The Voice & Sam Cooke

The Voice & Sam Cooke

By Jack Coll

 1/2/2014

     So I hit the couch for the night, it’s about nine o’clock or so and Donna says let’s see if there’s anything good on the tube and she hits the remote and all these little boxes show up on the screen showing us what’s on television tonight.  Up in the right hand corner of the screen is this little box running commercials about what’s good on TV or something of that nature.  Well this white guy with Buddy Holly looking glasses is in the little box singing “A Change Is Gonna Come” and quite frankly I was a little in all of the voice I was hearing.  It turns out it was from the show “The Voice,” a show I have never watched, I’m a big music fan but a non-believer in the instant success path taken by these singing shows, (The Voice, the next big thing, the next big singer, American Idol and so on).  But this guy was singing an American classic, a music treasurer, and was sounding really, really good.  I didn’t know the guy singing nor did I even know the show.

     So after days of research, (actually it was about five minutes but it just sounds better the other way) after days of research I found out that the show was “The Voice” and the guy singing was Will Champlin.  So I U-tube the entire song by this guy and he still sounds pretty darn good to me.  He starts off at the piano, and then heads for center stage to lay the song out.

     “A Change Is Gonna Come” was a song performed by the late, great Sam Cooke.  While Sam had a number of chart hits that crossed over to the white audience like “You Send Me,” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Shake,” “Another Saturday Night” and many others, Sam felt very strong about addressing the situation of discrimination and racism throughout the Country.

     “A Change Is Gonna Come” believe it or not started in 1963 with a Bob Dylan tune “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  If a white artist like Dylan could reach so many people with his song about racism, perhaps Sam could reach out to a different audience and bridge the gap between black and white.  The song “A Change Is Gonna Come” started in 1963 when Cooke stopped to talk with a number of sit-in demonstrators following one of his concerts in Durham, North Carolina.  Cooke returned to his tour bus and penned a rough draft of the song “A Change Is Gonna Come.” 

     Cooke had a lot of inner turmoil as to how he would address racism and discrimination with his music, Cooke was a light skinned black with a largely based white audience and risked losing his white fan base.   Cooke finishing the song and recording it came on the heels of two major incidents in his life.  First, Cooke’s 18 month old son Vincent died in an accidental drowning the year he wrote and released the song.  The second incident happened on October 8, 1963, Cooke and members of his band and crew tried to register at a “White’s Only” motel in Shreveport, Louisiana and were promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.  Both of those incidents are represented in the weary tone and lyrics of the song, especially the final verse, “There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long, but now I think I’m able to carry on, it’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.”

     The song was recorded in January 1964 and released to fairly good reviews and the album reached number 34 on the Billboard Pop Album Charts.  Cooke and his manager wanted to give the song greater exposure and his manager persuaded Cooke to sing “A Change Is Gonna Come” on his February 7, 1964 appearance on The Tonight Show.  Cooke knocked it out of the park with his performance, unfortunately for Cooke any impact the performance made on America was kicked into the background as The Beatles made history two nights later on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Yet another misfortune, NBC did not save the tape of Cooke’s performance.  

     Although the song only achieved mid-chart success, “A Change Is Gonna Come” became an anthem for the on-going Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1960’s.  Over the past half century the song has been widely recognized and considered Cook’s best work.  A few of the honors recognizing the song include being named number 12, on the Rolling Stone’s Magazine‘s Top 500 songs of all time.  The song is also among three hundred songs deemed the most important ever recorded by National Public Radio and was recently selected by the library of Congress as one of twenty-five selected recordings to the National Recording Registry as of March 2007.

     Unfortunately Cook didn’t live to enjoy the success of the song, he was killed in a Los Angeles Hotel under mysterious circumstances in December 1964.  Throughout the 1960’s Civil Rights activists both black and white wanted change, that change wasn’t coming out of Washington D. C., perhaps racial change was stalled on November 23, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed, and racial change suffered another setback on April 4, 1968 in Memphis when King was gunned down.  But music, music of all kinds, from around the world opened the eyes of young people, and if change was gonna come it was coming from the young people worldwide.  While politicians were busy condemning young bands of the 1960’s, while politicians were busy condemning the long haired freaks and the pot smoking generation of the 1960’s, little did they know the people they were busy condemning were changing the world, changing hatred, and certainly changing racism and discrimination.  Nixon threw John Lennon out of the country, and Johnson said Dylan was just another folk singer, and many of our country’s “greatest politicians” condemned black music.  Well from where I’m sitting a lot of change has come, the next great song should be titled “More Change is Coming”    

     I was never big on the Voice show, or American Idol, but after watching Will Champlin perhaps that should change, change is good.  I don’t know if Will Champlin won the contest, or the show or whatever it is when they finish first, but maybe I should spend a “FEW DAYS AND RESEARCH” that.  Will Champlin, a white dude with Buddy Holly looking glasses sang the song “A Change Is Gonna Come” and did the song justice, singing it with soul, even if it was “White Soul.”  I think Champlin honored the legacy of the late Sam Cooke, I think Sam Cooke would have approved if he were alive today, I think he would have smiled, and nodded with approval.

 

(You can’t read or write soul, but trust me, this song had a lot of soul, a lot of soul)

“A Change Is Gonna Come”

I was born by the river in a little tent

And just like that river I’ve been running ever since

It’s been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

 

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die

Cos I don’t know what’s out there beyond the sky

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

 

I go to the movie

And I go downtown

Somebody keep telling me don’t hang around

It’s been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

 

Then I go to my brother

And I say brother help me please

But he winds up knockin’ me

Back down on my knees

 

There were times when I thought I couldn’t last for long

But now I think I’m able to carry on

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will