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: A powerful account which blends personal with professional facts
Summary: 5 Stars
Plenty of other accounts of gospel/soul singer Sam Cooke have been written before, so at first glance the need for yet another in Dream Boogie: The Triumph Of Sam Cooke seems illogical, even redundant - but wait, there's more depth and detail here than in others. Perhaps this is because Peter Guralnick already has a history writing extensively on American popular music and musicians, from Robert Johnson to Western Swing and soul; or perhaps it's because Dream Boogie goes beyond the listings of hits and biographical detail to probe the social and cultural atmosphere which fostered Cooke and his music. Either way, it's a powerful account which blends personal with professional facts to lend many more insights into artist Sam Cooke than other biographies can offer.
Book Review: Disappointing biography, not disappointing subject
Summary: 3 Stars
Although 'Dream Boogie' is long and exhaustive with research, it dwells on details and the reader is apt to miss out on the full picture as Guralnick has. It lacks the emotional depth of other biographies and is padded with cultural touchstones that did not directly affect Sam Cooke, but are not mainstream enough to take us there. It is also fraught with inaccuracies and inconsistencies - for example, late in his career Sam played at Comiskey Park, not Wrigley Field, and after being told that his wife had her tubes tied, we learn that after his death she has another child with his protegee Bobby Womack, but no mention of surgery is made.
Despite the fascinating life (and death) of Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick dropped the ball; he is more a researcher than a writer and does better capturing the letter than the spirit of the story. He gives inordinate ink to the adventures and accounts of groupies and minor hangers-on than more prominent sources (such as Muhammad Ali and James Brown) who are also still alive.
One oft-repeated tale is that of the joyously drunken recording of 'Bring it on Home to Me,' famously recounted in Daniel Wolff's superior Sam Cooke biography 'You Send Me.' In 'Dream Boogie,' there is no mention of the excitement and electricity surrounding this recording session. Although Guralnick might have wanted to avoid repeating the story in favor of original research, he misses out on the heart and soul of what Sam Cooke was all about.
Book Review: A fuller picture of Cooke
Summary: 4 Stars
For those of us who weren't around during Cooke's lifetime, Peter Guralnick's book answers many questions of why folks like Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson worshipped Sam Cooke.
Many fans and critics mainly know Cooke as the singer of You Send Me, Chain Gang and Cupid and have questioned why Guralnick, who has written two books about Elvis, would devote time to what they consider to be a lesser figure in music history. The sordid events of Cooke's violent death have also overshadowed his musical contributions. But Guralnick fills in the blanks of why many feel Cooke's time as a member of the legendary gospel group the Soul Stirrers showcases his strengths as a singer.
He also attempts to show how complex a figure Cooke was. Many articles and retrospectives by Cooke's family and friends have painted him as a saintly figure ...Christian family man and all around good guy. These descriptions only made the circumstances of his death more puzzling. But perhaps with the passage of time (it's been 41 years since Cooke's death) his associates now feel they could be more honest in their recollections, which show Cooke was neither saint nor devil. Most importanly, Guralnick talked to Cooke's widow Barbara who has often been ignored or vilified by Sam's family and friends in the retelling of her husband's story. Like Sam, she comes across as neither saint nor devil but rather as a complex person in a difficult marriage to a famous man. Her voice gives a much needed perspective although it seems the circumstances of her husband's death denied her much needed closure. Appropriately, the author gives her the last word.
If there is anything missing, it would have been nice to find out what's going on with Sam's family and friends in the current day. What about daughters Tracy and Linda? I know Linda followed her father into show business and was a favorite on the soul ciruit in the 80s as half of Womack and Womack. What's she doing now? Did Barbara's marriage with Bobby Womack break up? What happened to Sam's brothers LC and Charles who were dependent on Sam for their livlihood?
But those omissions aside, Guralnick has produced a very good work.
Book Review: The Individualistic Talent and Shakespearean Tragedy of Sam Cooke
Summary: 5 Stars
On December 11, 1964, 34 year-old singing legend Sam Cooke was shot dead in an early morning altercation with the night manager at a seedy motel in Los Angeles. What always seemed to me like a sudden and useless tragedy now has some grounding and a sense of preconceived destiny thanks to music historian Peter Guralnick's thorough and often compelling biography. At over 750 pages, the tome most definitely has some overkill on the details of his life, but through it all, Guralnick makes sense of the singer's psyche in a way that makes his talent and career resonate today. On the surface, much like Harry Belafonte, Cooke was a good-looking, hugely successful entertainer popular with both black and white audiences in the late fifties and early sixties. The author paints a portrait of a supremely ambitious man who was more than willing to crossover to enjoy the level of success experienced by the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Johnny Mathis. In fact, Cooke was a headliner at the Copa and English concert stages, maneuvering his mellifluous voice around saccharine arrangements of dull standards geared toward white audiences.
However, this artistic dead end was countered by his own arrangements for earthier shows at venues like the Apollo and the Harlem Square Club. It is at these places that he went back to his gospel roots and fully employed his trademark vocal delivery to capture the spirit in a decidedly secular way. At the same time, Cooke became friendly with the galvanizing figures of the evolving civil rights movement including Malcolm X and Cassius Clay, as he refused to acquiesce to Jim Crow racism or to Black Muslim radicalism. Yet, the most interesting parts of Guralnick's exhaustive book relate to Cooke's upbringing and early career. Moving from Mississippi to Chicago's South Side, Cooke performed before congregations with his siblings as the Singing Children. It was training that launched his gospel career first with the Highway QCs and then with the legendary Soul Stirrers.
Not only was he a successful entertainer but also a trail-blazing entrepreneur, as he founded his own independent label, SAR, where he helped develop the careers of future stars such as Bobby Womack, Lou Rawls and Johnnie Taylor. This venture did not prevent him from struggling with his hybrid identity constantly reconciling the demands of the white record-buying public with his roots in gospel and his desire to explore new sounds. His most popular hits were deceptively simple - "You Send Me", "Wonderful World", "Chain Gang", "Cupid", "Another Saturday Night", "Shake", "Bring It on Home to Me", "Having a Party" - yet they remain memorable for their perfect blend of melody and lyrical hooks. Cooke, however, was restless to make a more meaningful mark, and one of his last songs, the posthumously released, stirring civil-rights anthem, "A Change Is Gonna Come", was clear indication of this ambition.
Even though he was a visionary and a devoted friend and brother, Cooke had his demons according to Guralnick - he was by all accounts, a philandering husband and absent father and someone who exposed a violent streak in a lightning-quick moment. He was also purportedly a sex addict whose excesses peppered and plagued his career. Consequently, his mystifying death in that motel does have roots with the numerous measured accounts Guralnick has gathered of Cooke's anger, remoteness, ruthlessness and lifelong womanizing. The author has done an excellent job in filling in a lot of the blanks in Sam Cooke's persona that made him not only a great star but a tragic figure. Fortunately, because of his obvious admiration for Cooke's accomplishments, the author does not belabor the latter at the expense of the former.
Book Review: Thorough and Insightful
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a great fan of showbiz biographies. In this genre there are very few that are written as thoroughly as this one. The author's research is detailed in an expansive footnote section in the back of the book. The footnotes contain details not mentioned in the text and additional conversation. Excellent.
I have read two previous biographies on this singer. "Dream Boogie" is a far superior book in every way. Here, Mr. Guralnick paints an apparently honest portrait of this legendary crooner from his youth to his gospel quartet days to his crossover into secular success. For those unfamiliar with the culture of the gospel music industry there may be a few surprises related to the cut-throat behind-the-scenes machinations.
Mr. Cooke, like all other personalities was not a one dimensional character and this biography culls from the myths and the mysteries a balanced view of Sam Cooke the celebrity.
At more than 600 pages it is long but worth the time. I reccomend this as equal in effort to J. Randy Tarraborelli's "Call Her Miss Ross" for detail and source citing.
A riveting and entertaining offering by this author. I'd definately read him again.