Product 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.

Track Listing

1. Touch The Hem Of His Garment - Sam Cooke, The Soul Stirrers
2. Lovable
3. You Send Me
4. Only Sixteen
5. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
6. Just For You
7. Win Your Love For Me
8. Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha
9. I'll Come Running Back To You
10. You Were Made For Me
11. Sad Mood
12. Cupid
13. 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. Tennessee 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 - Sam Cooke, The Soul Stirrers
31. Soul

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2874 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

Customer Reviews

The best soul singer
Sam Cooke was a musical genius. As a performer, singer and songwriter he excelled and surpassed all his competitors. This essential compilation (Only When a boy falls in love is missing among these best songs) shows his development, his growing from gospel and pop gems to A change is gonna come, one of the best songs in history. His style of singing is so awesome it may take a few listening to realize in full, because it's done with such ease that is almost a miracle. His effortless melisma, his golden tone, his "feeling" (after all, that's what soul music is about) are haunting, as so many singers who try (in vain) to match it, even in our days, show. More than 40 years after his death, songs like You send me, Chain gang, Wonderful world (I fell in love with it thanks to "Witness", of course), Cupid (And with this one thanks to "Innerspace"), and of course A change is gonna come still sound fresh and gloriously beautiful. Only if you have all the songs of this set already you shouldn't buy the CD. For the rest of the world, there are no excuses to miss it.

A Real Legend!
I first tried a Sam Cooke album about a year ago and was surprised that I already knew the vast majority of the songs. Again and again I found myself listening to a particular track and before ten seconds had past I'd be thinking 'Wow, I didn't know he wrote that one!'. I'd heard a number of versions of 'Chain Gang' for instance but never Cooke's original which incidentally is by far the best.

The man's vocal range and talent is just awesome as he demonstrates on 'Touch The Hem Of His Garment' in an early gospel record. But songs like 'You Send Me', 'Only Sixteen', 'Cupid', '(What A) Wonderful World', 'Chain Gang', 'Twistin' The Night Away' and of course the masterful 'A Change Is Gonna Come' (Cooke's response to Bob Dylan's 'Blowin in the Wind') show what a truly great song writer he was as well as a singer.

Who knows what he might have achieved had he lived longer!. Altogether this is an excellent collection of songs that are well worth getting hold of.

You Send Me....
This man is a gold-plated soul legend, who was also savvy enough to set up his own label and nurture other black recording artists, such as Bobby Womack. Initially a gospel superstar, he, like many before and after, successfully crossed over into the fledgling pop charts, merging gospel and pop and becoming huge.

His voice is surely one of the most beautiful ever committed to vinyl. This collection does a fantastic job of summarising Cooke's tragically curtailed career, and for newcomer and fan alike, is the best collection out there.

As a footnote, I must add to the debate on 'A Change Is Gonna Come', Cooke's response to hearing Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' and an example of his interest in other genres. I am a massive Otis Redding fan, but his version is a poor relation to Sam's effort - this is his last recorded song and his finest few minutes, a tantalising hint of what he may acheived had he not been gunned down.

Buy it.