"A Change Is Gonna Come"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/28/how-martin-luther-king-jr-influenced-sam-cooke-s-a-change-is-gonna-come.html

HOW MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. INFLUENCED SAM COOKE’S ‘A CHANGE IS GONNA COME’

BY PETER GURALNICK
12.28.14

It is impossible to calculate the full effect that watching this on television, listening on the radio must have had on Sam. These were people that he knew. This was the world from which he came. Mahalia had called the Highway QCs “her boys” when Sam was just starting out, at the age of seventeen, and the Soul Stirrers had cut a new version of “Free At Last” for SAR no more than six months ago. He and Alex [his friend and business partner, J.W. Alexander, who had formerly sung with the Pilgrim Travelers] had been talking with student sit-in leaders in North Carolina on the spring tour. And when he first heard “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the new Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album J.W. had just given him, he was so carried away with the message, and the fact that a white boy had written it, that, he told Alex, he was almost ashamed not to have written something like that himself. It wasn’t the way Dylan sang, he told Bobby Womack. It was what he had to say. His daughter was always telling him he should be less worried about pleasing everyone else and more concerned with pleasing himself—and maybe she was right. But like any black entertainer with a substantial white constituency, he couldn’t help but worry about bringing his audience along.

- snip -

But he didn’t hear back for almost five months, and then it was from an assistant community relations director, who suggested that he give her a ring so they could discuss just what he might have in mind. “We didn’t count,” was the matter-of-fact assessment of Lloyd Price, like Sam, an independent businessman and solid Movement supporter. “They wanted high-profile artists like Sammy, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, artists [who appealed to whites and the black middle class] like Nat ‘King’ Cole—but what could have been more high-profile than rock ’n’ roll singers selling millions of records and playing interracial music, interracial dances?”

“I’m going to write something,” Sam told J.W. But he didn’t know what it was.

- snip -

The traveling show arrived in Shreveport at 7:30 in the morning after an all-night drive. Sam had called ahead to make reservations for Barbara and himself at the brand-new Holiday Inn North just outside of town, but when they pulled up in the Maserati, with Charles and Crain trailing in the packed Cadillac limo, the man at the desk glanced nervously at the group and said he was sorry, there were no vacancies. Charles protested vehemently, but it was Sam who refused to back down. He set his jaw in the way that Barbara knew always meant trouble, and, long after the clerk had simply gone silent, Sam kept yelling at him, asking, Did they think he was some kind of ignorant fool? He had just as much right to be there as any other damn body. He wanted to see the manager. He wasn’t going to leave until he got some kind of damn satisfaction. Barbara kept nudging him, trying to get him to calm down. They’ll kill you, she told him, when the desk clerk’s attention was distracted. “They ain’t gonna kill me,” he told her, “because I’m Sam Cooke.” Honey, she said, down here they’d just as soon lynch you as look at you, they don’t care who you are. Finally the others got him out the door, but he sat in the car fuming, staring at the desk clerk who just stared coldly back, and when he drove off, it was with the horn of the Maserati blaring and all four occupants of both cars calling out insults and imprecations.

The police were waiting for them when they arrived at the Castle Hotel on Sprague Street, the colored guesthouse downtown where the rest of the group was staying. They were taken to the police station, where they were charged not with attempting to register at the Holiday Inn but with creating a public disturbance. They were held for several hours and finally let go, but not before the contents of Crain’s small suitcase had been carefully scrutinized and counted: it amounted to $9,989.72 in coins and wrinkled bills and represented, Crain told a skeptical police captain, “the receipts collected from recent performances.” The Maserati’s horn had stuck, Crain explained to even greater skepticism, because there was a short in the electrical system that caused it to go off whenever the automobile turned sharply to the left. Crain posted a cash bond of $102.50 apiece shortly before 1:30 P.M., and they returned to the Castle Hotel.

- snip -

He played it through once, singing the lyrics softly to his own guitar accompaniment. After a moment’s silence, Alex was about to respond—but before he could, Sam started playing the song again, going through it this time line by line, as if somehow his partner might have missed the point, as if, uncharacteristically, he needed to remind himself of it as well.

It was a song at once both more personal and more political than anything for which Alex might have been prepared, a song that vividly brought to mind a gospel melody but that didn’t come from any spiritual number in particular, one that was suggested both by the civil rights movement and by the circumstances of Sam’s own life—J.W. knew exactly where it came from, but Sam persisted in explaining it nonetheless. It was almost, he said wonderingly, as if it had come to him in a dream. The statement in its title and chorus, “A Change Is Gonna Come” (“It’s been a long time comin’ / But I know / A change gonna come”), was the faith on which it was predicated, but faith was qualified in each successive verse in ways that any black man or woman living in the twentieth century would immediately understand. When he sang, “It’s been too hard living / But I’m afraid to die / I don’t know what’s up there / Beyond the sky,” he was expressing the doubt, he told Alex, that he had begun to feel in the absence of any evidence of justice on earth. “I go to the movies / And I go downtown / Somebody keep telling me / Don’t hang around” was simply his way of describing their life—Memphis, Shreveport, Birmingham—and the lives of all Afro-Americans. “Or, you know,” said J.W., “in the verse where he says, ‘I go to my brother and I say, “Brother, help me, please,”’—you know, he was talking about the establishment—and then he says, ‘That motherfucker winds up knocking me back down on my knees.’

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[Autumn]

1. .

[monmouth4]

2. While listening to this beautiful song I was remembering that night in Grant Park when Barack Obama

won his first election and was going to be the first black President of the United States. Of all the beautiful sights to be seen that night, for some reason Jesse Jackson stands out to me. He didn't just have moisture in his eyes, his tears were huge, and he let them roll right down his face. I was thinking that he must have been possibly thinking of his own ancestors, the great-grands, etc. and how he wished they could be with him to see this celebration. I had not shed any tears that night but seeing Jesse, I started to cry also. It was so emotional and glorious at the same time. I find I have something in my eye right now and considering my age I doubt I will ever see such a thing again. Thanks for posting this and reminding us all.

[Spazito]

3. When "A Change is Gonna Come" was sung at President Obama's inauguration...

in front of the Lincoln Memorial, I cried like a baby. I searched out the video and cried again while listening to it.

[Hissyspit]

4. Same here. Only I was there!

[Spazito]

5. I remember, you were posting to DU from there, right?

Didn't you, Skinner and EarlG go or am I mixing up when the three of you traveled together?

[Hissyspit]

6. Yes, I went to the concert and the inauguration.

You are also thinking of when I went to the 2007 convention and stayed with Elad.

It amazes me how that song makes me tear up everytime.

[Spazito]

7. Ahhh, okay, I am remembering two different occasions...

The song does the same to me every single time I hear it. The true meaning of it, though, did not truly hit home until the election of President Obama.

Sam Cooke has been and always will be my favorite r&b artist.