A Change Is Gonna Come : Rolling Stone

Written by: Cooke
Produced by: Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore
Released: Dec. '64 on RCA
Charts: 7 weeks
Top spot: No. 31

In 1963, Sam Cooke -- America's first great soul singer and one of the most successful pop acts in the nation, with eighteen Top Thirty hits since 1957 -- heard a song that profoundly inspired and disturbed him: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." What struck Cooke was the challenge implicit in Dylan's anthem. "Jeez," Cooke mused at the time, "a white boy writing a song like that?"

Cooke's response, "A Change Is Gonna Come," recorded on January 30th, 1964, with a sumptuous orchestral arrangement by Rene Hall, was more personal: in its first-person language and the experiences that preceded its creation. On October 8th, 1963, while on tour in the South, Cooke and members of his entourage were arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, for disturbing the peace after they tried to register at a white motel -- an incident reflected in the song's third verse. And Cooke's mourning for his eighteen-month-old son, Vincent, who died that June in a drowning accident, resonates in the final verse: "There have been times that I thought/I couldn't last for long."

On December 11th, 1964, nearly a year after he recorded the song, Cooke was fatally shot at a Los Angeles motel. Two weeks later, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released as a single -- Cooke's farewell address and final hit.

Appears on: Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 (ABKCO)

Next: Yesterday

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