Early life
Cooke was born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1931. In 1957 he added an "e" at the
end of his name to signify a new start to his life. He was the fifth of eight children of the Rev.
Charles Cook, a minister in the Church of Christ (Holiness), and his wife, Annie Mae.
One of his
younger brothers, L.C. (1932–2017), later became a member of the doo-wop band Johnny Keyes and
the Magnificents. The family moved to Chicago in 1933. Cooke attended Doolittle Elementary
and Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Chicago, the same school that Nat "King" Cole had
attended a few years earlier. Sam Cooke began his career with his siblings in a group called the
Singing Children when he was six years old.
He first became known as lead singer with the Highway
QC's when he was a teenager, having joined the group at the age of 14. During this time, Cooke
befriended fellow gospel singer and neighbor Lou Rawls, who sang in a rival gospel group. In
1950, Cooke replaced gospel tenor R. H. Harris as lead singer of the gospel group the Soul Stirrers,
founded by Harris, who had signed with Specialty Records on behalf of the group. Their first
recording under Cooke's leadership was the song "Jesus Gave Me Water" in 1951. They also recorded
the gospel songs "Peace in the Valley", "How Far Am I from Canaan?", "Jesus Paid the Debt" and "One
More River", among many others, some of which he wrote.
Cooke was often credited for bringing
gospel music to the attention of a younger crowd of listeners, mainly girls who would rush to the
stage when the Soul Stirrers hit the stage just to get a glimpse of Cooke.
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Death
Cooke died at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, at 9137 South Figueroa Street,
in Los Angeles, California. Answering separate reports of a shooting and of a kidnapping at the motel,
police found Cooke's body, clad only in a sports jacket and shoes but no shirt, pants or underwear.
He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart.
The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, said she had shot Cooke in self-defense after he broke into
her office residence and attacked her. Her account was immediately questioned and disputed by acquaintances.
The official police record states that Franklin fatally shot Cooke, who had checked in earlier that
evening.Franklin claimed that Cooke had broken into the manager's office-apartment in a rage,
wearing nothing but a shoe and a sports coat, demanding to know the whereabouts of a woman who had
accompanied him to the hotel. Franklin said the woman was not in the office and that she told Cooke
this, but the enraged Cooke did not believe her and violently grabbed her, demanding again to know
the woman's whereabouts. According to Franklin, she grappled with Cooke, the two of them fell to
the floor, and she then got up and ran to retrieve a gun.
She said she then fired at Cooke in self-defense
because she feared for her life. Cooke was struck once in the torso. According to Franklin, he exclaimed,
"Lady, you shot me", before mounting a last charge at her. She said she beat him over his head with
a broomstick before he finally fell, mortally wounded by the gunshot. The motel's owner, Evelyn
Carr, claimed that she had been on the telephone with Franklin at the time of the incident.
Carr claimed to have overheard Cooke's intrusion and the ensuing conflict and gunshot. She called
the police to request that officers go to the motel, telling them she believed a shooting had occurred.
A coroner's inquest was convened to investigate the incident. The woman who had accompanied Cooke
to the motel was identified as Elisa Boyer, who had also called the police that night shortly before
Carr had.
Boyer had called from a telephone booth near the motel, telling them she had just escaped
being kidnapped. Boyer told the police that she had first met Cooke earlier that night and had
spent the evening in his company. She claimed that after they left a local nightclub together, she
had repeatedly requested that he take her home, but he instead took her against her will to the Hacienda
Motel. She claimed that once in one of the motel's rooms, Cooke physically forced her onto the bed,
and that she was certain he was going to rape her. According to Boyer, when Cooke stepped into the
bathroom for a moment, she quickly grabbed her clothes and ran from the room. She claimed that in
her haste, she had also scooped up most of Cooke's clothing by mistake. She said she ran first to
the manager's office and knocked on the door seeking help.
However, she said that the manager took
too long in responding, so, fearing Cooke would soon be coming after her, she fled from the motel
before the manager ever opened the door. She said she then put her clothing back on, hid Cooke's
clothing, went to a telephone booth, and called police. Boyer's story is the only account of
what happened between her and Cooke that night; however, her story has long been called into question.
Inconsistencies between her version of events and details reported by diners at Martoni's Restaurant,
where Cooke dined and drank earlier in the evening, suggest that Boyer may have gone willingly to
the motel with Cooke, then slipped out of the room with his clothing in order to rob him, rather
than to escape an attempted rape.
Cooke was reportedly carrying much more money at Martoni's
than the $108 cash found at his death scene, and Boyer was arrested for prostitution in January 1965,
though the charge was dismissed and she accrued no more notoriety or arrests. However, questions
about Boyer's role were beyond the scope of the inquest, the purpose of which was only to establish
the circumstances of Franklin's role in the shooting. Boyer's leaving the motel room with almost
all of Cooke's clothing, and the fact that tests showed Cooke was inebriated at the time, provided
a plausible explanation to the inquest jurors for Cooke's bizarre behavior and state of dress.
In
addition, because Carr's testimony corroborated Franklin's version of events, and because both Boyer
and Franklin later passed lie detector tests, the coroner's jury ultimately accepted Franklin's
explanation and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. With that verdict, authorities officially
closed the case on Cooke's death. Some of Cooke's family and supporters, however, have rejected
Boyer's version of events, as well as those given by Franklin and Carr.
They believe that there was
a conspiracy to murder Cooke and that the murder took place in some manner entirely different from
the three official accounts. Singer Etta James viewed Cooke's body before
his funeral and questioned the accuracy of the official version of events. She wrote that the injuries
she observed were well beyond the official account of Cooke having fought Franklin alone. James wrote
that Cooke was so badly beaten that his head was nearly separated from his shoulders, his hands were
broken and crushed, and his nose mangled. Some people speculated that Cooke's manager, Allen
Klein, might have had a role in his death. Klein owned Tracey, Ltd, which ultimately owned all rights
to Cooke's recordings
Marriages and family
Cooke was married twice. His first marriage was to singer-dancer Dolores Elizabeth Milligan Cook,
who was killed in an auto accident in Fresno, California, in 1959. Although he and Dolores were
divorced, Cooke paid for his ex-wife's funeral expenses.
Cooke and his second wife, Barbara
Campbell Cooke, had three children, Linda (b.1953), Tracy (b.1960), and Vincent (1961 – 1963),
who drowned in the family swimming pool. Cooke also fathered at least three other children
out of wedlock.
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Discography
1958 Sam Cooke
1958 Encore
1959 Hit Kit
1959 Tribute to the Lady - Billie Holiday
1960 Hits of the Fifties
1960 Cooke's Tour [live]
1960 I Thank God
1960 Swing Low
1960 The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke
1961 My Kind of Blues
1962 Twistin' the Night Away
1963 Mr. Soul
1963 Night Beat
1963 Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963
1964 Sam Cooke at the Copa [live]
1964 Ain't That Good News
1964 Soul Stirrers
1965 Shake
1965 Try a Little Love
1968 The Man Who Invented Soul
1968 Right On
1970 The 2 Sides of Sam Cooke
1975 Sam Cooke Interprets Billie Holiday
1979 When I Fall in Love
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Samuel Cooke
(January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964), known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer,
songwriter, and entrepreneur.