As we remember Sam Cooke on what would have been his 84th birthday, its most fitting this week as we also remember Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and the release of the film Selma, we focus on Cookes pivotal A Change Is Gonna Come which was partially inspired by an incident in which Cooke and his band tried to register at a whites only motel in Shreveport, Louisiana. On October 8, 1963, Cooke called ahead to the Holiday Inn North to make reservations for his wife, Barbara and himself, but when he and his group arrived, the desk clerk glanced nervously and explained there were no vacancies. While his brother Charles protested, Sam was fuming, yelling to see the manager and refusing to leave until he received an answer. His wife nudged him, attempting to calm him down, telling him, Theyll kill you, to which he responded, They aint gonna kill me, because Im Sam Cooke When they eventually persuaded Cooke to leave, the group drove away calling out insults and blaring their horns. When they arrived at the Castle Motel on Sprague Street downtown, the police were waiting for them, arresting them for disturbing the peace. The New York Times ran an AP report the following day headlined Negro Band Leader Held in Shreveport, but African-Americans were outraged, leading to the creation of a myth surrounding the incident, exaggerating parts of the story and fabricating others. A Change Is Gonna Come is now much more than a civil rights anthem. Its become a universal message of hope, one that does not age. Generation after generation has heard the promise of it. It continues to be a song of enormous impact, he says. We all feel in some way or another that a change is gonna come, and he found that lyric. It was the kind of hook that he always looked for: The phrase that was both familiar but was striking enough that it would have its own originality. And that makes it almost endlessly adaptable to whatever goal, whatever movement is of the moment. A Change Is Gonna Come was released a little less than month after Sam Cookes death on December 11, 1964
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 05:47:23 +0000
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