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: Masterful
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been waiting for this book ever since I learned several years ago that Peter Guralnick was working on it. Like his other books (especially Lost Highway, Sweet Soul Music, and Last Train to Memphis), it was well worth the wait. Guralnick takes on a subject whose life and work was more complex than surface appearances would suggest. The portrait that emerges is multidimensional, and the reader sees not only the development of Sam Cooke as a performer and entrepreneur, but the shadow sides of his personality, and ultimately his extensive influence in black America in the early sixties.
Guralnick's research is thorough. His interviews with Barbara Cooke, Bobby Womack, and Allen Klein add a dimension missing from previous accounts, including the one found in Sweet Soul Music. But by ending the book shortly after Cooke's death, I still find myself with unanswered questions surrounding Allen Klein's handling of Cooke's back catalog and legacy. For several years in the early seventies, there was much talk of a Sam Cooke film bio, with Al Green playing Cooke. Nothing came of it. And why did it take ABKCO nearly forty years to issue an annotated and comprehensive CD package of Cooke's representative work if Allen Klein owned the masters? These questions are really outside the scope of this book, but I can only hope that as a result of Guralnick's access to Klein, these questions can be addressed in an article somewhere.
That critique aside,by placing Cooke's story in the larger contexts of the pop and R & B music businesses and the black church, the reader gains a greater understanding of both Sam Cooke and the culture that both nurtured and rebuffed him. Cooke influenced many performers in his own time and afterward --Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, early Rod Stewart, and Al Green, to mention just a few. Peter Guralnick's triumph in Dream Boogie is demonstrating how and why that happened.
If you're a part of the generation who grew up with Sam Cooke's records, you'll love this book. If you're part of the generation that missed Cooke because his music was either off the market or poorly repackaged, read this book while listening to the ABKCO compilation and you'll learn why Sam Cooke mattered -- and still matters.
Book Review: From South Side Chicago to a worldclass artist: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Summary: 5 Stars
For the general music lover the artist Sam Cooke nowadays may not be as familiar as it once was in the 1950's and 60's. His music however has to this day remained and practically everyone knows his biggest hits 'You Send Me', 'Wonderful World', 'Chain Gang, 'Cupid' and 'Bring It On Home To Me'. This might lead people to believe that he was just one of the many soul singers that were around in his day. But his history if far more fascinating that just an interpreter of songs.
To explain a soul singer you have to explain his roots and in Cooke's case, as in so many others, it was in gospel music. But he wasn't just a singer in a choir, he was the leading singer in one of the greatest gospel quartets ever; The Soul Stirrers. At the highpoint of that career he decided to make the move into the secular field and record pop.
It is a project that Guralnick must have been thinking of for at least 20 years because in his book 'Sweet Soul Music' (in my opinion the definitive history of soul) he spends a fair amount on Sam Cooke. Peter Guralnick has done an excellent job to chronicle the amazing life of Sam Cooke from his gospel days into pop but also the things he may not have been so farmous for, as a business man and a labelowner which was rare for a black man in the early 60s. Where oftentimes singers are shown as people who are not completely in charge of their own lives Sam did. He was definitely a smart man who read a lot, also about African-American history. The book isn't called 'The Triumph of Sam Cooke' for nothing.
As is usual with black artists in the 50's and 60's the issue of race plays an important part, which makes his career as a business man even more important. There are stories about how he changed his music to gear it towards different audiences (just listen to his live albums 'At The Copa' and 'Harlem Square' to hear the difference). And of course on the road in the south where he on more than one occassion denied to play for a segregated audience or in a city that did not allow a mixed stage. All this seems to serve as a opening act for maybe his best composition, the civil rights song 'A Change is Gonna Come', a song he was very proud of.
We also see his friendships with other people like Jimi Hendrix, Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles, Solomon Burke and most of all Muhammed Ali. Nice is a small anecdate about Sam and Martin Luther King meeting at an airport for a brief chat.
Besides his career as a succesful artist we also get a good look at his private life. We see that he was a womanizer who was constantly seen around other women but also a friendly man who helped everyone around him with money, careers etc. This gives a somewhat double view of the man. The book is mostly devided into certain time periods, from his days with Highway QC's, up to the month and day of his death, a death that Guralnick seems to ascribe mostly to Sam himself. The history of his death is still not known and probably will never be, but it adds to the legend of Sam Cooke. It was one of the saddest days in musical history and the fact remains that if he was white the investigation about his death would have been different.
This is the second real biography of Sam Cooke after 'You Send Me' by Daniel Woolf which was a good book. It is a little pale compared to 'Dream Boogie' however. All the loose ends that were left in 'You Send Me' are perfectly tied here. Some parts of the Sam Cooke story that were left out or not researched are now in here. He had the advantage of being able to talk to Sam's wife Barbara Campbell and Bobby Womack. They give a different insight into his life and even though we might not always believe what they say it's definitely an extra. Where most books end with his death
The most controversy about the book is in the aftermath. Barbara and Bobby Womack got married very soon after the funeral although in my view it seems they might have done it because they were both a little destroyed by his death.
The book is long, over 650 pages, but again Guralnick has shown that he is among the best writers on American popular music history. You can see that he is and remains a fan of 'The Man who invented Soul'. It is superbly written and some scenes are so well desribed that you almost see it before your eyes, the setting of bars, the houses. You can almost see the crowd outside the funeral home and his brother trying to get in.
Brilliant biography, also for someone not into his music it will give you a good insight into a special case in American history: the history of a poor black kid growing up to be a star in the gospel field and then in the pop field, both as an artist and as labelowner: it is truely the Triumph of Sam Cooke
Book Review: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN..........MR.SAM COOKE!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
A Top 5 pick for 2005.I agree with a previous reviewer,this bio would make a great movie.Just like RAY.Although I don't know about Will Smith.Sam Cooke was a complex individual,triumphant yet tragic.What's also great abot this book is that Mr.Guralnick shows the adversity of what Black entertainers had to go through in the 50's and 60's,the sleaziness of the music business,and eventually of how Sam Cooke triumphed.Also in the book we are introduced to a wide variety of indiviuals:Jackie Wilson,Little Richard, Cassius Clay,Allen Klein(who eventually managed 3 of 4 Beatles and the Rolling Stones)and one of my favorites Lithofayne Pridgon.This book will have you laughing out loud in some spots and quietly reflecting in others.In the end you realize what the world would miss and that in itself is the greater tragedy.Book Review: BIO ON THE TRUE KING !
Summary: 5 Stars
PETER GURALNICK CAME TO HIS SENSES AND WROTE AN ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING BOOK ON THE "TRUE KING". I PICKED THIS BOOK UP AND COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN! IT WAS BETTER THAN A SOAP OPERA.NOW ALL WE NEED TO DO IS GET WILL SMITH TO SIGN ON FOR THE MOVIE DEAL AND WE'LL CALL IT "WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD"! Book Review: Great Book&Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Sam Cooke is One of the Greatest&One of the Most Important Artists Ever in the History of Music.His Lifestory along with His Creativity are all incredible&still there is a air of Mystery to this Music Making Genius.Peter Guralnick who did a great job on writing on Elvis Presley's Career&Life was a must read. this Book on Sam Cooke is really tight with various Stages of Sam's Career&His Influence as a Musicain&also as a BusinessMan.a must read.