The Life and Times of Sam Cooke and his Songs

I worked the door as a greeter on Thursday at studio 620, which was the opining of the “life and times of Sam Cooke.” The show was enjoyable but was loosely done and was not very professional. The talent that surrounded the leading character was very amateur. The leading personality who sang the Sam Cooke songs had a decent voice and lots of on stage personality, as he was able to arouse the audience in participating in the sing along of most of the tunes. With this said the amateur and simple ness of the production was enjoyable for the reasons I just stated. Their was a simple joy in watching and listening to the audience chime in to each song and knowing all the words, and then they got up to dance to ‘twisting the night away’. In all the show was well received by the audience as they piled out of theater with smiles on their faces.
As I left the theater and walking to my car, I was struck by the acceptance of the audiences approval of this armature production, what was it that allowed these folks to go beyond and become involved in the show. Was it the leading character and his charismatic performance? Was it the songs, which were so recognizable to the audience? On the other hand, was it the period of time that these tunes personified? I believe it was a combination of all, the performance was good, the songs, and there words were better and the times the audience connected to was a time of innocence and simple pleasures. These were personified in the words of songs like ‘You send me’ and ‘Cupid’ portrayed as most songs of the period the turmoil and joys of falling in love which seemed to encompass ones entire day. The simplicity of boy meets girl and vise versa was the overriding persona of the time and produced in the following years as data suggests via US census a truckload of babies. ‘A change is goanna come’, and ‘chain gang’ were encompassed within the racial unrest of the country while love was all around in a ‘wonderful world.’ A slight dichotomy in reality but not for the times, as this racial unrest, and love produced the 60’s were love and racial issues were not so simple and involved deeper interaction with deeper thought. When reviewing the lyrics of some of the Sam Cooke songs and then just moving ahead by five years the contrast is radical “At first I thought it was infatuation But woo, it's lasted so long Now I find myself wanting To marry you and take you home Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” ‘You send me’(S.Cooke) or "don't know much about algebra. Don’t know what a slide ruler is for. But I do know that I Love you and I know that if you loved me too. What a wonderful world this would be.” ‘Wonderful World’ (S.Cooke) Then moving forward to a Pink Floyd tune ‘young lust’“I am just a new boy, Stranger in this town. Where are all the good times? Who's gonna show this stranger around? Ooooo I need a dirty woman. Ooooo I need a dirty girl. Will some woman in this desert land, Make me feel like a real man? Take this rock and roll refugee. Ooo Babe, set me free.” Or again Pink Floyd’s The Wall We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave those kids alone. Hey, Teacher,
leave those kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. When we look at Sam cooke’s racial statement with ‘A change is gonna come’ “I go to the movie and I go downtown Somebody keep telling me don’t hang around It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will Then I go to my brother. And I say brother help me please But he winds up knocking me Back down on my knees Ohhhhhh…..” This tune has been recently redone by Seal, It was nice to hear it again, and done well. When we move ahead to the sixties, we can see how differently, the genre of a racial song differs by James Brown in his ‘say it loud’ “Look a'here, some people say we got a lot of malice Some say it's a lotta nerve I say we won't quit moving Til we get what we deserve We've been buked and we've been scourned We've been treated bad, talked about As just as sure as you're born But just as sure as it take Two eyes to make a pair, huh Brother, we can't quit until we get our share Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, one more time Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud, huh.
Yes, Things changed from those simple innocent lyrics and so did our social system and that was simply the response by the audience at studio 620. They reverted to that simplicity of innocence and lost their inhibitions through the tunes of Sam Cooke it was nice to see the audience freely sing along and get up and dance the twist in the isles. These people left their realities of everyday life at the door and their intellectual insights that we all have now of our social and political system. They had memories of a different life when all that mattered was falling in love and what a wonderful world it will be. I know we all have memories of a time when life was simple in our lives when all we had on minds was where, when, and how we were going to have fun each day, and with whom. These where the memories that the audience returned to as they were not being entertained they were reflecting and interacting with songs that produced falling in love again without a thousand words.