Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
by Peter Guralnick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter GuralnickEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-05
ISBN: 0316013293
Number of pages: 768
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Book Review: A Triumph of Peter Guralnick
Summary: 4 Stars
Peter Guralnick knows how to tell the history of a life, and Dream Boogie is a well written account not just of Sam Cooke but of the history of popular music at perhaps its most significant stage. The author details the coming together--forced to varying degrees from the circumstance of segregation--of gospel and blues, art and commerce, glamour and shabbiness. Guralnick brings this last combination to vivid perspective in particular: while on tour and 'Wonderful World' is high in the charts, for instance, segregation still limits Sam's choice of accommodation to run-down hotels. As Guralnick shows, however, the religious and the secular were two things that were already well entwined: Dream Boogie emphasizes how the church was rooted in material success--how preoccupied its gospel stars were with sexual and financial, as well as spiritual, concerns.
I'd like to clear up a confusion that other reviews suffer from: when Guralnick, say, talks about Sam Cooke's 'naked avariciousness', he's talking from a business opponent's point of view. This is why statements seemingly flatly contradict. We get impressions of greed and generosity, but just because words aren't in inverted commas, it doesn't mean they represent the author's beliefs. It's a literary conceit (you could call it 'shifting third person subjective' or some such if you liked), and Sam Cooke appears through this composite approach. Guralnick has said in interview that his professional intention is to 'disappear', and mostly he does--by the device of presenting a series of opinions.
Too much of Sam's life seems little more than a series of tour itineraries. It's a fault that overruns the middle section of the book, although it's tempting to accept as a by-product of honesty and thoroughness. The end, though, is filled with revelation, and it becomes clear the author has consciously chosen to concentrate even on Sam's trivial triumphs above examples of tawdriness: the death of our hero is met with such a conspicuous absence of sorrow from those closest to him that it creates an absence of sorrow in us, too--all we can feel primarily is surprise.
If you've ever wondered about the myriad personal ramifications of instantly recognizable genius, and if you want to know how things were, how things happened, at the birth of rhythm & blues--and rock & roll--this book provides answers. Dream Boogie reminds us that things only spring out of nowhere at the quantum level. Sam Cooke, after all, had contemporaries: the primary difference was *that* voice.
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