Track Listing

1. Touch The Hem Of His Garment
2. Lovable
3. You Send Me
4. Only Sixteen
5. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
6. Just For You
7. Win You Love For Me
8. Everybody Love To Cha Cha Cha
9. I'll Come Running Back To You
10. You Were Made For Me
11. Sad Mood
12. Cupid
13. (What A) Wonderful World
14. Chain Gang
15. Summertime
16. Little Red Rooster
17. Bring It On Home To Me
18. Nothing Can Change This Love
19. Sugar Dumpling
20. (Ain't That) Good News
21. Meet Me At Mary's Place
22. Twistin' The Night Away
23. Shake
24. Tennesee Waltz
25. Another Saturday Night
26. Good Times
27. Having A Party
28. That's Where It's At
29. A Change Is Gonna Come
30. Jesus Gave Me Water

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36891 in Music
• Released on: 2006-07-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 78 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some 46 years after his first pop hit, and 39 years after his death, comes only the second attempt at a comprehensive Sam Cooke collection. Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 eclipses RCA's early-80s The Man And His Music. From 1951's Soul Stirrers' gospel classic "Touch The Hem Of His Garment" through to 1964's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Shake," we get highlights of Cooke's career presented in state-of-the-art digital audio; superior in every way possible to the audio quality of The Man And His Music. What's more, this is a hybrid disc with SACD capability, and the sound on that layer is almost as much of a jump above the quality on the CD layer as this remastering is from the old The Man And His Music disc; and either the standard CD or the SACD playback makes that 1980s-issued compilation sound faint and anaemic. There's also annotation here--which was totally lacking on the earlier CD--by Peter Guralnick, which delve very effectively into the background of each song. And the producers have taken the trouble to be a little inventive in the programming--it would have been easy enough to follow a strict chronological approach, but instead the disc opens and closes with tracks that reveal Cooke's gospel roots; which is pretty much where his music started and where it ended up, bookending his first hit with songs from his first session ever. --Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

CD Description
Best-of collection from arguably the most important soul singer of all time, who pioneered the style and enjoyed mass-market appeal across race and age divides. This features the best loved songs from across his body of work including early sides he cut with the Soul Stirrers as well as classics like 'You Send Me', 'What A Wonderful World', 'Cupid', 'Shake', 'Bring It On Home To Me' and 'A Change Is Gonna Come', which have lived on well beyond his untimely death in 1964.

Customer Reviews

The Golden tenor of "Soul" re-born...
This release is another of the outstanding archive renovations that brought the world "The Rolling Stones" re-issues in 2002.

Yet again the same team that brought the world that restoration has done this compliation of "Sam Cooke's" recordings from 1951-1964.
The mastering process was done by the awesome "Bob Ludwig",who has in the past done such re-issues as "Roxy Muisc's" and the solo recordings of "Bryan Ferry"(this "Mr Ludwig" did in 1999).

What they have released is a hybrid disc that has 2 layers of data,1 layer for playing on a standard C.D. player and the other layer for SACD players.
The sound quality that this has acheived is just jaw dropping it's so good, gone is the thin weedy sound of the past re-issues of this star's music,now the tracks have a warmer purer seductive sound that "Sam" voice was famous for.
The tracks sound like they were recorded just yesterday and not way back last century.

The song that opens the collection "Touch the hem of his Garment" recorded in 1956 and was written by the artist sets the tone for this anthology of 30 tracks, 24 of which "Sam" wrote "Twistin' the night Away" still makes me want to get up and dance every time I hear it, even more so with the clearer handclap sounds.
If you loved the sound of "Sam Cooke" before you will absolutely adore this collection, the details the listener can hear are incredible.
This collection is for soul fans everywhere,a must have for your music collection...

Where it all began
Sorry to correct the previous reviewer, but Sam Cooke's 'Wonderful World, was emphaticaly NOT the same song made famous by Louis Armstrong. This was called 'What a Wonderful World, and was a very different proposition from Sam's offering. As for Herman's Hermits......
Soul fans wil know that the best cover version of this tune was the one by Otis Redding. In fact, Otis covered many of Cooke's songs , including 'Shake' and a 'Change is Gonna Come'( the latter arguably topping even Sam's version)

Anyway, factual quibbles apart, this CD documents an important slice of Sam Cooke's output.He was, unquestionably one of the most influential singers ever, and not just in the soul field. Rod Stewart fans will find Sam's vocal fingerprints all over his singing. Sam Cooke's early death was was not only a tragedy for music lovers, just think, if he had lived we might have been spared Rod Stewart.Now there's a thought.

Sheer genius brilliantly presented
No less a person than Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records (who twice failed to sign him) describes Sam in the accompanying booklet as "the best singer who ever lived" and what this collection does in excellent SACD sound is show why. Covering the whole range of his career from his early spiritual recordings in 1951 with the Soul Stirrers, via his Speciality label records (where he fell out with Art Rupe the owner for using a "white" rather than an R&B sound) through to his triumphant personally written and co-produced RCA recordings and resultant great hits which appealed to everyone, one can see why someone like Rod Stewart holds this man in such high esteem.

In addition to the superb CD audio transcriptions lasting over 79 minutes in full, the liner booklet notes by a devoted expert such as Peter Guralnick with full data on recordings and musicians make this a priceless collection.

Fourty years on since his early death the CD title "Sam Cooke -Portrait of a legend" says it all.