Tracklist: Feel It//Chain Gang//Cupid//Medley: It's All Right - For Sentimental Reasons//Twisting the Night Away//Somebody Have Mercy//Bring It On Home to Me//Nothing Can Change This Love//Having A Party
Review:
Oh fuck this. I didn’t pay cash money for a copy of Aqualung just so that I could abandon this thirty-four albums in. No, that’s an act that takes a toll on your soul... A life time of repentance lies before me.
Speaking of soul, here we have what just might be the first full-on soul album on the list. It’s a little bit country, it’s a little bit rock... It’s also fucking incredible. You may notice I’m swearing a lot more, also. I find that the speed with which I complete these reviews is directly proportional to how much shame I would feel in letting my grandma read them. In any case, this album deserves praise conveyable only by the use of profanities. It just might the best live album anyone ever did ever. Leastways, I can’t imagine it being possible to ever do much better.
Anyway, Sam Cooke is playing at the Harlem Square Club, and appropriately enough he sounds like a total square. He’s got a speaking voice to make a high school mathematics teacher look cool. What’s amazing is that he’s also a bloody incredible singing voice. He manages to blend the throaty quality of guys like Little Richard or Otis Redding with a technical polish and rhythmic sense largely alien to those other (admittedly still pretty great) artists. All of which would mean shit if he didn’t also have an incredible backing band, pumping-out a soulful – and I do mean honest-to-god soulful – mix of stomping rhythms, crooning horns and bouncy, bouncy basslines. The result is what just might be the most joyful, beautiful album I’ve ever heard. He comes out, the crowd goes wild, and it doesn't let-up for 38 glorious minutes.
I’d always suspected that Cooke was good, what with songs like “Cupid” and “A Change Is Gonna Come”, but as great as those tracks are they’re also kind of syrupy and over-produced. I tend to like music that’s syrupy and over-produced, but here the general raw ambience of the live setting, contrasted with the sweetness of the music, produces the perfect mix. Add to this Cooke working the audience like a born showman, making little asides to the audience between (and even during) songs, coaxing them to sing along and the like. This is one of those albums where the live audience is just as important as the star players – hell, they sing most of the words on “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons”. And I can’t imagine “Having A Party” being anywhere near as good without the chorus of worshipful female fans. Or the "Hoo! Hah!" grunting on "Chain Gang".. The guy came out of church music, pioneering the singing of secular Gospel, and it only makes sense that he’d be brilliant at stage-front exhortations and the conjuring of the overwhelmingly uplifting. I mean, this is an album where the ballads are just as rocking and wonderful as the actual rockers! And the flow of the show is masterful, starting with a killer batch of fist-pumpers, then lulling a bit, and closing on the anthemic (and aptly-titled) "Having A Party". Not that the music is at all "churchy". In fact, "raw, blinding sexuality" might be a better description. It may sound a cliché to say it, but I would kill a man to be able to go back in time and attend this concert.
So, do you feel like you wanna twist awhile? I said, DO YA WANNA TWIST AWHILE!? Pass the handkerchief around! I said pass the handkerchief around! Cause I don’t know if you can hear me, but if feels good to twist the night away. I said it sure feels good when you’ve got someone to twist the night away with.
Unfortunately, Sam Cooke died pretty soon after this, in deeply peculiar circumstances. The varying reports of how he came to be gunned down in a motel office are “In A Grove”-like in their interlocking complexities. I can’t say I’ve felt a lasting regret about this, since I only know two of his songs outside of this album, and this album is something I've only just become acquainted with, but it’s really a real pity, really, in any case. This is just astonishing.
9/10
