It is 50 years today since the death of Sam Cooke, the inventor of soul music. This is a protest song he wrote, scared of releasing for fear of losing his white audience, yet at the same time ashamed that non-black artists such as Bob Dylan had written songs in support of civil rights and he had not. Knowing it would not be nearly as successful as his previous work he released it anyway. It almost scared him that the song — it was almost as if the song were intended for somebody else. He grabbed it out of the air and it came to him whole, despite the fact that in many ways its probably the most complex song that he wrote. It was both singular — in the sense that you started out, I was born by the river — but it also told the story both of a generation and of a people. https://youtube/watch?v=j-X9JkM9Bgo
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 12:25:14 +0000