Sam Cooke

Songwriter and performer Sam Cooke merged gospel music and secular themes and provided the early foundation of soul music. Cooke's pure, clear vocals were widely imitated, and his suave, sophisticated image set the style of soul crooners for the next decades.

One of eight sons of a Baptist minister, Cooke grew up in Chicago and was a top gospel artist by 1951. As a teenager, he became lead vocalist of the Soul Stirrers (which later included Johnnie Taylor), with whom he toured and recorded for nearly six years. Cooke's phrasing and urban enunciation were distinctive from the start.

Hoping not to offend his gospel fans, he released his pop debut, "Lovable" (1956), as Dale Cooke, but Specialty dropped him for deserting the Soul Stirrers. He released his own "You Send Me" the following year, and the 1.7-million-selling Number One song was the first of many hits. In the next two years his several hits — "Only Sixteen" (Number 28, 1959), "Everybody Likes to Cha Cha" (Number 31, 1959) — concentrated on light ballads and novelty items. He signed to RCA in 1960 and began writing bluesier, gospel-inflected tunes.

Beginning with his reworking of "Chain Gang" (Number Two) in August 1960, Cooke was a mainstay in the Top 40 through 1965, with "Wonderful World" (Number 12, 1960), "Sad Mood" (Number 29, 1961), "Twistin' the Night Away" (Number Nine, 1962), "Bring It On Home to Me" (Number 13, 1962), "Another Saturday Night" (Number 10, 1963), and "Shake" (Number Seven, 1965).

His shooting death on December 11, 1964, tarnished his image. Bertha Franklin, the manager of the Hacienda motel in L.A., claimed she killed the singer in self-defense after he'd tried to rape a 22-year-old woman, then turned on Franklin. The coroner ruled it a justifiable homicide. There still remain questions about the circumstances surrounding Cooke's murder.

Two months after his death his song "Shake" peaked at Number Seven on the singles chart. Cooke's hits have been covered widely by rock and soul singers; "Shake," for instance, was interpreted by Otis Redding and Rod Stewart. The posthumously released "A Change Is Gonna Come" hit Number 31 in 1965. It represented a return to Cooke's roots, placing him back in the spiritual setting from which he had first emerged just nine years earlier. Cooke's material continues to be widely covered by rock and soul performers.

Cooke was also a groundbreaking independent black-music capitalist. He owned his own record label (Sar/Derby), music publishing concern (Kags Music), and management firm. His influence can be heard in the work of artists as varied as Michael Jackson and the Heptones, but it is most profoundly felt in the singing of Redding, Stewart, and Al Green. Cooke was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986; three years later the Soul Stirrers entered separately.