![]() ![]() By the time he recorded the towering “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Cooke was very much grounded in the reality of the work, demonstrating a more zestful vocal style that his younger self would have missed out on. And much like the title suggests, the album demonstrates a life as much as it exhibits a life lived on the magic of music. In the recently-released Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964, Cooke’s voice is there to be enjoyed, as everything from his early works to the blues records of his later years, is slotted together in one tidy compilation. It’s so truthful.”Ĭooke’s voice crossed boundaries of race, gender, age, and creed, precisely because it was so clear and immediate. I listen to one of his live albums, he has two, and he could sing through the harder stuff. Talking to Penny Black Music, Roachford said, “Much of it inspires me, but a lot of it makes me want to give up. Such was the immediacy of Cooke’s voice that it inspired white singers like Stewart, not forgetting blues vocalists of color Gabrielle and Andrew Roachford. “Then I suddenly turned into a Jack Kerouac rambling beatnik, grew my hair long, and started listening to all the great folk singers of the time.” “It was around the age of 16 I first heard Sam Cooke, on a little transistor radio that I’d put against my ear when I traveled from Highgate to Kentish Town to go to work,” recalled Sir Rod Stewart.
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