Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Book Review: Sam Cooke - a fabulous account
Summary: 5 Stars
I enjoyed this book, not only because I'm a huge Sam Cooke fan, but because it gives context to the times and the environment of Sam Cooke's short, but impactful visit to this earth. The little details like how the Soul Stirrers came to be, the grooming and refinement of their talent as a group and Sam's talent as an individual gave me a different perspective from what I had. Though I haven't finished reading the whole book, I have read enough to grasp the historical value of the work. Often, time period accounts contain analyses and language that comes across as boring and doesn't really place the reader there. Not so with this book. It's records like this one that help us to understand the generation before us, how they dreamed and how they reached for those dreams in a very real and tangible way. Another book that I'd strongly recommend is You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke. Book Review: A must-read for 1950s-60s Music Fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Sam Cooke's life -- his amazing rise and tragic death -- is wonderfully told in Peter Guralnick's "Dream Boogie." The intensely researched book does a wonderful job of putting Sam's life in context. While there was too much detail on Sam's early days as a gospel singer for my taste, I admire the author's dedication to the details. I think the book really picks up when Sam moves to LA and tries to become a pop star. From there, his life and the entertainment factor of the book takes flight. Above all -- read it to the end, and then you'll get the reward of seeing how the tragedy unfolds. You'll close the book being supremely glad you read it. So go buy it!Book Review: he sends you
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm giving this book 4 stars inseated of 5, because although it's an excellent book, you dont need it in order to get the most out of Sam's music. In fact some parts of it, especially those relating to Sam's dealings with women, might actually put you off the man and his (to me, outstanding) work. It's very strong on the business and financial side of things - a niche readership for that I would have thought. If you're interested in the civil rights movement of the 60s, the supporting cast looms large, including Malcolm X, Dr King and Cassius Clay. Some of the details about the way Sam and his band were treated in the South are very disturbing and illuminating, and you wonder at how the hard shell this must have formed around him never manifested itself in his resolutely positve and confident music. It seems we've come a long way in the past 40-odd years, socially and sonically, although if you do go back to those records after reading, you'll find there's not much made since which can hold a candle to his output, which ended tragically and somewhat sordidly in 1963. Book Review: Very Good
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Guralnick could write the phone book and it would be a great read !!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.