Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke

by Peter Guralnick

  Crain, who conceived of himself as the boy’s only true “guide and protector,” emphasized deportment as well as singing technique. “You could never get him up in the morning, but I devised a plan. If the program was at eight o’clock, I’d tell him it was seven, so maybe we’d get him there on time.” When Crain was pleased with his pupil’s progress, he called him “Sammy-o.” If he felt compelled to deliver a lecture, he began with “Now, son,” knowing he could no more maintain a stern tone with Sam than anyone else could, least of all the teenagers who were flocking in growing numbers to their programs and occupying the front rows of every church. “They didn’t go to Archie, they didn’t go to Kylo Turner. They came to Sam.”

  By the time they arrived in Los Angeles on February 11 for the series of West Coast programs J.W. had set up in advance of their recording session, Sam was a full-fledged member of the group. To Alex’s relief he went over well at their first concert, at the Embassy auditorium in downtown L.A., but when they went up to Oakland, the promoters protested loudly that they had assumed they were getting R.H. Harris when they booked the Soul Stirrers. To show his confidence in Sam, J.W. offered to waive both the Stirrers’ and the Travelers’ guarantee if the promoters were not fully satisfied with the program. “Fortunately [he] went over well, and the people liked him! He did have that type of charisma.”

  But it wasn’t until the first Soul Stirrers record with their new lead singer came out some two months later that J.W.’s and Crain’s faith in Sam was fully vindicated.

  “JESUS GAVE ME WATER,” backed with “Peace in the Valley,” was released on April 21, after a series of cheerfully hectoring letters from Crain to Art Rupe on his new “Nationally Known Soul Stirrers of Chicago, Illinois” stationery. “Hi Art,” Crain saluted his boss in a May 8 follow-up that thanked Rupe for finally releasing the new single and assured him that “the People will like and buy my Records with the young feller (Sam).”

  The Soul Stirrers, ca. 1952. Top, left to right: Sam, J.J. Farley, Paul Foster, R.B. Robinson. Foreground: S.R. Crain.

  Courtesy of Specialty Records

  He was right. From the day the record came out, Sam Cook was a star. Everywhere the Soul Stirrers and Pilgrim Travelers appeared together, “Jesus Gave Me Water” was the single most requested number—and nobody was interested in hearing it by its originators, the Pilgrim Travelers, either. When the Stirrers gave their annual Mother’s Day homecoming program at DuSable High School on May 13 (with both the Travelers and the Spirit of Memphis as their special guests), former QCs Marvin Jones and Gus Treadwell sat in the back and listened to Sam do the song that had been his calling card in the last few months he had been with them. “We both just cried because that young boy was devastating. That was the day I told Gus, ‘You know, we ought to go get Harris and put the Highway QCs back together [behind him].’ That would have been something.” But, Creadell Copeland acknowledged, Sam had developed so fast that “Jesus Gave Me Water” was no longer a QCs song. “He [had] just got progressively better. He learned to control his voice more. As good as he was with the QCs, he just [became] much better.”

  The Cook family, too, was out in full force, Reverend Cook as always in a dignified dark suit, with Sam’s mother, her broad face wreathed in smiles, wearing her best Sunday-go-to-meeting dress and one of the many elaborate hats made for her by a friend named Belle. Half the neighborhood turned out, as Mrs. Cook made it her personal mission to sell more tickets than all the other Soul Stirrers combined, and fifteen-year-old Agnes transferred her allegiance once and for all from the QCs to her brother’s new group. “It was the first time I saw him with the Soul Stirrers, and he turned it out.” Sam, her brother L.C. concurred, unquestionably took the show.

  But perhaps it should be left to Rebert Harris, about to debut his new group, the Christland Singers, at DuSable the following week, to put his finger on the mysterious source of Sam’s charismatic appeal. Harris, never one to downplay his own accomplishments or shrink from the kind of direct comparison that Marvin Jones envisioned (but with a lineup of former Soul Stirrers behind him, not unknown QCs), observed to gospel historian Tony Heilbut some years later that Sam “did it in a different way. He didn’t want to be that deep, pitiful singer, like, ‘My mother died when I was young,’ you know, Blind Boys, Pilgrim Travelers stuff.” Sam, he said, adopted a different kind of approach, even as he was still evolving a style of his own. “He was a singer who could just stand and within the process of just singing create without throwing the background off.” And, without pausing for breath, Harris concluded, as so many others had, and would, over the course of Sam’s career, “I taught him that.”

  He was a hometown hero, and he basked in the attention that every hometown hero duly receives. The Famous Blue Jays’ record store couldn’t keep his record in stock. His best girl, Barbara Campbell, nearly sixteen now, was growing up and attracting attention whenever they went anywhere in public. They talked about the future, they even talked sometimes about getting married—but Barbara knew that was just a fantasy as long as Sam had all these other girls who wanted to give him anything (a car, clothes, money) they had. He talked all the time about how he just wanted a room for himself, where they could go to be alone—but she was cynical about that, too. He gave his mother money to fix up the apartment, to get herself a new stove and a nice hideaway bed, but Barbara knew he was as likely to give his money away to strangers, or other girls, and even though his family didn’t approve of her—she didn’t know if they would think anybody was good enough for their son—she tried to get him to put things in their proper perspective. She knew he had other girlfriends, she still had her other boyfriend, Clarence Mayfield—he was her “financier”—and, even though he knew she was not in love with him, he cared for her, and took care of her, every bit as much as Sam.

  WHILE THE SOUL STIRRERS WERE AT HOME, they had rehearsals twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays at 2:00 P.M. at Crain’s house, with meals provided by his wife, Maude. Rehearsals were important—they were a part of the whole “business” of music, with fines attached for any infringement of a set of rules that ranged from tardiness to public misbehavior—but the most important thing about them from Crain’s point of view was that they kept the group together. Because to stay together, as he recognized, “you had to care for each other first.” That was the basis for their entire enterprise. Everyone drew a nominal salary, everyone shared equally in record and songwriting royalties, but the bulk of the money went into a common fund that took care of everything from the $1,400 they had to pay out for a new Chrysler to carry them well over fifty thousand miles every year to the purchase of uniforms, the photographs they sold at concerts, even medical bills as they came up. If you were a Stirrer, the whole world knew it, and you carried yourself as a Stirrer wherever you went: clean, dignified, someone for older folks to be proud of and young people to look up to. That was no problem for the newcomer. With just a few hints from Crain about maybe being a little more discreet about his “affairs of the heart” (after all, they all had affairs of the heart) and staying away from some of the “bad boys” he had grown up with (he was no longer a fighting Junior Destroyer, Crain reminded him, but a singing Soul Stirrer), Sam not only fit the image—he defined it.

  Crain became a proud “papa” in September, and the group enjoyed a brief respite from the road. But for the most part the road was their home, as they traversed the country, playing everywhere from Las Vegas (at former Soul Stirrer Walter LaBaux’s church on the “colored” West Side) to Foster’s hometown of Grand Teton, Louisiana, from the West Coast swings that J.W. Alexander set up to bookings in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York under the auspices of veteran gospel promoters Ronnie Williams, Brother Thermon Ruth, and Reverend Frederick D. Washington. They played Atlanta, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Palm Beach, staying in the few small colored hotels that dotted the landscape if there was room and in private homes when, more often than not, there wasn’t. “Those were rough days,” said
Jesse Whitaker, the Pilgrims’ melodically inventive baritone singer, “but it didn’t bother us. We’d get hungry, man, we’d have to find a grocery store, buy some bologna, cheese and crackers, what we could get. Groups today, they can stop anywhere to eat and sleep. We couldn’t. We had a rough time, but we didn’t let it bother us. We knew when we went down through there what to do and how to do, we didn’t let it rob us, it just made us more careful.”

  It was like being in a brotherhood of disaccommodation. There were so few places where they could count on being able to stay—the Foster in New Orleans, the Crystal in Houston, the Claxton Manor in Tampa, promoters Herman Nash and B.B. Beamon’s Savoy Hotel in Atlanta—that at one time or another you were bound to run into virtually every other black entertainer, or even sports stars like Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson who were out there on the road. And if you didn’t actually run into them, you knew you shared the same situation, so everyone in the world of black entertainment was more or less on a first-name basis, and if you read about Duke or Count or Louis in the Defender or Atlanta’s Daily World, you felt just as much common cause with them as if you had been invited into their own homes.

  The touring was mapped out under the auspices of Herald Attractions, which Art had set up in 1950 with the idea of expanding the opportunities for his gospel acts and no doubt exercising some degree of control over the manner in which they were presented. In charge was Specialty’s former publicity director, Lillian Cumber, “a well-educated Negro lady,” as Art described her to one of his acts, who was “only interested in handling top-attractions which I recommend.” Mrs. Cumber for her part referred to her employer as “a young liberal who doesn’t [just] preach liberalism, he practices it,” while Specialty was the one label “that has ever attempted to create a position [such as her own] for a Negro” and expressed its resolute determination not to “tolerate a distributor who is prejudice[d] even if it means the loss of sales.”

  The immediate result, as Rupe saw it, was a professionalization of services, an opportunity for the groups “to realize more money for their performances” and, not coincidentally, a chance to “boost record sales.” Nonetheless, for all of Mrs. Cumber’s dedication to the task, there remained glitches to be worked out, and the Soul Stirrers in particular were reluctant to pay an agency commission on the Chicago bookings they had so painstakingly established as the core of their economic operation over the years.

  J.W. Alexander attempted to intercede on the Stirrers’ behalf. “I can see your point of view from the agency angle,” he wrote to Lil the day after the Mother’s Day program, while stressing that Crain was “quite unhappy” and that J.W. could see his point of view as well. They had all had to educate themselves in various aspects of the business, was the implicit message of J.W.’s letter. More important, they were all in this together. Wouldn’t it be better to lose a little commission but have a happy group of Soul Stirrers than to risk “a lot of personal feeling and strife”? “There are a lot of Groups singing, and no doubt many have written you, but very few [like the Soul Stirrers] that people are paying to see consistently. So please give it thought.” Which she undoubtedly did—as much perhaps for J.W.’s courtly manner as his carefully chosen words.

  Everyone recognized Alex as a good businessman and a really “shrewd” man. “Even Crain would ask questions,” said Travelers baritone singer, Jesse Whitaker. “Alex taught him a lot. Mostly about traveling and the different promoters, you know. Because a lot of times promoters would get to you if you didn’t be careful. Alex was the type of guy who didn’t hold a grudge, he was just that type of person. If he could help you, he help you. But if you cross him, you had a problem—and he let you know you crossed him. The promoters knew him, and they knew what would happen if they didn’t do right. [It wasn’t that he was better educated], he just know how to use it.”

  Alex had even gone so far as to announce the Travelers’ incorporation in April, declaring in a publicity release on Specialty Records stationery that his “ace religious group” would issue stock, to be “jointly owned by the five singer-members,” and that “on the eve of Alexander’s fifth anniversary as manager . . . plans are readying for a European tour,” another example of visionary forward thinking that, unfortunately, never came to pass.

  All of this had little to do with Sam directly—he was a Soul Stirrer first, last, and always, a participant in group decisions, a beneficiary of group success, certainly, but the business aspects tended to escape him. At the same time, he could scarcely miss the way Alex commanded the respect of both black and white, the suave, smooth manner that was so different from Crain’s blunt stolidity, and the interest the older man took in him and his career, providing him with helpful encouragement, giving him little tips all the time without ever seeming to criticize or step on Crain’s toes. For the most part, though, he was just thrilled to finally be caught up in the life. The record was selling like crazy—he would have known it even if Crain hadn’t told him, simply by the way the girls all called for it, and the older women, too. There were dozens of girls in every little village and town, big-legged yellow gals who crowded up into the front pew, sisters just shouting out his name, he told his brother L.C.—and you didn’t even have to lift a finger to get them to do it. In some of them little country towns in Mississippi or Alabama, there might be some old grandmama who would offer you a place to stay and then apologize for the fact that there wasn’t enough room for you to sleep by yourself, would you mind sharing a bed with her fifteen-year-old granddaughter if she put up an ironing board in between? And you couldn’t even be sure what she meant, what was in the grandmother or granddaughter’s mind, until the girl made a move in the middle of the night. But they always made a move.

  He would joke about it with the other Soul Stirrers while they were in the car traveling on to the next town. They were all married, of course, but, he quickly discovered, no one was married on the road. And no one was attached past the date of the program or, geographically, beyond the city limits. They rehearsed in the car as they drove; Crain would give them a pitch, and they would all chime in, working out new arrangements, perfecting their harmonies, trying out new material. They still weren’t able to take the program from the Blind Boys, but with J.W.’s encouragement and Crain’s coaching, Sam was able more and more to establish his own tone—it was a matter, as Alex said, of lowering the volume to the point where people almost had to pay attention. Sam studied the audience as much as they studied him; he fixed on a girl and tried to get her until he could feel the rest of them starting to come across, he could feel the thrum start to build in the church or auditorium as he took out a comb and ran it through his carefully processed hair or played with what he knew to be the seductive sound of his own voice.

  In St. Petersburg, five-year-old Ann Thompson, whose father, Reverend Goldie Thompson, promoted all the gospel shows in the Tampa-St. Pete area, fell in love. All the gospel groups used to stay with the Thompsons in their public housing unit in Jordan Park, and she was used to the neighbors coming around and gawking at all these out-of-town “celebrities,” but Sam was different—and it wasn’t just that he was so much closer to her own age than all these men she had gotten used to calling “uncle.” He had a way of communicating that no one else had. It was like he himself said. “Now, listen, Cheese,” he told her, using her family nickname, “I’m not your uncle, I’m not your cousin. I’m your guardian angel.” And he was, too, protecting her from the imaginary monsters she was afraid of, taking her on his shoulders sometimes when he sang, reading to her so the familiar Bible stories came alive in a language that was both fresh and respectful and that developed the story line in a way that kept you in total suspense. She was a sickly child, but she felt safe around him, and as much as she loved to hear him sing, what she loved most about him was the way he took her seriously, the way it seemed he “could adapt to anything or anybody and make them feel comfortable.”

  “WE ARE VERY PROUD of the group,” Ar
t Rupe wrote to Crain in September. “As a matter of fact, we want to thank you for suggesting that we put out ‘Jesus Gave Me Water’ and keeping on us until we did.”

  The single had sold thirty-five thousand copies by this time, eight thousand more than “By and By,” the Stirrers’ greatest success with Harris, though considerably less than the Pilgrim Travelers’ biggest sellers or Brother Joe May’s “Search Me Lord,” which had sold almost seventy thousand copies in 1950 alone. Gospel music was clearly making great strides in terms of both sales and public acceptance, though privately Rupe continued to doubt that the record-buying audience would ever “reward gospel singers the way popular stars were rewarded [because] the business had a quasi-religious tone and the public was not yet conditioned to financially support [it].” Still, as the Chicago Defender pointed out the same week that it advertised the Soul Stirrers’ annual fall program, with the Five Blind Boys, at DuSable, “gospel singing is not only popular but very lucrative.” As proof the article cited sales of over a million copies of the Blind Boys’ “Our Father” on the Peacock label, a mark that Defender columnist Charles Hopkins must surely have been aware was apocryphal but nonetheless was indicative of an accomplishment “the Blind Boys can be proud of, especially when you consider the limited market.”