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Sam CookeBiography Producer Jerry Wexler always thought Cooke has the greatest voice of his generation. Considering Wexler made all those great records with Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, among others, that's quite a recommendation. Cooke's life story is practically a parable for the story of soul music itself--from the innocence of shouting gospel to a sordid death outside a hooker's seedy hotel room. He became one of the first major black artists to establish his creative self-determination with a major label. He laid the cornerstones of the music called soul. group, the Soul Stirrers, Cooke had to hold his first pop sessions in secret, releasing the results under a pseudonym to relative indifference. But his next single, "You Send Me," went No. 1 in 1957, and Cooke never looked back. He not only expertly explored a vast broad cross-section of music on his own recordings--blues, supper club pop, epic ballads, Top 40 jive--but he wrote and produced brilliantly for other artists. His extraordinary impact cannot be over estimated; the pure sound in his throbbing, sensual voice intoxicated so many other vocalists--as well as listeners--that his style continues to echo throughout the pop scene long after his death. But his many and momentous accomplishments still live, well preserved in a number of different collections of his work.
Albums by Sam Cooke
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