. Like, Jesus Christ, Sam: fuck the Copacabana! Those supper club assholes don't deserve you, they deserve fucking Pat Boone! Even if the man remains something of a puzzle, his times are vividly captured by Guralnick.

The gospel scene of the 40s and 50s, the early days of rock and soul, the Southern RnB circuit, the network of local, bizarro rhyming DJs, the Civil Rights movement: all of it is rendered in careful but loving detail. But Guralnick's book, even after pages, somehow still leaves you sort of baffled, by the end. There's a sense of something Again, probably just me really upset about the fact that fucking Sam Cooke was murdered and a couple of lie detector tests were the entirety of case for calling the act "justifiable.

Oh, and while I'm here: I listened to a lot of Sam and his contemporaries while reading this one. Again, like this book, his work is kinda The models for Black success back then were Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte, and though Sam was a genius, he was nevertheless unquestionably a product of his time. So much texture! So much nuance! So much soul!

But the real one that everybody must get, the one that most immediately connects him to the energy and feeling I associate with, well, all good and interesting music, but especially rock music, is "One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club. Seriously one of the ten best records ever done. Jason P. It goes without saying that you have to really love Sam Cooke to like this book!

The horror of segregation and racism hangs over everything and you really get a sense of how this period of time and Sam Cooke changed the music world. Author 2 books 5 followers. I knew the tragic ending was coming but I was still stunned and saddened when it came. Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. Review this product Share your thoughts with other customers.

Write a customer review. Customers say. Select to learn more. Readability Depth Biography Storytelling. Images in this review. Top reviews from the United States. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Verified Purchase. Although this book is a very thorough and comprehensive record of singing virtuoso Sam Cooke and his much-too-short life, the or so pages seem to soar as effortlessly as Sam's voice over a lyric.

Upon completing this read it was not exhaustion I felt from reviewing every minute detail as recalled by nearly a hundred of first-hand witnesses of Sam's 33 years, but a feeling of utter sadness and frustration that this monumental talent himself probably set about the chain of events that caused his demise. Many details of his personal appearances both in the U.

Highly recommended! I've been on a Sam Cooke binge of late and this book was mentioned on Wikipedia as having a lot of source material. I have simply scanned it so far but with almost pages and pages of footnotes there is a lot to digest. I was quite impressed that it contains a good number of photos of Sam Cooke from the early years and over the span of his life.

This will be a treat to explore. One person found this helpful. Really made me want to find his gospel songs! So powerful! To me, Sam Cooke music was always light weight and so I always considered him a lightweight as I am not a huge fan of pop music. In Peter Guralnick's detailed, insightful book, Cooke is revealed to be so much more.

Sam's gospel and family roots in Chicago are explained with entertaining tidbits which include his friends and colleagues such as Lou Rawls, Bobby Womack and Johnnie Taylor. Cooke was a trailblazer in the music industry: Like Ray Charles, he transformed gospel to pop music. He wrote the bulk of his own material-which to me is the mark of a total recording artist, transcending singing.

Lastly, Cooke was one of the first artists who took total control of the business end of his career and cut out a lot of the middlemen who profit off the talent of others. The book does everything a biography is supposed to do and more. It carefully researches the details of Sam Cooke's life and shocking and controversial death.

It also offers insight into Sam's motivations, artistry and tragic flaws. This book is very well researched and well written by Peter Guralnick. This book is very interesting and insightful about Sam Cooke a very important musical artist! I admire the work of Peter Guralnick. I recommend this book without qualifications for everyone wanting to understand modern popular American culture and music.

Must Read! It's been around for a while and a lot of reviews have been written here and most of them have offer the same sort of praise this one will. I am very pleased to have read this and gotten to know the man, even though some of it I'd just have soon not have known. Such is life; such are lives. Not going to be long and involved - this is a marvelously researched and written biography of the man who was an icon.

If you have the slightest interest in the man himself, and I will assume you do if you are reading reviews of a biography of him, then cut to the chase and order this. You will be pleased that you did. And it will send you right back to those magical records. Very good it dug deep into his life very informative well written. It was well written,great depth requiring much research.

In my early years I lived just a few miles from all this music and singing. Unable to enjoy it because of racism and hate. America continues to learn from past mistakes. See more reviews. Top reviews from other countries. Translate all reviews to English. Loved the way it was written. Concise and empathetically stated. A life filled with tragedy and triumph.

From the acclaimed author of Last Train to Memphisthis is the definitive biography of Sam Cooke, one of most influential singers and songwriters of all time. Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes -- the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own business destiny.

No biography has previously been written that fully captures Sam Cooke's accomplishments, the importance of his contribution to American music, the drama that accompanied his rise in the early days of the civil rights movement, and the mystery that surrounds his death. Bestselling author Peter Guralnick tells this moving and significant story, from Cooke's childhood as a choirboy to an adulthood when he was anything but.

With appearances by Martin Luther King Jr. The triumph of the book is the vividness with which Peter Guralnick conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era -- the drama, force, and feeling of the story.