Arguably one of the most influential soul artists of all time, Sam Cooke's music had a profound effect in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Daisy Innes reflects on his legacy, in particular his renowned track "A Change Is Gonna Come".
The 1960s. A turbulent decade in America’s dark history in its movement towards civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in the first year of the decade, 1963 saw the March on Washington with around 250,000 people joining the peaceful protest, and the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964. In 1965 the movement took a violent turn with the march from Selma to Montgomery on ‘Bloody Sunday’ and towards the end of the decade, two of the leaders of the movement were assassinated.
By the mid-1960s, Sam Cooke was one of the biggest names in music, not just in Black music, but music as a whole. The ‘King of Soul’ was releasing hit after hit, selling out concerts and charming talk show hosts on the regular. He was consistently topping the charts, with his rhythm and blues songs flawlessly delivered with a voice overflowing with soul and warmth. Tracks like "What a Wonderful World", "You Send Me" and "Nothing Can Change This Love" demonstrated his ability to record a crooner style, catchy, quality pop song. But he couldn’t ignore what was going on outside of the music industry, and it many ways the boundaries between political conversation and music were becoming increasingly blurred.
Where there’s political unrest, there’s music too. The 60s was largely dominated by the folk movement with artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger leading the social-commentary fuelled songwriting genre. However, artists like Sam Cooke had firsthand experience of the racial discrimination plaguing the states – and made their voices heard through their own music.
Cooke heard Dylan’s "Blowin' in the Wind" and, according to his brother, thought to himself ‘Geez, a white boy writing a song like that?’.
Cooke believed that ‘a black man should’ve written "Blowin' in the Wind"'. The legendary Dylan song became synonymous with the soundtrack of the 60s and spoke inquisitively and intimately on the social situation. Due to a significant proportion of Cooke’s audience being white, he had been reluctant to write his own politically charged song, so made the first step by covering "Blowin' in the Wind" at a performance in New York. Whilst being an exceptional artist, Cooke was also a clever businessman and entrepreneur. He had previously worried about the potential impact on his commercial success that his political voice would have, but ultimately, he decided that some things were too important. So, he wrote "A Change is Gonna Come" – a song that will go down in history as one of the best of all time.
"A Change is Gonna Come" saw Cooke making a return to the Gospel sounds he was raised on in Mississippi, deeply personal lyrics that almost bled with an autobiographical honesty, and a musical sound moving from sweeping strings into melancholic horns with a strong percussive bridge pushing forward his story. In between verses of painful personal experience, Cooke delivers a remarkably assured chorus, telling his listeners that a change will come, that America will progress, and that the commitment the 1960s civil rights movement will continue.
Despite his success, Cooke was not looking for a number one hit with this song, he was searching for a way to connect his personal experience with Black Americans who, soul singer or not, were all facing the same racial discrimination. The story that follows is devastating in its almost predictability. In a decade that saw the assassinations of multiple political figures, Sam Cooke’s murder in 1964 would join Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X as markers of the extreme results of a Black man being politically vocal. Whilst unknown details circulate around Cooke’s murder, the links to his confident steps towards civil rights activism are difficult to ignore. The abrupt and violent silencing, and ending, of a Black voice with social, artistic and intelligent power in America was all too common, Sam Cooke’s hopeful plead for social change was released as single after his death, a heartbreaking yet endlessly important legacy to leave.
"A Change is Gonna Come" might have only peaked at number 31 upon its release, but its power is felt, heard and maintained. In 2021, Rolling Stone named Cooke’s magnum opus the third greatest song of all time. Music and protest are intrinsically linked. It offers an individual the opportunity to combine artistry with experience in a way that connects, moves and expresses.
"There been times that I thought
I couldn't last for long
But now, I think I'm able
To carry on"
— Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"
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