Towards this end, he recorded show-tunes and supper-club standards, teen mini-operas and novelty items. His ambition now was to secure the all-American stature of a Sinatra or Nat King Cole. Many in the gospel world were dismayed by Cooke's apostasy and Cooke himself had doubts, but it paid off when the ethereal "You Send Me" sold more than a million copies in 1957. The gospel genre was confined to a black audience to make the money he wanted and to acquire the recognition he believed he deserved, he would have to "cross over" to pop.
For Cooke, the economics of the situation were clear. His delivery was subdued compared to that of his rivals, but the effortless fluency and sense of carefully modulated power made it all the more compelling.ĭespite their pre-eminence, the Soul Stirrers never sold more than 30,000 copies of a record. After a shaky start, he emerged as a unique vocal stylist. In 1950, age 19, he was recruited as lead vocal by the Soul Stirrers, one of the biggest acts on the circuit. The teenage Cooke won rapid notice for his ability to "wreck the house" and his appeal to women young and old.
The erotic power that shook church walls was by no means entirely sublimated. The repertoire was exclusively sacred, but the lifestyle decidedly worldly. It was marked by joyous competitiveness, with quartets vying in displays of technical virtuosity and emotional power. Cooke, like many of his generation, struggled throughout his life to reconcile the conundrum.Ĭhicago in the late 40s was the hub of a vibrant gospel scene, and one of the strengths of Peter Guralnick's biography is his recreation of this lost world, a subculture carved in pain and joy out of a racist environment.
His father, who had brought the family from Mississippi to Chicago in the mid 1940s, was a metal-worker and professional preacher, who gave his son two contradictory pieces of advice: "Go along to get along", and "Never take a back seat". The fifth of eight children, from his earliest years he stood out from the crowd with his relaxed self-assurance, winning smile, exceptional voice - and unapologetic ambitiousness. Cooke was a product of the great mid-20th-century wave of black migration from the rural south to the urban north.
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