Sam Cooke

They Killed Sam Cooke

It's the evening of December 10, 1964; Sam Cooke has gone to a business dinner at Martoni's, an upscale Italian restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. The alcohol flows freely, spirits are high, because Sam is the charismatic "King of Soul" adored by fans and colleagues alike, but he's also a shrewd businessman who isn't afraid to indulge himself when the occasion arises. Among the restaurant's patrons that evening is an attractive young woman of Asian descent, later identified as Elisa Boyer. It's not entirely clear who makes the first move, but Sam's reputation as an incurable womanizer is well known to everyone – even his wife Barbara knows it, and by now she's used to turning a blind eye to her husband's vices.

A few hours later, a Ferrari speeds toward the South Central neighborhood, heading for the Hacienda, one of the few motels that accept non-segregated clientele – in this case, Sam and Elisa. What happened after the couple's arrival remains disputed, but the police consider themselves satisfied with the witnesses' account: Sam has been drinking like a fiend and displays erratic, far from graceful behavior, to the point that the frightened girl pretends she's going to the bathroom and then flees the room. Sam goes looking for her all the way to the front desk, pounding on the window like a madman; the motel manager, Bertha Franklin, finds herself facing a half-naked, dead-drunk man, and after a brief scuffle, panicking, she shoots him straight in the chest, then strikes him in the head with a broom handle. That's how Sam Cooke dies, at just thirty-three years old, uttering the now-famous words:

Lady, you shot me

The next morning, the news explodes across the whole nation; his wife finds herself a widow with two daughters, aged four and eleven, Etta James goes to the morgue in person and swears she saw a body far more emaciated and battered than the medical report described, fueling the theory that it was a premeditated murder – though this will never be confirmed. During the trial, public opinion turns against Boyer and Franklin, seizing on details such as the fact that a wallet containing a driver's license and credit cards was never found, or the fact that, just a month later, Elisa herself is arrested for prostitution under different circumstances, revealing her true profession and the possible real purpose behind her encounter with Cooke. Bertha, meanwhile, was already known around town as a madam and facilitator for adult entertainment. The fact remains that the trial concludes swiftly with a verdict of "justifiable homicide," sealing the end of a story that remains unresolved to this day.

It is therefore difficult to fairly assess a man like Sam Cooke, who evidently fell victim to the vices of the newly wealthy in a society where women's voices are kept in the background, especially when they contradict those of men deemed important. This story is no exception; Sam probably behaved questionably toward women, and at the same time, his velvet voice – among the first to bring the gospel tradition to national attention within pop structures – gave strength and support to his community during the civil rights uprisings of the Sixties, which explains the mix of bitterness and disbelief surrounding the incident.

What can be speculated with a bit more accuracy, if anything, is that the FBI couldn't have been happier: better that he took himself out of the picture on his own, Sam Cooke, the bewitching crowd-crossing charmer – one less headache to deal with.

Black Excellence: Myths and Contradictions of American Capitalism

Even today there are factions of American society that would like to view the end of slavery as a convenient point at which to erase its impact on the populations who suffered it, and to shrug off the burden of remembering a heavy chapter in the national memory. Beyond being a flawed and dismissive attitude – even though America also celebrates Juneteenth, which commemorates precisely the date slavery's end was announced, June 19, 1865 – the period following emancipation was itself a chaotic ordeal of grave circumstances that the Black population had to face head-on.

Far from being merely a skin-deep prejudice, stoked among populations kept at arm's length, racial segregation, reinforced by Jim Crow laws, was a bureaucratic structure at the governmental level, a long series of actions and prohibitions designed with the clear purpose of cutting the legs out from under a population that had already started out impoverished. It's a contradiction that weighs like a boulder: in a nation that wants to celebrate individual freedom above all else, and in which the accumulation of capital is considered the only viable path – if not a moral duty through which to justify one's very existence – the blatant unfairness of the system is a betrayal that undermines the principle at its root.

There is no more glaring example than the deplorable Tulsa massacre, in the Oklahoma city where the Black population had gradually settled since the mid-19th century, building, in the segregated neighborhood of Greenwood, a small but industrious, well-educated and economically stable community, so much so that it earned itself the nickname of Black Wall Street.

But in the late spring of 1921, following a racial incident reported by the newspapers in sensationalist tones, an enraged faction of white citizens gathered in front of the courthouse, while the Black population scrambled to protect themselves, fearing yet another lynching. But it was too late; between May 31 and June 1, Greenwood suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack by white supremacists, who, aided even by a military-style aerial assault, burned down thirty-five blocks of homes and businesses – an estimated three hundred people were killed and thousands injured, along with the physical and symbolic destruction of one of the few examples of economic success achieved by a systematically oppressed people.

The residents of Greenwood would never fully recover; the magnitude of the event denied any sense of justice. Mrs Viola Ford Fletcher, a child at the time, would spend her whole life remembering the massacre and putting pressure on local authorities – she passed away in November 2025 at the age of one hundred and eleven, the last known survivor of a chapter that remains, to this day, a symbol of intolerance never truly laid to rest.

Tulsa is just one of many dark episodes, yet despite the violence and bureaucratic obstacles, Black America simply cannot stop living – every injustice suffered on one side ends up sparking ingenuity on the other. By the 1960s, a huge nationwide movement had taken shape, varied in styles and attitudes, spanning those who incited revolt in the streets, those who believed in assimilation and the power of capital, and those who instead saw the problem as rooted in the system itself and opted for the philosophy that terrified the government more than any other: socialism.

Of course, the subject is far more complex and layered than this, and it is not the purpose of this review to gather every development and contradiction inherent to the movement, but rather to recall, in broad strokes, a series of voices that pushed the message onto the pages of every newspaper: there are the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, the so-called radical wing, there's Martin Luther King Jr, an educated and presentable man, there are Sydney Poitier and Rosa Parks, and underground congregations like the Five Percenters in Harlem and, of course, the Nation Of Islam, the latter a particularly symbolic movement, born in response to a Christian society that refused to consider Black people as equals. And then there's Cassius Clay, a big man with a tongue as quick as his fists, heavyweight world champion and the sporting face symbolic of the twentieth century, who, at the height of his success, changed his name to Muhammad Ali and refused to be drafted into the army in protest against the Vietnam War.

Amid this hive of activity, Sam Cooke was certainly gentler and more pleasant, but no less tenacious in carving out his place in the record industry while maintaining his African American pride, even while selling records to white audiences; as early as 1959, at the start of his solo career, he founded Sar Records together with his co-writer and right-hand man J. W. Alexander, and Roy Cain, his mentor and tour manager, three Black men determined to keep control of their own work and get around the discrimination of segregated America.

It was a forward-thinking move for the time, as well as a remarkable political stance in an era when African American expression was under heavy scrutiny – a good example being Berry Gordy's Motown, which in those years released a string of works of undeniable artistic merit, though designed to win over mainstream audiences without unsettling them.

But Sam was shrewd; he kept his far more lucrative distribution deal with Rca Victor, which had made him a millionaire, and funneled the money into Sar to release work by his friends and colleagues, such as the Soul Stirrers, the vocal group he himself had sung with in his youth, the Valentinos, the family band of a young Bobby Womack, as well as Billy Preston, Mel Carter and other Black artists who would have found no outlet in an industry run by white executives. Because resistance takes this form too, through ideas and songs that become the daily bread with which to feed one's family, whatever the Senate might think of it.

Good news: the story of a timeless classic

It's thanks to this awareness of his own means that Sam's art grew over time, gradually expanding the usual rhythm'n'blues songbook of love songs to include social and political themes across a range of musical styles, culminating in his final collection of new material, "Ain't That Good News", an album so complete it could stand as the soundtrack to America itself. This, in fact, is the work of a songwriter capable of commanding a diverse audience in a segregated nation, thanks to a pen equal to everything the era demanded and a simply gorgeous tenor voice – rooted in the family's gospel background, since his father was a preacher, but murky like the blues of his ancestors, velvety like contemporary soul, familiar like the working-class country, elastic like the jazz of the big cities, even capable of cutting through the syrupy string arrangements of the white pop fashionable among fans of Frank Sinatra and Doris Day.

Recorded under the production of the duo Hugo & Luigi, with orchestral arrangements by René Hall, "Ain't That Good News" was released in February 1964, presenting a mix of original songs and reworkings of popular and traditional material, an innate versatility skillfully anchored by a sound both soft and roaring, and by performances that are heartfelt yet always fitting, never out of place.

Sam had something for everyone; here he offers a greeting to the working man with "Another Saturday Night", the ode of a laborer who has worked all week and, now that he's got paid, hopes to spend Saturday night in good company – probably one of the most universal feelings there is. But the working man is also invited by "Meet Me At Mary's Place", a delightful choral tune that would have packed out every basement during Prohibition-era in the 1920s.

There's also the famous "Good Times", a joyful ode to the passing of life set to a guitar strum, conceived with disarming simplicity and a hand on the heart. And when it's time to head home, we're offered the wonderfully gentle jazz shuffle "Home", a classic of the American songbook, originally performed by Peter Van Steeden in the 1930s, here reinvigorated with a warm touch of faith.

The love songs, of course, are never missing; placed right at the start of the tracklist, "(Ain't That) Good News" tells the story of a man anxiously awaiting the return of his beloved after she had left him – it's impossible not to catch a hint of sarcasm, Sam being such a sophisticated performer that he could instill such subtleties even within the verses of a bouncy country number. There's a wonderful performance available online on the American Bandstand programme, recorded on April 4, 1964, followed by an interview in which Sam comes across, as usual, affable, with his typical southern twang:

Far more direct, on the other hand, is the delivery of "Tennessee Waltz", this time a country standard that tells of a man who loses his girlfriend to a friend, a sense of bitterness that Sam would later pour into the vengeful orchestral ballad "There'll Be No Second Time".

But Mr Cooke the ladies' man is an expert when it comes to relationships, and with the sly soul strut of “Rome (Wasn’t Built In A Day)” he shows himself willing to build one of his own, brick by brick – it's easy to imagine it dedicated to his own wife, who surely had the patience of a saint. When love's hour arrives, he lets himself go with innate tenderness into the shimmering orchestral jazz of “Falling In Love”, a song originally written by Harold Battiste, here reinterpreted as a serenade by moonlight.

But Cooke possesses a complex humanity, one that never fails to offer fresh points of interest even through the medium of the popular song. There's something curious about his elegant reworking of “Sittin’ In The Sun”, a well-known Songbook number written by Irving Berlin as an ode to money and the intoxicating comfort that comes from having enough of it; Berlin was Russian, having landed in America at just five years old, dragged along by a Jewish family fleeing persecution toward what was then billed as “the land of opportunity” – Sam too became rich, in a land that was nonetheless often inhospitable to him, underscoring that bittersweet feeling that lingers between personal success and social inequality.

The album closes instead with the lullaby “The Riddle Song”, a traditional folk tune from the Appalachian region, here dedicated with intense tenderness to his little son Vincent, who tragically drowned in the family's swimming pool in June 1963, before he was even two years old. These are the outer edges of a universal human experience, one that transcends the emblem of its own historical moment.

The centerpiece of the album, however, remains “A Change Is Gonna Come”, Cooke's signature song and one of the most significant moments in twentieth-century America. Born in the deep South of Mississippi in the early 1930s, raised in Chicago, then constantly on the road across the United States as his career took off, Sam could not escape the treatment reserved for Black men wherever he went – as is well known, Cooke and his family were arrested by police in October 1963 in Shreveport, Louisiana, after protesting “too loudly” over being turned away from a hotel despite having a reservation. Because the price of segregation is paid precisely in everyday things – at the time of that incident, Sam was heartbroken over the death of a son just months earlier, worried about the rest of his family, proud of his career, weighed down by social pressure and the stress of his work schedule, and yet America still only cared about the color of his skin. For this reason too, “A Change Is Gonna Come” pours out of him like a river in flood, a limpid melody carried by a majestic symphonic backdrop and a vocal performance in which pain, exhaustion and hope are bound together into one inseparable whole:

[…]

There were times when I thought

I couldn't hold on much longer

but now, I think I can do it

keep going 

it's been a long time

it took a long time, but I know

a change is gonna come

oh yes, it will

[…]

Bad news: from assimilation to the end of an era

It would be conservative president Richard Nixon, elected in 1969, who slowed down various instances of segregation, especially in schools, and advanced more tolerant policies, such as the official recognition of Black History Month to be celebrated every February (the shortest month of the year, of course), an observance that still retains its dignity today, even though it's now far removed from the spirit in which it was originally conceived.

While obviously positive results, on closer inspection, Black History Month and other progressive policies are also strategies of assimilation: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, and his complex political legacy was immediately condensed into the famous "I have a dream" speech, universalizing its message while stripping away the specificity of the context it had emerged from – a sentiment not too dissimilar from the Jim Morrison and Bob Marley posters hanging in every college dorm, symbols of a "revolutionary" dream that ultimately goes nowhere. Because when a movement becomes impossible to manage, it's just as well to fold it back into the social fabric, carefully smoothing over all those edges that are truly uncomfortable – skin color was never really the problem, what mattered was killing off the experience it carries with it, especially when it presents ideas and philosophies that challenge the status quo of a nation founded on values that aren't as democratic as people believe.

In this context, Sam's cultural legacy is left orphaned just when it was reaching its peak, soon followed by the closure of Sar Records, and finally by the gradual historicizing of a body of work that was important but perhaps never truly understood by the wider public. It would instead be the other fascinating soulman, Marvin Gaye, who struck a more revolutionary note when, in 1971, he released “What’s Going On”, an album immediately recognized even by rock critics as a classic for its themes and sound.

But by then, the United States had already been photographed in black and white, not with antagonism, but with a merciless question written without a question mark to underline its inherent rhetorical sarcasm: “Ain’t That Good News”, for better or worse, the most profoundly American record of the entire twentieth century.

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22/02/2026