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Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
One of the most influential singers and songwriters of all time, Sam Cooke was among the first to blend gospel music and secular themes--the early foundation of soul music. He was the opposite of Elvis: a black performer who appealed to white audiences, who wrote his own songs, who controlled his own business destiny. No biography has previously been written that fully captures Sam Cooke's accomplishments, the importance of his contribution to American music, the drama that accompanied his rise in the early days of the civil rights movement, and the mystery that surrounds his death. Bestselling author Peter Guralnick tells this moving and significant story, from Cooke's childhood as a choirboy to an adulthood when he was anything but. With appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Aretha Franklin, Fidel Castro, The Beatles, Sonny and Cher, Bob Dylan, and other central figures of this explosive era, DREAM BOOGIE is a compelling depiction of one man striving to achieve his vision despite all obstacles--and an epic portrait of America during the turbulent and hopeful 1950s and 1960s. The triumph of the book is the vividness with which Peter Guralnick conveys the astonishing richness of the black America of this era--the drama, force, and feeling of the story.
768 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2005
187 people are currently reading
2429 people want to read
About the author
Peter Guralnick
60 books367 followersPeter Guralnick is an acclaimed American music critic, author, and screenwriter best known for his deeply researched works on the history of rock and roll. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Boston University and soon began writing about blues, country, soul, and early rock music. His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is considered a definitive account of the singer’s life. Guralnick also authored landmark biographies of Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips, earning praise from critics and musicians alike. He has written liner notes for legends like Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich, winning a Grammy for his notes on Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club. His documentary scripts include Sam Cooke – Legend and Feel Like Going Home, directed by Martin Scorsese. Guralnick’s writing stands apart for its straightforward, unembellished style, earning him a reputation as one of rock’s most respected storytellers. He has taught at Vanderbilt University since 2005 and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010. His recent works include Looking to Get Lost and a forthcoming biography of Colonel Tom Parker. Guralnick lives with his wife, Alexandra, and their family. His extensive archive is housed at the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
November 27, 2007
My heart sank when I first cracked open this book and saw how small the print was, because I knew it would take a while to plow through and, you know, so many books, so little time, right? But the actual text was only (ha! only!) 650 pages, followed by 100 pages of voluminous notes, bibliography and index, so it wasn't as bad as I first thought.
And I really wanted to read it, because I'm a fan and because I could never reconcile how a man who seemed so polished and accomplished wound up dying such a tawdry death. Now that I've read the book I kind of get it, but it's still a damned shame.
More than just a bio of Cooke himself, the book also traces the evolution of "race" music from the blues and gospel of the '30s, '40s and '50s into the R&B and Soul of the '60s and beyond. There are glimpses of the early careers of some familiar names, like Jackie Wilson, Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Womack, Aretha Franklin and James Brown, as their stories interwove with Cooke's, and loads of great anecdotes.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and learned a lot about the "chitlin circuit" and these artists' lives on the road, on stage and off, and how they dealt with (or were dealt with by) the predominantly white record industry, DJs, promoters and venue owners in view of the racial climate of those times.
Still, the book could have been edited down by 100 pages or so and still would've been just as good. There's plenty of stuff in there that's either repetitive, such as praise from Cooke's peers, or simply non-essential info that doesn't add much to the whole. I hate to use the word "bloated" so maybe "exhaustive" is the word I'm looking for. Because I am. Exhausted, I mean.
And I really wanted to read it, because I'm a fan and because I could never reconcile how a man who seemed so polished and accomplished wound up dying such a tawdry death. Now that I've read the book I kind of get it, but it's still a damned shame.
More than just a bio of Cooke himself, the book also traces the evolution of "race" music from the blues and gospel of the '30s, '40s and '50s into the R&B and Soul of the '60s and beyond. There are glimpses of the early careers of some familiar names, like Jackie Wilson, Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Womack, Aretha Franklin and James Brown, as their stories interwove with Cooke's, and loads of great anecdotes.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and learned a lot about the "chitlin circuit" and these artists' lives on the road, on stage and off, and how they dealt with (or were dealt with by) the predominantly white record industry, DJs, promoters and venue owners in view of the racial climate of those times.
Still, the book could have been edited down by 100 pages or so and still would've been just as good. There's plenty of stuff in there that's either repetitive, such as praise from Cooke's peers, or simply non-essential info that doesn't add much to the whole. I hate to use the word "bloated" so maybe "exhaustive" is the word I'm looking for. Because I am. Exhausted, I mean.
February 8, 2022
Love Sam Cooke's music, especially "A Change is Gonna Come" and "Twisting the Night Away." He had a wonderful voice and sense of style. Too bad he couldn't keep his personal life under control or he might have gone on to do even greater things. Didn't know that he was RCA's 2nd biggest seller after Elvis. Never heard the details of how he died either--just a waste of a great talent. So many entertainers go down a dark path that it's become cliché. I've read Peter Guralnick's two-volume bio. of Elvis and his treatment of Sam Cooke is just as polished and intriguing. His Sam Phillips bio is equally good.
Read
October 5, 2017First let me say this is not for everyone. An extremely thick book (from memory about 800 pages) on a subject who hardly seems known at all except through the Obama election campaign. Sam Cooke? Even to me, a musician and lover of Stax Records and early rock 'n' roll, the name conjured only dim recollections: of 'You Send Me' in a TV icecream advertisement when I was young, of 'Beautiful World' ('Don't know much about history...') in the film Animal House with John Belushi, of Otis Redding's version of 'A Change is Gonna Come'. That is, until in 2008 at age 35 (35 years without Sam Cooke!) I downloaded the Portrait of a Legend compilation and everything changed...
Sam was a gospel singer. His father was a preacher, and at an early age Sam was out on the road preaching/singing with his brothers. He was a phenomenon, like a small-scale Michael Jackson, and by his mid-teens women really did reach to touch the hem of his garment as in the song Sam wrote and sang with the Soul Stirrers in 1959:
The story Peter Guralnick tells is that the Soul Stirrers were on their way to a recording session when they realised Sam didn't have a song for them. 'OK OK,' Sam says, 'give me the Bible.' His finger falls on the relevant passage and the song is written. This song is golden. It has wings, like so many of Sam's simple, romantic almost-nursery rhymes. Guralnick writes with the passion of a true fan about everything he can unearth concerning the writing and the recording of these little masterpieces. That he also goes into much detail about Sam's personal life is of less interest to me, but that he manages to place Sam convincingly and enlighteningly in the context of the gospel music and rock 'n' roll of the 1950s, the soul of the 60s and the Civil Rights movement is much more so. Strange, that these days Sam Cooke must almost inevitably be viewed through the reverse prism of history, which amplifies virtually his last recording, 'A Change is Gonna Come', to the point where it drowns out the rest of his life and career, and refracts it from this new perspective of 'protest singer'.
Was Sam Cooke a protest singer? He was whatever seemed to fly. First gospel singer, then when he saw the bucks were bigger in pop he jumped the fence, releasing 'You Send Me' (his biggest hit for years after) with his brother's name in the writing credit so as not to be snared by his old publishing commitments. With his older mentor and fellow former-gospel singer J.W. Alexander he began his own recording and publishing companies, releasing records by various groups and side-projects both pop and spiritual including the Womack Brothers' 'It's All Over Now' (covered by the young Rolling Stones). He experimented. Sometimes he was out-and-out silly ('Twistin' the Night Away') but even then he was soulful. Yeah, when Bob Dylan came along Sam was humbled. He realised that this little white guy had come out of nowhere singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Times They Are A Changin' whereas he, Sam Cooke, with a billboard in Times Square and the 2nd biggest seller at EMI after Elvis, couldn't get past the guy-and-girl songs. But then by that time he had had to take a stand on so many things - coming up from near-total segregation on tours in the deep south as a child through big tours that still couldn't get served at most roadhouses to segregated stadiums in Memphis as a popstar. Did he have to take a stand in his music now as well? Until his death he wondered about the wisdom of releasing his now most-famous song.
And his death? Guralnick investigates this, like everything else, thoroughly. For me it is not important, though the scenario - the prostitute, the cheap motel - was certainly not out of keeping with the rest of Sam's often lonely, sad life. (Sam Cooke was shot by the landlady of an L.A. motel when he ran out of his room without his pants chasing a hooker who had evidently stolen his stuff while he was in the shower.) Guralnick's other great achievement - the 2-part 1500-page biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love - is also a sad, sad tale. It is probably that other opus that is the greater achievement, not just for its size but because we sense that Elvis is the author's first love. But we all know so much about Elvis. Yes, Sam was a businessman, but he lived for the moment, and when he died his legacy was left in disarray, and his legend faded. Guralnick resurrects him. (The excellent Portrait of a Legend was compiled by Guralnick, as was the TV show, which I haven't seen, entitled Sam Cooke: Legend.)
At the end of Portrait of a Legend Guralnick includes a short track entitled '8 Bars of Soul', an excerpt from an interview by a then-prominent black disc jockey in which the DJ asks Sam to 'hum 8 bars of what soul represents'. And Sam lets loose, but quietly, and his melody, though mundane enough at first, seems at some point to cross into some otherworldly mode, a place beyond culture, beyond gender, beyond time, before resolving on the Major tonic that now sounds as if foreign. And the DJ says, 'Sam Cooke's yours. He'll never grow old.'
Whoa there was a woman in the Bible days
She had been sick, sick so very long...
Sam was a gospel singer. His father was a preacher, and at an early age Sam was out on the road preaching/singing with his brothers. He was a phenomenon, like a small-scale Michael Jackson, and by his mid-teens women really did reach to touch the hem of his garment as in the song Sam wrote and sang with the Soul Stirrers in 1959:
When she touched him the Saviour didn't see
But still he turned around and cried 'Somebody touched me!'
She said it was I who just wanna touch the hem of your garment
I know I'll be made whole right now
The story Peter Guralnick tells is that the Soul Stirrers were on their way to a recording session when they realised Sam didn't have a song for them. 'OK OK,' Sam says, 'give me the Bible.' His finger falls on the relevant passage and the song is written. This song is golden. It has wings, like so many of Sam's simple, romantic almost-nursery rhymes. Guralnick writes with the passion of a true fan about everything he can unearth concerning the writing and the recording of these little masterpieces. That he also goes into much detail about Sam's personal life is of less interest to me, but that he manages to place Sam convincingly and enlighteningly in the context of the gospel music and rock 'n' roll of the 1950s, the soul of the 60s and the Civil Rights movement is much more so. Strange, that these days Sam Cooke must almost inevitably be viewed through the reverse prism of history, which amplifies virtually his last recording, 'A Change is Gonna Come', to the point where it drowns out the rest of his life and career, and refracts it from this new perspective of 'protest singer'.
Was Sam Cooke a protest singer? He was whatever seemed to fly. First gospel singer, then when he saw the bucks were bigger in pop he jumped the fence, releasing 'You Send Me' (his biggest hit for years after) with his brother's name in the writing credit so as not to be snared by his old publishing commitments. With his older mentor and fellow former-gospel singer J.W. Alexander he began his own recording and publishing companies, releasing records by various groups and side-projects both pop and spiritual including the Womack Brothers' 'It's All Over Now' (covered by the young Rolling Stones). He experimented. Sometimes he was out-and-out silly ('Twistin' the Night Away') but even then he was soulful. Yeah, when Bob Dylan came along Sam was humbled. He realised that this little white guy had come out of nowhere singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Times They Are A Changin' whereas he, Sam Cooke, with a billboard in Times Square and the 2nd biggest seller at EMI after Elvis, couldn't get past the guy-and-girl songs. But then by that time he had had to take a stand on so many things - coming up from near-total segregation on tours in the deep south as a child through big tours that still couldn't get served at most roadhouses to segregated stadiums in Memphis as a popstar. Did he have to take a stand in his music now as well? Until his death he wondered about the wisdom of releasing his now most-famous song.
And his death? Guralnick investigates this, like everything else, thoroughly. For me it is not important, though the scenario - the prostitute, the cheap motel - was certainly not out of keeping with the rest of Sam's often lonely, sad life. (Sam Cooke was shot by the landlady of an L.A. motel when he ran out of his room without his pants chasing a hooker who had evidently stolen his stuff while he was in the shower.) Guralnick's other great achievement - the 2-part 1500-page biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love - is also a sad, sad tale. It is probably that other opus that is the greater achievement, not just for its size but because we sense that Elvis is the author's first love. But we all know so much about Elvis. Yes, Sam was a businessman, but he lived for the moment, and when he died his legacy was left in disarray, and his legend faded. Guralnick resurrects him. (The excellent Portrait of a Legend was compiled by Guralnick, as was the TV show, which I haven't seen, entitled Sam Cooke: Legend.)
At the end of Portrait of a Legend Guralnick includes a short track entitled '8 Bars of Soul', an excerpt from an interview by a then-prominent black disc jockey in which the DJ asks Sam to 'hum 8 bars of what soul represents'. And Sam lets loose, but quietly, and his melody, though mundane enough at first, seems at some point to cross into some otherworldly mode, a place beyond culture, beyond gender, beyond time, before resolving on the Major tonic that now sounds as if foreign. And the DJ says, 'Sam Cooke's yours. He'll never grow old.'
October 22, 2018
As with any biography, or historical book for that matter, a wise reader has to be on guard for inconsistencies, the potential for emotional spin or sway from the writer and those interviewed, and keep an awareness that this is a tale woven and relayed out of the delicate, sifting threads of memory as well as the paper facts, photos, and videos captured. What is presented is a version of the truth. Since I've been drawn so deeply into the life and music of Sam Cooke recently, it's become extremely important to me to examine every possible angle I can.
The style of writing took me awhile to latch onto. Sometimes it felt a bit information dump-y, with run on sentences so long in pages that seemed to have very little to do with Sam Cooke. I am not speaking of the civil rights and race aspects, more just facts about people that didn't seem to have much to do with the story of Sam. (Did I need to know that John Siamis and his brother made airplane parts when they moved out to California? I discovered this fact in a particularly painful run-on sentence. Not sure how this adds onto Sam's story.)
Another difficulty was reading peoples' versions of events about Sam presented as fact. I mean, I eventually came to understand that I had to read all of it with a grain of salt, and basically discard what could not be proven as one person's perspective. But does every reader know to do this, especially some of the more troubling relaying of events? I have no doubt that Sam was not perfect, because none of us are, and he had many worlds resting on his shoulders at any given time.
What I've come to do, is what Sam suggested: observation, baby. Just be the observer as best as you can. Try to understand and relate to the times and circumstances. This does not mean that I didn't cry my eyes and heart out at the end, and have to bite back my anger. Every. Time. Even though I KNOW the ending, it sucks. Every. Time.
But the best part of this book, which is greatly detailed and examines many sides and angles (almost to a fault at times when you wonder, "now why did we go here?"), is that you can begin to draft the accuracies together and the character of Sam Cooke, his creativity, ambition, business sense, intellect, musical talent, control, and charm, begins to emerge. It's like you begin to understand why you hear what you do in his music and understand it better. In fact, I basically fell in love with Sam Cooke as I have read about him. I respect his interest in people, the world, where and why he took his music in the direction he did. I wish he had written books himself and that I could read them, over and over. I wish I could watch him perform now, those eyes magnetic and charisma intact, on a stage, singing remnants of a disco Sam phase, and a collaboration in the 80s that sent him charging up to #1 on the charts. This incomplete arc of his life is painful to imagine, and yet his 33 years here were richly spent and given.
Back to the book, though, I've veered off track in my passion. The racial aspects are tough to read but vital, especially now. IF WE DON'T ACCEPT AND REALIZE WHAT IS WRONG, WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND, MUCH LESS HEAL IT. Many dreams still are swept under the rug and still festering. You can't throw a rug over a pile of shit and say, "It's gone." But if you clean it up, and plant it, shit makes the best fertilizer, you know? I consider Sam Cooke to have been extremely brave, with a sense of righteousness and proper indignation that was ready at the drop of a hat to say: "I'm not buying it. Try again."
The book depicts over and over again Sam's finest and most admirable qualities: his devotion to learning and higher education, his warmth and appeal, his desire to reach out and connect to humanity on the broadest scale possible, his generosity, his fastidious desire in the studio to get an arrangement "right" based on what he heard in his mind, his forward thinking and ability to read and recognize trends, his preternatural good looks....ok. You can already tell that despite his "flaws," Sam Cooke sent an arrow right into my heart.
The style of writing took me awhile to latch onto. Sometimes it felt a bit information dump-y, with run on sentences so long in pages that seemed to have very little to do with Sam Cooke. I am not speaking of the civil rights and race aspects, more just facts about people that didn't seem to have much to do with the story of Sam. (Did I need to know that John Siamis and his brother made airplane parts when they moved out to California? I discovered this fact in a particularly painful run-on sentence. Not sure how this adds onto Sam's story.)
Another difficulty was reading peoples' versions of events about Sam presented as fact. I mean, I eventually came to understand that I had to read all of it with a grain of salt, and basically discard what could not be proven as one person's perspective. But does every reader know to do this, especially some of the more troubling relaying of events? I have no doubt that Sam was not perfect, because none of us are, and he had many worlds resting on his shoulders at any given time.
What I've come to do, is what Sam suggested: observation, baby. Just be the observer as best as you can. Try to understand and relate to the times and circumstances. This does not mean that I didn't cry my eyes and heart out at the end, and have to bite back my anger. Every. Time. Even though I KNOW the ending, it sucks. Every. Time.
But the best part of this book, which is greatly detailed and examines many sides and angles (almost to a fault at times when you wonder, "now why did we go here?"), is that you can begin to draft the accuracies together and the character of Sam Cooke, his creativity, ambition, business sense, intellect, musical talent, control, and charm, begins to emerge. It's like you begin to understand why you hear what you do in his music and understand it better. In fact, I basically fell in love with Sam Cooke as I have read about him. I respect his interest in people, the world, where and why he took his music in the direction he did. I wish he had written books himself and that I could read them, over and over. I wish I could watch him perform now, those eyes magnetic and charisma intact, on a stage, singing remnants of a disco Sam phase, and a collaboration in the 80s that sent him charging up to #1 on the charts. This incomplete arc of his life is painful to imagine, and yet his 33 years here were richly spent and given.
Back to the book, though, I've veered off track in my passion. The racial aspects are tough to read but vital, especially now. IF WE DON'T ACCEPT AND REALIZE WHAT IS WRONG, WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND, MUCH LESS HEAL IT. Many dreams still are swept under the rug and still festering. You can't throw a rug over a pile of shit and say, "It's gone." But if you clean it up, and plant it, shit makes the best fertilizer, you know? I consider Sam Cooke to have been extremely brave, with a sense of righteousness and proper indignation that was ready at the drop of a hat to say: "I'm not buying it. Try again."
The book depicts over and over again Sam's finest and most admirable qualities: his devotion to learning and higher education, his warmth and appeal, his desire to reach out and connect to humanity on the broadest scale possible, his generosity, his fastidious desire in the studio to get an arrangement "right" based on what he heard in his mind, his forward thinking and ability to read and recognize trends, his preternatural good looks....ok. You can already tell that despite his "flaws," Sam Cooke sent an arrow right into my heart.
May 18, 2015
It’s taken me a while to read Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick, but that time is not a reflection on the quality of this biography, but due to poor time management skills, and my own writing endeavors, that took precedent after I had started reading this book.
During my late Teens, when I had finally opened my musical horizons, understanding there was more to the world of music than my limited rock ‘n’ roll favorites at the time; a friend introduced me to Sam Cooke’s greatest hits. I placed the vinyl (yes, vinyl) on my record player and discovered a singer whose tone and creativity absolutely surprised me. There is a lot of great music out there, but a limited number of times when you’re going to discover an artist whose voice, interpretation and style is wholly unique; in my lifetime, I would say Elvis Presley falls into this category, along with Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald – listening to any one of them makes you believe there’s something greater and more beautiful out there.
Having read Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, the two definitive biographies of Elvis, it was a no-brainer to delve into his one-volume biography of Sam Cooke. What Guralnick provides us with is a complex picture of a man who in many ways was impossible to define.
Cooke’s father was a minister and he came from a religious family, getting his start singing Gospel music and becoming a huge and popular force in that world with his singing group the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers. Despite his rise to notoriety singing Gospel music across the States, Cooke and many of those who did, also indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle, their fame giving them ample opportunity to seduce young women; Cooke did, and from an early age, seemingly sired many illegitimate children. As Guralnick tells it, Cooke was a driven man, who took the risk of turning his back on the Gospel world to embrace the Pop world, and did so with much success – but he also did so ruthlessly. Despite his wholesome public image, Cooke was never faithful to any one woman, and, when he needed to be in business, put his own interests over others. And while this was so, he also demonstrated a sense of loyalty to others as well – in other words he was a complex human being.
Guralnick paints a fascinating picture of an interesting man, and in telling his tale, also educates us about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and ‘60’s; whether Cooke or other Negro artists like him wanted to or not, they were confronted with the racism of their day and expected to take a stand.
Dream Boogie humanizes Sam Cooke, while his music seems Heaven sent. While he is not as well remembered as some other performers of his day, and did see his life cut short in a tragic, pointless way, this is a wonderful biography of a man, whom if you have a deep love of good music, you must seek out and listen to, because no matter who or what he was, and how we choose to view or judge his actions throughout his life, his music is his true legacy – and what a legacy that is.
During my late Teens, when I had finally opened my musical horizons, understanding there was more to the world of music than my limited rock ‘n’ roll favorites at the time; a friend introduced me to Sam Cooke’s greatest hits. I placed the vinyl (yes, vinyl) on my record player and discovered a singer whose tone and creativity absolutely surprised me. There is a lot of great music out there, but a limited number of times when you’re going to discover an artist whose voice, interpretation and style is wholly unique; in my lifetime, I would say Elvis Presley falls into this category, along with Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald – listening to any one of them makes you believe there’s something greater and more beautiful out there.
Having read Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, the two definitive biographies of Elvis, it was a no-brainer to delve into his one-volume biography of Sam Cooke. What Guralnick provides us with is a complex picture of a man who in many ways was impossible to define.
Cooke’s father was a minister and he came from a religious family, getting his start singing Gospel music and becoming a huge and popular force in that world with his singing group the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers. Despite his rise to notoriety singing Gospel music across the States, Cooke and many of those who did, also indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle, their fame giving them ample opportunity to seduce young women; Cooke did, and from an early age, seemingly sired many illegitimate children. As Guralnick tells it, Cooke was a driven man, who took the risk of turning his back on the Gospel world to embrace the Pop world, and did so with much success – but he also did so ruthlessly. Despite his wholesome public image, Cooke was never faithful to any one woman, and, when he needed to be in business, put his own interests over others. And while this was so, he also demonstrated a sense of loyalty to others as well – in other words he was a complex human being.
Guralnick paints a fascinating picture of an interesting man, and in telling his tale, also educates us about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and ‘60’s; whether Cooke or other Negro artists like him wanted to or not, they were confronted with the racism of their day and expected to take a stand.
Dream Boogie humanizes Sam Cooke, while his music seems Heaven sent. While he is not as well remembered as some other performers of his day, and did see his life cut short in a tragic, pointless way, this is a wonderful biography of a man, whom if you have a deep love of good music, you must seek out and listen to, because no matter who or what he was, and how we choose to view or judge his actions throughout his life, his music is his true legacy – and what a legacy that is.
September 15, 2012
this book not only gave a good look at the life of sam cooke, but also the black gospel music "quartet" movement and the story behind how of many of these gospel stars moved on to soul, rock and roll, r&b careers.
sam cooke was to be commended for demanding more ownership of his work and for starting a record company long before most other african american singers.
sam cooke was to be commended for demanding more ownership of his work and for starting a record company long before most other african american singers.
October 16, 2011
This book is extensive. I almost know too much about Sam Cooke after reading all 600 some pages. Rather, I know more than I wanted to know about everyone else in his circle from the time he was born. But I do love when Guralnick takes a detour to talk about other musicians like Jackie Wilson or Little Richard. Some of the stories from these package tours they went on are just unreal. There's also really good research into more obscure musicians, dee jays, and behind the scene players.
I've always felt ambivalent about Sam Cooke. Some of his work is so bland and corny and yet some of it is raw soul genius. I feel he was almost cursed by his talent. This book drives home the point that Cooke was so good looking and had such a great voice from early childhood that he could, without effort, do almost anything he wanted musically, get any girl, charm anyone and get away with anything; which isn't as interesting to me as someone who's flawed and has to make the best of it.
I've always felt ambivalent about Sam Cooke. Some of his work is so bland and corny and yet some of it is raw soul genius. I feel he was almost cursed by his talent. This book drives home the point that Cooke was so good looking and had such a great voice from early childhood that he could, without effort, do almost anything he wanted musically, get any girl, charm anyone and get away with anything; which isn't as interesting to me as someone who's flawed and has to make the best of it.
Read
February 5, 2009Guralnick, the veteran music biographer best known for his two-volume study of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, combines meticulous research with a passion for his subject in the most complete and insightful biography of Cooke to date. Critics roundly praise the depth of Guralnick's reporting and his willingness to track down previously unused sources (the book was more than a decade in the making), though some comment that the author's exhaustive attention to detail at times slows an otherwise engaging narrative. Guralnick succeeds, however, in shedding new light on a short, brilliant life defined by its complexity and its contradictions.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
March 5, 2021
How bout it for SAM COOKE! How bout it!
I like how Peter Guralnick calls Sam Cooke's life/career a "triumph," which emphasizes his incalculable influence on music and his impressive (if sadly limited... more on this later) body of work. I wonder though if Guralnick's first drafts didn't have a different title-- something like "Dream Boogie: the Enigma of Sam Cooke." Even by the end of this unfathomably well-sourced, hyper-detailed 700-page biography, it's hard to say just who exactly Sam Cooke IS. More curiously, the mysteries of his life and death don't take the form of a Rashomon-style "different people saw different things" deal. Almost everyone Guralnick interviewed (and he interviewed EVERYBODY, from close musical associates to distant family members to random fans who got Sam's autograph in Cleveland in 1958) says the same stuff about Sam: that he was smooth, confident but not cocky, incredibly brilliant, occasionally temperamental but mainly warm and funny, with the ability to make you, as listener or acquaintance, feel like the only person in the room. The person Sam was, in other words, was the uncommonly handsome, suave-as-fuck, ladies' man's man grinning at you in every picture of him ever taken (in none of which he ever looks like anything but the coolest man in the shot). Okay, so maybe that guy is not the sort you'd expect to call everyone "fucker" (a word in every other line somebody remembers Sam saying), or to have dozens of women lining up outside his bedroom for five minute quickies, or to insult a cop, or befriend a cast of characters including great heroes like Muhammad Ali and notorious villains like Allen Klein. But even those perhaps more unsavory or more surprising elements of Sam's character were evidently well-known by his associates, and they comfortably cohere with the larger story that Guralnick is trying to tell.
And yet, even with all these details, Sam Cooke remains sort of unknowable, to us. His peers talked about it too: how he'd clearly be feeling something, but not saying it-- how he seemed to operate on another plane than mere mortals. Certainly, this "god-like" quality is detectable in the best of Sam's music (i.e. "A Change is Gonna Come," the entirety of the "One Night Stand" live album and the "Night Beat" studio LP, selected moments from his pop career, and much of his Soul Stirrers work (see below for more on this)) which seems like it was beamed from heaven. But his distance from "us" is also seen in the sadder, less distinguished parts of Sam's story, like his treatment of his wife, Barbara, and his bizarre, shockingly under-investigated death. Is the deeper, darker Sam we only fleetingly get a glimpse of the "real" Sam?
That we still don't really know is what makes "Dream Boogie" both tantalizing and frustrating. At certain points, it's hard to say if this is the doing/fault of Sam or Peter Guralnick. Some of the things Guralnick finds most beguiling about Sam are not necessarily the things that first spring to mind when you hear, oh, "That's Where It's At" for the first time. Certainly, Sam's drive-- for artistic achievement, sure, but also popularity and financial success-- would be a part of any decent Cooke biography. But Guralnick spends probably about two hundred pages here on Sam's business dealings-- his ins-and-outs with Specialty and RCA and all kinds of producers and managers and flunkies-- that don't necessarily make you wanna, like, move. While there's definitely some inspirational value in watching Sam tell off a bunch of white record label losers who have no idea what to do with a truly unprecedented talent (and eventually start his own indie, the pioneering SAR), there's also something sort of depressing (to me, anyway) to see Mr. Soul being reduced to, oh, a Black Capitalist. Again: hard to say if that's Guralnick or Cooke's doing (or mine!). There are definitely places in the book where Guralnick makes his disappointment known. Like, Jesus Christ, Sam: fuck the Copacabana! You are SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER than the FUCKING COPA! Those supper club assholes don't deserve you, they deserve fucking Pat Boone!
I should say though that "Dream Boogie" does a great job of putting Sam in a social context, and helping you to see how his decisions were constantly influenced/motivated/derailed by the expectations of a very racist, very dumb, very greedy and short-sighted mid-century American society. Even if the man remains something of a puzzle, his times are vividly captured by Guralnick. The gospel scene of the 40s and 50s, the early days of rock and soul, the Southern RnB circuit, the network of local, bizarro rhyming DJs, the Civil Rights movement: all of it is rendered in careful but loving detail. Any book with hilarious/fascinating cameos from Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Etta James, the Beatles, Fidel Castro, and James Brown is obviously worth it for those appearances alone. But Guralnick's book, even after 700 pages, somehow still leaves you sort of baffled, by the end. There's a sense of something... unfulfilled...
Again, probably just me really upset about the fact that fucking Sam Cooke was murdered and a couple of lie detector tests were the entirety of case for calling the act "justifiable." I mean, come on!
Oh, and while I'm here: I listened to a lot of Sam and his contemporaries while reading this one. Again, like this book, his work is kinda... spotty, alternating between really stirring soul (!!) and some distressingly perfunctory showtunes. The models for Black success back then were Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte, and though Sam was a genius, he was nevertheless unquestionably a product of his time. Anyway, I don't recommend going to the albums with Sam, except for maybe "Night Beat" and "Ain't that Good News." A good Soul Stirrers comp and a good solo-era singles comp will get you there, for the studio stuff (and some of those songs just repay re-listens forever... I mean, the guy was a GREAT singer! So much texture! So much nuance! So much soul!). But the real one that everybody must get, the one that most immediately connects him to the energy and feeling I associate with, well, all good and interesting music, but especially rock music, is "One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club." Half an hour of like three chord bangers, feat King Curtis on the saxophone. Seriously one of the ten best records ever done.
I like how Peter Guralnick calls Sam Cooke's life/career a "triumph," which emphasizes his incalculable influence on music and his impressive (if sadly limited... more on this later) body of work. I wonder though if Guralnick's first drafts didn't have a different title-- something like "Dream Boogie: the Enigma of Sam Cooke." Even by the end of this unfathomably well-sourced, hyper-detailed 700-page biography, it's hard to say just who exactly Sam Cooke IS. More curiously, the mysteries of his life and death don't take the form of a Rashomon-style "different people saw different things" deal. Almost everyone Guralnick interviewed (and he interviewed EVERYBODY, from close musical associates to distant family members to random fans who got Sam's autograph in Cleveland in 1958) says the same stuff about Sam: that he was smooth, confident but not cocky, incredibly brilliant, occasionally temperamental but mainly warm and funny, with the ability to make you, as listener or acquaintance, feel like the only person in the room. The person Sam was, in other words, was the uncommonly handsome, suave-as-fuck, ladies' man's man grinning at you in every picture of him ever taken (in none of which he ever looks like anything but the coolest man in the shot). Okay, so maybe that guy is not the sort you'd expect to call everyone "fucker" (a word in every other line somebody remembers Sam saying), or to have dozens of women lining up outside his bedroom for five minute quickies, or to insult a cop, or befriend a cast of characters including great heroes like Muhammad Ali and notorious villains like Allen Klein. But even those perhaps more unsavory or more surprising elements of Sam's character were evidently well-known by his associates, and they comfortably cohere with the larger story that Guralnick is trying to tell.
And yet, even with all these details, Sam Cooke remains sort of unknowable, to us. His peers talked about it too: how he'd clearly be feeling something, but not saying it-- how he seemed to operate on another plane than mere mortals. Certainly, this "god-like" quality is detectable in the best of Sam's music (i.e. "A Change is Gonna Come," the entirety of the "One Night Stand" live album and the "Night Beat" studio LP, selected moments from his pop career, and much of his Soul Stirrers work (see below for more on this)) which seems like it was beamed from heaven. But his distance from "us" is also seen in the sadder, less distinguished parts of Sam's story, like his treatment of his wife, Barbara, and his bizarre, shockingly under-investigated death. Is the deeper, darker Sam we only fleetingly get a glimpse of the "real" Sam?
That we still don't really know is what makes "Dream Boogie" both tantalizing and frustrating. At certain points, it's hard to say if this is the doing/fault of Sam or Peter Guralnick. Some of the things Guralnick finds most beguiling about Sam are not necessarily the things that first spring to mind when you hear, oh, "That's Where It's At" for the first time. Certainly, Sam's drive-- for artistic achievement, sure, but also popularity and financial success-- would be a part of any decent Cooke biography. But Guralnick spends probably about two hundred pages here on Sam's business dealings-- his ins-and-outs with Specialty and RCA and all kinds of producers and managers and flunkies-- that don't necessarily make you wanna, like, move. While there's definitely some inspirational value in watching Sam tell off a bunch of white record label losers who have no idea what to do with a truly unprecedented talent (and eventually start his own indie, the pioneering SAR), there's also something sort of depressing (to me, anyway) to see Mr. Soul being reduced to, oh, a Black Capitalist. Again: hard to say if that's Guralnick or Cooke's doing (or mine!). There are definitely places in the book where Guralnick makes his disappointment known. Like, Jesus Christ, Sam: fuck the Copacabana! You are SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER than the FUCKING COPA! Those supper club assholes don't deserve you, they deserve fucking Pat Boone!
I should say though that "Dream Boogie" does a great job of putting Sam in a social context, and helping you to see how his decisions were constantly influenced/motivated/derailed by the expectations of a very racist, very dumb, very greedy and short-sighted mid-century American society. Even if the man remains something of a puzzle, his times are vividly captured by Guralnick. The gospel scene of the 40s and 50s, the early days of rock and soul, the Southern RnB circuit, the network of local, bizarro rhyming DJs, the Civil Rights movement: all of it is rendered in careful but loving detail. Any book with hilarious/fascinating cameos from Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Etta James, the Beatles, Fidel Castro, and James Brown is obviously worth it for those appearances alone. But Guralnick's book, even after 700 pages, somehow still leaves you sort of baffled, by the end. There's a sense of something... unfulfilled...
Again, probably just me really upset about the fact that fucking Sam Cooke was murdered and a couple of lie detector tests were the entirety of case for calling the act "justifiable." I mean, come on!
Oh, and while I'm here: I listened to a lot of Sam and his contemporaries while reading this one. Again, like this book, his work is kinda... spotty, alternating between really stirring soul (!!) and some distressingly perfunctory showtunes. The models for Black success back then were Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte, and though Sam was a genius, he was nevertheless unquestionably a product of his time. Anyway, I don't recommend going to the albums with Sam, except for maybe "Night Beat" and "Ain't that Good News." A good Soul Stirrers comp and a good solo-era singles comp will get you there, for the studio stuff (and some of those songs just repay re-listens forever... I mean, the guy was a GREAT singer! So much texture! So much nuance! So much soul!). But the real one that everybody must get, the one that most immediately connects him to the energy and feeling I associate with, well, all good and interesting music, but especially rock music, is "One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club." Half an hour of like three chord bangers, feat King Curtis on the saxophone. Seriously one of the ten best records ever done.
October 14, 2024
It goes without saying that you have to really love Sam Cooke to like this book! It’s perhaps a little too exhaustive at times - the whirl of session dates and musicians is hard to keep up with - but the overall effect is to transport you to a time of creativity and possibility for gospel, pop and soul musicians in the late 50s and early 60s. The horror of segregation and racism hangs over everything and you really get a sense of how this period of time and Sam Cooke changed the music world. Tragic.
March 6, 2015
I knew the tragic ending was coming but I was still stunned and saddened when it came. Cooke accomplished so much both as a musician and as a businessman and community leader before his death in a pointless and avoidable nightmare. He had just finished some of his best work and was boldly charting new directions -- his plans included an album of hard core blues and an album of ragtime era pop songs by black composers. He also had his finger in the wind and his ear to the ground: he was close to Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, was planning a benefit for MLK; he modeled "Shake" on Sly Stone's very first production, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was his response to Bob Dylan, he was watching the Beatles, Stones and Animals closely and pushing the Valentinos/Womack Brothers to carve out a niche as a guitar-driven black combo.
All that makes his death so much more awful and heart-breaking. His own personal failings and tragedies -- a string of losing paternity suits had left him a customer of high-end prostitutes; the death of his son was the final straw alienating he and his long-suffering wife; his refusal to ever back down from a confrontation and sense of immortality & invulnerability because he was Sam Cooke; are all well established by Guralnick long in advance of the final tragedy. Cooke's end involved a drunken encounter with a hooker who specialized in rolling johns, and an avoidable brawl with a no-nonsense hotel manager with a gun who panicked when a semi-nude Cooke smashed down her office door and attacked her...made me think of the death of Orpheus.
Learned about a lot of great music here too: the pre and post-Cooke Soul Stirrers, the Valentinos, the Five Blind Boys, Jesse Blevin, L.C. Cooke and much more on contemporaries and predecessors like Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Little Willie John, Lloyd Price and Ray Charles. Plus tons of stuff about music biz associates like Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, Allen Klein, Bumps Blackwell, Specialty Records, and a great account of an LA party where the band was Sam, Johnny Rivers, Phil Everly and Jerry Allison of the Crickets.
All that makes his death so much more awful and heart-breaking. His own personal failings and tragedies -- a string of losing paternity suits had left him a customer of high-end prostitutes; the death of his son was the final straw alienating he and his long-suffering wife; his refusal to ever back down from a confrontation and sense of immortality & invulnerability because he was Sam Cooke; are all well established by Guralnick long in advance of the final tragedy. Cooke's end involved a drunken encounter with a hooker who specialized in rolling johns, and an avoidable brawl with a no-nonsense hotel manager with a gun who panicked when a semi-nude Cooke smashed down her office door and attacked her...made me think of the death of Orpheus.
Learned about a lot of great music here too: the pre and post-Cooke Soul Stirrers, the Valentinos, the Five Blind Boys, Jesse Blevin, L.C. Cooke and much more on contemporaries and predecessors like Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Little Willie John, Lloyd Price and Ray Charles. Plus tons of stuff about music biz associates like Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, Allen Klein, Bumps Blackwell, Specialty Records, and a great account of an LA party where the band was Sam, Johnny Rivers, Phil Everly and Jerry Allison of the Crickets.
October 27, 2014
The reviews of this book suggests a definitive assessment of Sam Cooke’s life, but overall it is simply a weighty tome of poorly sourced, regurgitated rumors, old information, misspelled names, and dialogue and thoughts by principals made up from whole cloth. If the reader is completely new to the subject of Sam Cooke then perhaps it will not be a total waste of time, or money. However, for those familiar with his story the only passion this book engenders is irritation. It seems to be nothing more than a cut and paste job of past articles written by authors with a greater depth and appreciation of their subject. What is even more irksome is the shallowness in how the man’s still controversial death is covered. It is treated almost as an afterthought, even though, sadly, Sam Cooke’s violent end has become over the years a very salient part of his legacy. Decades later and all we’re told is even less than what was said days after the event. But as so few books have been written about this exceptionally talented musician perhaps, as the saying goes, “Beggars can’t be choosy.” The verdict: Nothing new to see here.
September 27, 2019
Peter Guralnick has composed a biography of unique soul singer Sam Cooke that is rich in detail and nuance and, like all his books, strong in literary pedigree and steeped in meaning and strong in its grasp of history. Sam Cooke lived, worked and died in one of the most turbulent and violent periods of American history and the book reflects on his role within that history, touching on many historical events of that period and how he was both shaped by them and helped to shape them. A beautifully crafted and important book about an important musical figure. - BH.
February 26, 2017
Too many names and side stories. I wanted to read Sam Cooke's story. What I got was a well-researched treatise on the gospel music groups in the Chicago area while Sam was coming up. I'm sure those groups deserve their due but I found the details about all these other groups distracting and, boring. It's Sam Cooke's music I dig and Sam's name is on the cover, tell me more of HIS story. I put the book down after 157 pages. Ugh.
June 12, 2008
His two volume set about Elvis was fantastic, but this is probably Guralnick's best work. Cooke's smooth voice belied a complex and complicated man, and Guralnick captures that existential struggle without ever being half as pretentious as this sentence.
February 16, 2017
The most comprehensive autobiography I have read. Guralnick doesn't just go into Cooke's roots but paints a detailed back drop of the American gospel scene and Chicago RnB in general, very very good.
January 25, 2026
Peter Guralnick is a truly remarkable writer, biographer, and music historian. His two-volume set on the life of Elvis Presley is a staggering achievement. His other works include Lost Highway, Feel Like Going Home, and his latest, The Colonel and The King, among many others. His prose reads so easily, and is heavily influenced by David Halberstam. He also has a knack for capturing the voices of the characters he writes about.
Written in 2005, Dream Boogie is the story of Sam Cooke, whose music and influence continue to this day, more than a half century after his untimely and bizarre death at the age of 33. Guralnick explores Cooke’s church upbringing and gospel music roots, and captures life in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood vividly.
He then goes into Cooke’s decision to leap from gospel to pop music, after watching his music label mate Rev. Richard Penniman (stage name Little Richard) do the same thing flawlessly. And he tries to weave the “love story” of Sam and future wife Barbara Campbell throughout. There’s only one hitch: no matter how hard Guralnick tries, as the reader I never bought the premise that their relationship was a bonafide love story. They seemed to tolerate each other.
Guralnick then details (at times ad nauseum) the rise of Sam Cooke to RCA’s #2 recording star, behind Elvis himself. It’s very interesting in spots, and unbearably repetitive in others.
But Cooke’s influence on pop music was undeniable. I didn’t know he wrote a lot of his own songs, including “You Send Me”, “Chain Gang”, and “A Change Is Gonna Come”. I didn’t know he was angling to be another Berry Gordy, with his SAR Records and his efforts to sign acts like Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls, and young unknowns Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, and Aretha Franklin (all three were completely in love with him as young teenagers).
I didn’t know his manager at the end was the evil Allen Klein, who would go on to rip off both the Rolling Stones and later the Beatles! I didn’t know that he and Muhammad Ali were such good friends.
Finally, Guralnick seems to gloss over the details of his shocking shooting death at the Hacienda Motel in LA. I get it— the focus should be his music — but that raised so many questions, which will likely never be answered. The book itself was well written, but he has done so much better work.
Written in 2005, Dream Boogie is the story of Sam Cooke, whose music and influence continue to this day, more than a half century after his untimely and bizarre death at the age of 33. Guralnick explores Cooke’s church upbringing and gospel music roots, and captures life in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood vividly.
He then goes into Cooke’s decision to leap from gospel to pop music, after watching his music label mate Rev. Richard Penniman (stage name Little Richard) do the same thing flawlessly. And he tries to weave the “love story” of Sam and future wife Barbara Campbell throughout. There’s only one hitch: no matter how hard Guralnick tries, as the reader I never bought the premise that their relationship was a bonafide love story. They seemed to tolerate each other.
Guralnick then details (at times ad nauseum) the rise of Sam Cooke to RCA’s #2 recording star, behind Elvis himself. It’s very interesting in spots, and unbearably repetitive in others.
But Cooke’s influence on pop music was undeniable. I didn’t know he wrote a lot of his own songs, including “You Send Me”, “Chain Gang”, and “A Change Is Gonna Come”. I didn’t know he was angling to be another Berry Gordy, with his SAR Records and his efforts to sign acts like Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls, and young unknowns Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, and Aretha Franklin (all three were completely in love with him as young teenagers).
I didn’t know his manager at the end was the evil Allen Klein, who would go on to rip off both the Rolling Stones and later the Beatles! I didn’t know that he and Muhammad Ali were such good friends.
Finally, Guralnick seems to gloss over the details of his shocking shooting death at the Hacienda Motel in LA. I get it— the focus should be his music — but that raised so many questions, which will likely never be answered. The book itself was well written, but he has done so much better work.
March 23, 2022
I believe I was the wrong audience for this book. I was wanting to read a biography that focused on Cooke's personal life and the inspiration behind his songs. Instead, I found this book hard to follow, because it was so heavily focused on the music industry - the people that produced his music, copyrighting disputes, contracts, etc. Many of the business aspects of the music went over my head, and I found it difficult to follow. The actual inspirations of his songs and his personal life were just little snippets woven in the mix of all of the industry talk.
February 23, 2022
In 700 pages I don't think I know anymore about Sam Cooke the man, than when I started but for those that love intimate detail of recording sessions, over gossip, this book is immaculately researched.
Cooke died at the point of his life where he was undoubtedly making some of the best music of his life and becoming more and more a political threat. Conspiracy aside, what if.
Cooke died at the point of his life where he was undoubtedly making some of the best music of his life and becoming more and more a political threat. Conspiracy aside, what if.
May 20, 2024
An in-depth, meticulously written biography about Sam Cooke. Well researched and foot noted with no stone unturned. There is so much information about the music business, popular culture, civil rights, as well as other artists of the day. It was a tragic ending of an artist who died at the peak of his career. Guralnick did an excellent job.
Read
August 5, 2010I was a big fan of Gurlanick's books on Elvis, and I heard him talking about Cooke's "Change is Gonna Come" single on one of those NPR segments about single songs that are important for some reason. And since then, the idea of reading this book has kind of simmered, and since I've been summered, I thought I'd give it a shot.
I didn't think as much of it as I did the Elvis books-- I don't feel like Gurlanick really penetrated the core of Cooke's psyche as well as he did Elvis, whatever that means, and the result is that there remains a significant enigma at the heart of the book. I'm willing to cut Gurlanick some slack-- after all, the Elvis story is more well-known to me by this one, and I came to it with certain expectations and understandings about Elvis' place in our culture that I don't have with Cooke.... I think you could make an argument that I missed out because I couldn't fully comprehend, for cultural reasons, the way Cooke's experience parallels and illuminates the black experience in this country, and as a result didn't find the book all that moving. But even controlling for that, I think Guralnick just didn't have the same kind of handle on his subject here that he needed for a book as long as this.
And it is long, and pretty dense as well, so this took me a really long time to read. Not that that itself is a bad thing, but I think it suggests a certain level of resistance on my part to the way Guralnick tells this story. It doesn't help, either, that I kept thinking, I wish I were reading about Jackie Wilson, or Hank Ballard, instead of Cooke.
That said, the simple facts on the ground here are shocking-- I understood intellectually the reality of segregated hotels and the way they affected black performers on the road in the south, but the sheer everydayness of it as its presented here made my head spin. And if you want a really intriguing portrait of the black community at mid-century, in many splendid dimensions, this book has a lot to offer. I think the treatment of the culture that Cooke lived in was really interesting-- recognizable, of course, but still fresh and surprising enough to keep my interest. I just wish I felt that strongly about the figure at the center of this bio.
I didn't think as much of it as I did the Elvis books-- I don't feel like Gurlanick really penetrated the core of Cooke's psyche as well as he did Elvis, whatever that means, and the result is that there remains a significant enigma at the heart of the book. I'm willing to cut Gurlanick some slack-- after all, the Elvis story is more well-known to me by this one, and I came to it with certain expectations and understandings about Elvis' place in our culture that I don't have with Cooke.... I think you could make an argument that I missed out because I couldn't fully comprehend, for cultural reasons, the way Cooke's experience parallels and illuminates the black experience in this country, and as a result didn't find the book all that moving. But even controlling for that, I think Guralnick just didn't have the same kind of handle on his subject here that he needed for a book as long as this.
And it is long, and pretty dense as well, so this took me a really long time to read. Not that that itself is a bad thing, but I think it suggests a certain level of resistance on my part to the way Guralnick tells this story. It doesn't help, either, that I kept thinking, I wish I were reading about Jackie Wilson, or Hank Ballard, instead of Cooke.
That said, the simple facts on the ground here are shocking-- I understood intellectually the reality of segregated hotels and the way they affected black performers on the road in the south, but the sheer everydayness of it as its presented here made my head spin. And if you want a really intriguing portrait of the black community at mid-century, in many splendid dimensions, this book has a lot to offer. I think the treatment of the culture that Cooke lived in was really interesting-- recognizable, of course, but still fresh and surprising enough to keep my interest. I just wish I felt that strongly about the figure at the center of this bio.
February 5, 2009
Sam possesses one of my all time favorite voices. There was just a pureness and clean smooth delivery with the lines he sang and the emotion he brought to each lyric. To me it seems like he never made a bad choice with every note he sang and the way he chose to phrase it. I am a huge fan, so when my friend bought me this book I was really interested to learn more about him.
I started reading this book a couple of years ago and had a hard time getting into it. At times it feels like an encyclopedia. The names, dates, times, read heavily on the pages, making the act of reading sometimes burdensome. So, about 100 pages in on my first attempt I just stopped reading. I was suffocating under the weight of the names of all of the gospel groups, the tour managers, promoters, girlfriends, the names of the people whose houses they stayed at. I like to enjoy my reading and this was not an enjoyable book for me.
This year, after really starting to appreciate Sam more, I decided to try again. I was determined to finish it or at least get to the part where he broke away from gospel and went pop.
It was a little easier this time, but it was never a completely smooth read. Sam, was undeniably a charismatic and extremely interesting individual with an equally interesting life. The book does an excellent job of creating a clear picture of the people, time and environment that he existed in. There are nice guest appearances by Hendrix, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Gladys Knight, and basically anyone that was on the scene at that time. I feel like I can't be mad that a biography has too many facts and historical details. I mean that is much better than being too sparse but it does feel like you are reading a history book. So if you are looking for a page turner this is not for you. If you are looking for a richly detailed, historical recounting of a interesting man and the time that he inhabited then you should give it a try.
I started reading this book a couple of years ago and had a hard time getting into it. At times it feels like an encyclopedia. The names, dates, times, read heavily on the pages, making the act of reading sometimes burdensome. So, about 100 pages in on my first attempt I just stopped reading. I was suffocating under the weight of the names of all of the gospel groups, the tour managers, promoters, girlfriends, the names of the people whose houses they stayed at. I like to enjoy my reading and this was not an enjoyable book for me.
This year, after really starting to appreciate Sam more, I decided to try again. I was determined to finish it or at least get to the part where he broke away from gospel and went pop.
It was a little easier this time, but it was never a completely smooth read. Sam, was undeniably a charismatic and extremely interesting individual with an equally interesting life. The book does an excellent job of creating a clear picture of the people, time and environment that he existed in. There are nice guest appearances by Hendrix, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Gladys Knight, and basically anyone that was on the scene at that time. I feel like I can't be mad that a biography has too many facts and historical details. I mean that is much better than being too sparse but it does feel like you are reading a history book. So if you are looking for a page turner this is not for you. If you are looking for a richly detailed, historical recounting of a interesting man and the time that he inhabited then you should give it a try.
November 9, 2007
If you've read Guralnick's two volume Elvis biography (and you absolutely must) then you know the author is nothing but thorough in dealing with his subjects. Dream Boogie is no different as Guralnick takes the reader on an almost day by day journey of Sam Cooke's life over the course of six hundred plus pages. If you are like myself and have trouble remembering loads of characters this can get a bit confusing and it can become easy to get bogged down in the petty details but if you let yourself find the bigger picture that the author has created then the story is well worth the many pages you will turn in order to reach the end.
Cooke rose to fame at a time when a white musician had no problem touring (unless he carried illicit materials along with him) but for anyone else touring, and dealing with a record company for that matter, were not easy. Guralnick draws a lot on this as well as the uprising of the civil rights movement and MLK, Malcolm X and Cassius Clay make appearances often throughout the story as these men were all relegated to spending the night in the same places as Cooke. It's a fascinating portrait of the time and its merging with music and the music business is something I found deliriously entertaining.
Regarding the music, all I will write is that Guralnick repeatedly describes a Sam Cooke show as the man standing still, singing while the house is shaking all around him. You can just about picture what the scene would've felt like and no matter how many times it is written about it is something to be enjoyed. I kept finding myself thinking about that scene over and over throughout the day.
Cooke rose to fame at a time when a white musician had no problem touring (unless he carried illicit materials along with him) but for anyone else touring, and dealing with a record company for that matter, were not easy. Guralnick draws a lot on this as well as the uprising of the civil rights movement and MLK, Malcolm X and Cassius Clay make appearances often throughout the story as these men were all relegated to spending the night in the same places as Cooke. It's a fascinating portrait of the time and its merging with music and the music business is something I found deliriously entertaining.
Regarding the music, all I will write is that Guralnick repeatedly describes a Sam Cooke show as the man standing still, singing while the house is shaking all around him. You can just about picture what the scene would've felt like and no matter how many times it is written about it is something to be enjoyed. I kept finding myself thinking about that scene over and over throughout the day.
November 3, 2011
I enjoyed the Sam Cooke story and the history around his place
in the musical era that became rock 'n roll. The author does a
good & thorough, job telling us about Sam, and also delves into
the savage machinations of the music industry - how you can have
a hit record and only make a few bucks. Other music groups and
artists also get a lot of attention, some of the fun is the name
dropping, Sony Bono as an intern, Gladys Knight a 15 year old on
the road, Jimi Hendrix wanting, and not getting, a backup guitar
job; how performing 'Pop' music was a risk to your career at the
time, you're old fans might not take you back if you ventured
into rocknroll and failed.
A fun thing to do is as you're reading about a certain tune, pull
it up on youtube and watch Sam, or other artists mentioned in action.
There's something for everyone in this biography because there's
everything in this biography.
As others have noted, whoa! this is a long book. If Cooke is ever
ordained as the era's Beethoven, well then this book will be the
Bible on him. You start to wonder how do you get 600 pages on
a pop singer? Occasionally you feel the author could have left
out passages on how one of Sam's entourage had cheesecake after
dinner.
May 21, 2014
Peter Guralnick is one of the very best rock biographers. I have read a few of Peter's books with his two part Elvis biograpy (of which I only read the first volume. I hear that, in the second half of the book Elvis life does not turn out so well). "Dream Boogie" has got to be the definitive biography of a man who, at the time of his death, was arguably the biggest black recording artist in the world. (You can make an argument for Ray Charles too but Sam was at least his equal in popularity). "Dream Boogie" starts off with Sam's rise to the top of the gospel music field. Probably the slowest section of the book, you will come away with more knowledge that particular world than anyone needs to know. Sam's big jump to secular music is my favorite part of the book. Looking back with 50 years perspective, it is amazing how much noise this move generated. Finally, Guralnick delves into the story of Sam's mysterious death, confirming that Sam's last words were indeed "Lady, you shot me!" That section of the book also gives us a fascinating glimpse of the start of the career of key Beatle figure Allan Klein.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
January 30, 2017
I'm giving this book 4 stars inseated of 5, because although it's an excellent book, you dont need it in order to get the most out of Sam's music. In fact some parts of it, especially those relating to Sam's dealings with women, might actually put you off the man and his (to me, outstanding) work. It's very strong on the business and financial side of things - a niche readership for that I would have thought. If you're interested in the civil rights movement of the 60s, the supporting cast looms large, including Malcolm X, Dr King and Cassius Clay. Some of the details about the way Sam and his band were treated in the South are very disturbing and illuminating, and you wonder at how the hard shell this must have formed around him never manifested itself in his resolutely positve and confident music. It seems we've come a long way in the past 40-odd years, socially and sonically, although if you do go back to those records after reading, you'll find there's not much made since which can hold a candle to his output, which ended tragically and somewhat sordidly in 1963.
January 22, 2010
Gets a lot of points for being exhaustive (the book doesn't cover every song he did as much as it covers every recording session he ever did, with critique--which is awesome,) and reporting neutrally; on the latter, I mean that it never tries to speculate on a motive for Sam Cooke acting the way he does, at least up until his death. This wasn't a book like The Executioner's Song, where removing the authorial presence is the only way to process information, but it's cool that the book assumes you'll know that wife-beating is horrible, that you'll figure out the dissonance between how he presented himself and how he acted through everybody's anecdotes.
One bonus star for the anecdotes bleeding into other anecdotes; you get Bobby Womack's young life, a few years of Little Richard and his sex bible, some choice James Brown anecdotes that were clearly too awesome not to include.
One bonus star for the anecdotes bleeding into other anecdotes; you get Bobby Womack's young life, a few years of Little Richard and his sex bible, some choice James Brown anecdotes that were clearly too awesome not to include.
July 11, 2012
It's awfully long, but for a book this thoroughly researched and detailed, surprisingly readable. It's not dry and boring, at least not for the most part. It's easy to get lost in the maze of managers, promoters, distributors, agents, producers, musicians, bandleaders, etc. covered in the book. (One thing I found confusing: J.W. Alexander is a prominent figure. Sometimes he's referred to as Alexander. Sometimes as J.W. Sometimes as Alex.)
Also, I was surprised that Guralnick didn't spend more time exploring the various conspiracy theories and irregularities surrounding Cooke's death. For a book so thorough, he basically acknowledges that some people have alternate theories, and then moves on.
But for a comprehensive and readable handling of one of the most intriguing figures in soul music. It just might be more comprehensive that some are looking for.
Also, I was surprised that Guralnick didn't spend more time exploring the various conspiracy theories and irregularities surrounding Cooke's death. For a book so thorough, he basically acknowledges that some people have alternate theories, and then moves on.
But for a comprehensive and readable handling of one of the most intriguing figures in soul music. It just might be more comprehensive that some are looking for.
July 6, 2016
I wanted to learn more about music icon Sam Cooke. I came to the book already a fan with some understanding of his life, death, and times, and certainly a deep appreciation for his music. I wish I had seen him perform. This biography told me more than I ever wanted to know about the intricacies of the music business at the time, and less than I hoped about the person, Sam Cooke. Other than repeating the he was elusive and detached, and gossiping about his many lovers and his relationship with his first love and wife when he died and what she did after he died...yadayadayada.....Guralnick really disappoints. I really had to push just to keep reading it. My advice to any potential reader is don't bother. There must be better books about Sam Cooke than this one.
January 14, 2009
to be honest, i scarcely read this book. it was a tome, and there were just too many minutia of sam cooke's life. i skimmed the section about his growing up in mississippi and chicago...the description of what the gospel music scene/emerging rock scene was like at that time was interesting; the influx of african-americans from the south and it's baptist tradirtions into urban centres in the north and it's affect on music: but that was about a paragraph. then i jumped to the details of his sketchy murder...and nothing in between could really hold my interest. bummer. at least i can still just love his records.
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