Original subtitles

People.

♪ Somebody have mercy on me ♪

♪ Somebody have mercy on me right now ♪

Sam had that magic voice.

♪ I wanna tell you that, darling, you... ♪

♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪

♪ You send me... ♪

Sam is the father of modern soul music. Absolutely.

This is Sam singing to a black audience.

It's a vastly different kind of Sam Cooke than the mainstream,

meaning white people, have become accustomed to.

♪ I love you ♪

♪ For ♪

♪ Sentimental reasons ♪

People remember Sam Cooke as a pristine Frank Sinatra wannabe.

But in reality, he was a complicated black man

in a complicated world.

Record companies really did not want a black man

talking about issues that were going on in the country.

They wanted him to be an entertainer and nothing more,

and that was never gonna be enough for Sam Cooke.

♪ How many deaths will it take ♪

♪ Till you know ♪

♪ Too many people have died ? ♪

In the times where everything was so oppressive,

he broke through a lot of color barriers and wasn't afraid to be the first.

Empowerment... this is what drove him to talk with Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

He was so unafraid.

If you afraid, you couldn't be hangin' out with Malcolm, but...

the FBI might find a way to get rid of you.

These were the early stages of black power.

That black male energy that Sam Cooke possessed,

unfortunately, for some people in power in this country,

represented a threat that had to be stopped.

This very mysterious death was just the most improbable death for Sam Cooke.

What happened? Why was he there? And who was this woman he was with?

And why'd he get shot? All those become bigger questions

than "What was he on the edge of achieving?"

It's a double murder.

It's the murder of the physical being who was Sam Cooke,

but there's also the murder of his legacy.

One of the biggest shocks I ever had in my life.

I was on the expressway in Detroit, and the radio was on.

Soul singer Sam Cooke shot to death last night...

in Compton or wherever he was.

I was devastated.

I don't think I functioned for a week.

It was horrible.

I asked my father

when he told me he was dead, I said, "What, a car accident?

A plane crash?"

I couldn't... Even when he told me he got shot, I...

I could've just passed out.

Who would want to shoot Sam Cooke? That's what I asked myself.

I was sad and confused back then,

and most... other people, especially in the black community, but not only,

were sad and confused. You know, "What happened?"

Everybody was cold but anxiously waiting.

They wanted to see Sam Cooke.

They wanted to know if this really happened.

There was just disbelief and sorrow all mixed up.

Two hundred thousand people-plus showed up at his funeral in Chicago,

and this is how this man died,

you know, naked at a seedy hotel in Los Angeles.

He's one of the biggest pop stars in America,

and he's just mysteriously dead now. Didn't make any sense.

Muhammad Ali, in his grief and rage, essentially said,

"If this had happened to Frank Sinatra or The Beatles or Ricky Nelson,

the FBI would be investigating this."

'Cause, of course, it felt this all went way too quickly.

And Muhammad Ali, I think, spoke for the entire community

who believed that this was being treated as just another dead black person.

Sam Cooke, at the time of his death,

is someone who has significant meaning to the black community.

Black community loves him.

Sam Cooke didn't mean the same to white America.

They didn't recognize how important Sam Cooke was.

Sam Cooke's death, or at least the way that it's been treated in the media,

it's been allowed to sort of hijack the rest of his career.

People didn't think of Sam Cooke in that way,

but he's a racial hero as much as he was a musical hero.

Between the way he died and this representation of him

as a sort of almost one-dimensional character

kind of loses the essence of who he was.

You have to question

why did the record companies suppress his politics?

♪ Oh, my baby's comin' home tomorr' ♪

♪ Ain't that good news? ♪

♪ Man, ain't that news? ♪

♪ Yeah, good news ♪

♪ Good news ♪

♪ Ain't that good news? ♪

♪ Ain't that news? ♪

Yeah.

- Miss Elinor Harris. - Hello, Miss Harris.

- Sam, sit here. - Terrific.

- It's good news. - Good news, yeah.

Let's do a little capsule version of the Sam Cooke story.

- How'd it all happen... - The captions version. Uh...

Born. My father was a minister.

Uh, I started singing in the church, naturally,

because I'm exposed to, uh, gospel singing first, Mike.

Sam Cooke is born in 1931 in Mississippi.

As Sam Cooke was coming of age during the Great Depression,

late '30s into the '40s,

slavery was something that was still a residual memory for many people.

You're talking about a time where black people,

especially black men, were being lynched all over the place.

I'm certain that people like Sam Cooke's family,

including his father, who was a preacher, said, "We've got to get somewhere

where we can have a life for ourselves, where we can actually not just survive,

but hopefully, we can win."

My great-grandmother was a slave in Mississippi.

She had no education. Neither did my father.

He was a self-made man,

but he saw the disadvantages to the negro child in the South,

so he went north to Chicago.

In many ways, I'm very like my father.

He has this intense drive that I've got.

Papa Cook got a church in Chicago,

so everybody went to church in his family.

Bronzeville was a beautiful place.

In that corridor, from 43rd and State Street

to 51st Street,

there must've been 200 to 300 black businesses that were vibrant.

Segregated, of course. All black.

It was like a black Wall Street.

Churches everywhere on every block.

There is no black politics at this moment in time without the black church.

If you were a popular gospel singer, as Sam Cooke eventually would become,

you would rub elbows with a young Martin Luther King, right?

You would know who Reverend C.L. Franklin was,

who, of course, is Aretha Franklin's father

and generally regarded as one of the greatest preachers

produced in the 20th century.

Chicago was a place where people had to figure out how to hustle for themselves,

and I don't think it's a coincidence that Sam Cooke would eventually say,

"I want to own my own record label, own my own publishing company."

That's what you saw in Chicago.

You saw businesses everywhere, and I'm sure he was impacted by that.

Papa Cook... he knew that Sam was very gifted.

Matter of fact, the whole Cook children, 'cause they were called the Cook children.

He took 'em around to the churches to sing.

♪ Well ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Though I've never been up there ♪

I met Sam at a concert in Gary, Indiana.

I was about 16 years old,

and Sam would had to be around 13 or 14.

I went up, and I say, "Hey, man. You were somethin' else, boy."

I ain't never heard nothing like this before in my life."

♪ Does Jesus care? ♪

The Soul Stirrers was a top group. They were one of the biggest.

It was a really big deal when Sam was tapped as a teenager

to fill the shoes of R. H. Harris,

who was a grown man and had been around the circle.

♪ I no longer stand ♪

♪ I ask my mother how ♪

He starts out trying to sing some of the lead songs

the way that Harris did. He was trying to reach...

As the story goes, he was trying to reach this high note

and couldn't quite reach it the way Harris did,

and he instinctively did this flutter

where he just kind of reached up for the note and just floated down.

♪ He gave her ♪

♪ And it was not in the well ♪

- ♪ Whoa ♪ - ♪ Yes ♪

When you hear a track like "Jesus Gave Me Water,"

you hear Sam keepin' up with the choir, keeping the time,

but then he goes into that little yodel piece, right,

that just says that this is Sam Cooke's song now.

♪ Water, water, water, water, loving water ♪

♪ And it was not in the well ♪

Aretha Franklin is my longest friend who is still alive.

We grew up together. Occasionally, I would go to their church,

but when Sam and the Soul Stirrers came to that church,

you would've thought they were gonna have a rock concert there

because... especially for women.

There were women who never even thought about goin' to church until...

until Sam and the Soul Stirrers were there.

And they would be around the block four deep, you know,

because Sam was there.

♪ Oh, pray when you're feelin' low ♪

♪ When the ill wind blows ♪

♪ Don't forget to pray ♪

I believe it was Abyssinia Baptist Church in Newark

where the Soul Stirrers were a part of the program.

I thought he was the cutest thing in the world.

I was 11 years old and madly in love.

Sam Cooke joins the Soul Stirrers when he's in his late teens,

so he's 19-20 years old when he starts to go down south to tour.

There was a Chitlin Circuit black artists played back in those days,

especially through the South.

We called it the Chitlin Circuit 'cause those places

were like funky like that, you know, like, funky like chitlins.

This is the time when we were on the last legs of vaudeville

and on the beginnings of rock 'n' roll,

of-of-of that kind of R&B rock 'n' roll.

So a lot of the places that we played

were like not very much bigger than this room.

They had one microphone with five of us tryin' to sing on one microphone.

♪ ...a bad girl be... ♪

And I'm singing "Bad Girl" into this guy's chest

because that's how close the crowd...

There was no stage, and we were on the floor,

and I'm singing "Bad Girl" into this guy's chest,

and people behind him are yellin' and screamin',

"Move out of the way. We can't see."

And so that's an example of what some of that stuff was like.

In traveling the South with the Soul Stirrers,

they're dealing with where they can stay,

where they can eat, the audiences they can play to.

At that moment, you know, he's a kid.

He's got to go with what's going on, but it really pained him,

you know, the heavy yoke of-of the Jim Crow laws,

which was something he wasn't really that accustomed to,

but had to get used to pretty quickly.

The conditions were very hard and very prejudice.

There were places in the South where we couldn't even stay in the hotels.

We'd have to stay in rooming houses.

We used to have to sleep in mortuaries with six bodies there,

us sleepin' in a cot with six bodies in caskets, you know.

Sam, he didn't like the Chitlin Circuit

because he wanted to be able to go where he wanted to go, you know.

After he went on that tour down south,

he came back, and he says, "Scoe, it's a shame how people is being treated.

Somebody should do something about it."

So only thing I could say I know what he was talkin' about

because I had been through the same... some of the same things myself.

I was comin' from school, and I was on the sidewalk walkin',

and he...

he hit me and knocked me off the sidewalk, say, "I teach a nigger how to...

how to walk on the sidewalk with a white man."

You're talking about a time

where a little black boy, 14 years old, who was also from Chicago,

with roots in Mississippi, just like Sam Cooke,

Emmet Till allegedly whistled at a white woman,

and he was beaten savagely in Money, Mississippi,

and had a fan tied around his neck and was killed.

Sam and I... we talked about Emmett Till a lot.

We was wondering just how could that be possible?

We didn't understand it at all.

When we saw the picture, I think Sam felt really hurt on a personal level.

Sam thought that there's got to be something that can be done.

We're living in a world where we pay taxes,

and we're law-abiding people, you know what I mean?

This should not happen to a 14-year-old anywhere, you know,

so he was, like, very bitter about that.

It was a wake-up call,

and it was actually, the really,

the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.

Sam had things on his mind that he wanted to do,

and he especially wanted to help his people, our people,

and he was determined to do that.

And he told me, "'Scoe, one of these days, the world gonna know Sam Cooke,

and I'm gonna help my people."

♪ I bought a brand-new airmobile ♪

Sam was a person of the early rock-'n'-roll generation,

so he was hearing Chuck Berry.

He was hearing Little Richard.

♪ Oh, now lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, Miss Clawdy ♪

♪ Girl, you sure look good to me ♪

I met Sam in Specialty Records' office

in 1953.

They were celebrating "Lawdy, Miss Clawdy"

because it was their first rock-'n'-roll record

to ever sell a million copies.

Sam would sneak off to rock-'n'-roll shows

because he saw something bigger, you know.

Sam knew all of the joints to go to.

He'd say, "The Soul Stirrers didn't know, but we'd be out

till two or three o'clock in the morning and have to sing the next day."

He'd say, "But Sam would be ready," you know.

When he came to my show at the Apollo, I pointed something out to him.

I said, "Now, you had about 300. I got 1,700 in here.

They're doin' the same thing here you had 'em doing in Richmond in church.

There's no different than this."

And he just didn't wanna switch.

But all the gospel singers back during that time didn't wanna switch.

You know, I guess it was because of the fear of Jesus.

We are told straight up in the black church,

"Either you're gonna sing God's music, or you're gonna do the Devil's music."

And there's a kind of a guilt complex that gets tied to that

because you're like,

"Well, I wanna sing God's music, but this Devil music's got me dancing.

And this Devil music can make me famous. I can do more things with my life."

He said himself, "I was afraid at first

because I knew that if I switched over...

if it didn't work, I couldn't come back with the Soul Stirrers."

That's the way people were.

Once you went out there, they weren't forgiving.

Papa Cook was like my father, you know.

He said, "Boy, let me tell you something.

You can gain the world...

and lose your soul.

You're doin' good with the Soul Stirrers. Everybody loves you.

You're known all around the country."

But Sam told him, "I want to be known all around the world."

Sam was saying early on, "I wanna make a wide range of music.

I wanna appeal to a wide range of people."

Well, why is that? It's about freedom.

I think he understood that whatever he was doing in this period

would have an impact on the people who would come after him.

♪ Wonderful ♪

There was a song called, uh,

♪ Wonderful ♪

♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪

♪ My God is so wonderful ♪

♪ He's wonderful ♪

♪ Whoa ♪

He took that song and said,

♪ Lovable ♪

♪ She is so lovable ♪

♪ She's so lovable ♪

♪ Ooh-ooh ♪

The first record that he came out with, he didn't use Sam Cooke.

He used Dale Cook because he was afraid of the backlash.

We used to, "Man, that's-that's-that's gotta be Sam.

I don't know anybody... I haven't heard anybody who sang like that."

♪ Whoa ♪

At some point, he just made peace with the fact that,

"I'm gonna make the kind of music that I wanna make,

and I'm gonna use my name... C-O-O-K.

I'm gonna add a "E" to it for some flavor,

you know, special Chicago flavor,

and I'm gonna put out this little song in 1957 called 'You Send Me.'"

This is "You Send Me."

♪ You send me ♪

♪ Darling, you send me ♪

Even though it's presented in a much more polished way in "You Send Me,"

you can hear aspects of his gospel background.

♪ Honest you do, whoa-oa-oa ♪

That moment where he does the "whoa-oa-oa,"

I mean, it's just, like, fantastic as a signature.

"You Send Me" is one of the most perfect pop songs of the era.

It's a song that was probably too pop-ish for Elvis Presley.

When they announced they were gonna have Sam Cooke on Ed Sullivan's show...

we knew that the record was a hit.

For African-Americans, of course there was this great pride.

You know, not everyone has a television, so it wasn't unusual that you might have

the one or two families in the black neighborhood

that has a television,

and everybody shows up at the house

just to catch a glimpse of blackness on television.

And now, ladies and gentlemen... Sam Cooke.

♪ Darling you ♪

We were all waiting, 30 or 40 people around a little television,

waiting for Sam to come on.

It was like seein' God, really.

♪ Mm-mm, mm-mm ♪

♪ Honest you do ♪

It's a gold record commemorating the million-record sale

of your big hit "You Send Me," and here it is.

Ha ha. Thank you, Steve, and I'd like to...

One night, I was singin' in the church

and thinkin' maybe I'll have to get a side job.

I'd heard of the stories of Cinderella singers like Elvis Presley,

but I never expected to be in one of those big payoffs myself.

"You Send Me" went straight up the charts, so he felt like,

"I'm going to do what I wanna do, and I'm going to go where I wanna go."

Dick Clark from American Bandstand

was also a concert promoter all around the country,

and he hired Sam Cooke to come down to Atlanta and to do a live show.

Dick Clark has such an impact

in terms of how young folks listen to American music.

If you're Sam Cooke, you had to be on that show.

Sam was about the only black,

or I should say negro singer at the time on the show,

and the Klan members down there had a problem with that.

Suddenly, there are threats coming from the KKK

suggesting that perhaps you should not go up on that stage.

Ku Klux Klan had just bombed a Jewish synagogue down there,

so we know they meant business.

Sam told us Dick was thinking about canceling

'cause he was getting all of this threatening mail,

and people saying that they were gonna blow up the studio

if he had a-a nigger on, you know.

That's just the way it was, you know.

Dick Clark did what a powerful white man would do.

He called the National Guard to keep people safe from the KKK,

but what Dick Clark didn't know

that probably most black people in Atlanta knew

that you probably couldn't trust the National Guard, either.

That's how pervasive this was.

Welcome aboard. It's nice to have you here on a Saturday night.

He was angry, but he wasn't afraid to go nowhere, not Sam.

It's Sam Cooke.

For Sam to go and do it anyway,

absolutely courageous, absolutely fearless,

because he was breaking boundaries, you know,

and I think Sam realized very early on "This is bigger than me."

What Sam Cooke would've said is that, "I'm a man,

and I'm a black man, and as a black man,

I have a responsibility to go on this show

and bring down whatever walls I can bring...

whatever boundaries I can help dissipate by showing that I am talented,

I am skilled, I can compete with the best of them.

And in fact, there was an audience within white America

that was very interested in having me seen there."

Los Angeles, California, when you live in Cleveland, Ohio,

is like a... a wonderland.

He had moved out to California where all the movie stars,

so we looked at him as really had hit it big, you know.

He could be the forerunner.

The Arthur Murray Party.

To start the evening off, we have invited a young singer,

who already has the most amazingly long list of hit recordings,

and he deserves every one of them.

It's Sam Cooke.

♪ Mary, Mary Lou ♪

♪ Why must you do ♪

♪ The things that you always do? ♪

Yeah.

I remember when he signed with RCA Victor.

He says, "Man, can you believe

that I'm number two under Elvis Presley in sales?"

We liked Elvis Presley, you know,

but I never thought I'd meet him.

One day, Sam said, "Hey, listen. Elvis is comin' over."

And we were like... "Sam's bullshittin' us, man.

Elvis Presley ain't comin' over here to meet us, you know."

But sure enough, he came over to the studio,

and I thought like, "Man, Sam is out here. He knows everybody."

♪ We're havin' a party ♪

♪ Dancin' to the music ♪

People think of Sam Cooke primarily as a singer,

and I don't think he gets enough credit as a songwriter.

You know, if you listen to a song like "Having a Party"...

♪ The Cokes are in the icebox... ♪

...you get these little snapshots of his life.

You wanna be at that party.

You feel the joy, the emotion of what's going on.

♪ Baby ♪

♪ We're out here on the floor ♪

Sam likes the idea of suddenly being in these exclusive circles

with very powerful white people

who could help him, and he could learn from them.

It's kind of changing his idea of who he is and the influence he can have.

RCA built their own studio at Sunset and Vine,

and I was the first engineer they hired.

Recording Sam was like catching fish in a barrel.

He wrote the songs. He sang the songs. He knew exactly what he wanted.

We spent a lot of time together, and Sam got inside me, you know.

He was more like a brother to me.

♪ The house I live in ♪

♪ A plot of earth ♪

♪ A street ♪

He certainly had hit a point in his career where he could've just been playing

the biggest nightclubs in New York, in Los Angeles, in Chicago.

It would've been easy for him to not go back to the South.

But I think it was important for him to constantly keep that connection

for himself and for his audience,

but to keep his finger on what was happening in the Civil Rights movement,

which wasn't happening the same way in the North or the West.

♪ That's America ♪

♪ To ♪

♪ Me ♪

My very first tour was with Sam Cooke.

We were in South Carolina,

and Sam says, "Everybody hungry?" We say, "Yeah."

We walked into this little place,

and we sat down and were asked to stand up.

Oh, ok.

And we asked. I said, "Are you gonna take our orders?"

"You gotta shut up and wait till I get to you."

So me and my big mouth. I said, "You know what you can do?

Take that order and shove it." And we left.

Ten minutes later, there was a police officer...

that came to the bus...

and he stepped onto the bus.

And Sam said, "Can I help you?"

He said, "Yeah, we wanna know who those two gals were

that were rude to the waitress in the tavern house."

And Sam says, "First of all, we don't have gals on our bus.

We have ladies and gentlemen...

and this happens to be my bus.

It's private property,

and I'm gonna ask you kindly to step off of it."

He thought about who he was

and those around him, who they were,

and that they were not going to take advantage

of anybody that he cared about.

I will never forget the day

I was unable to fulfill a one-night singing engagement in Georgia

because I wouldn't sit in a Jim Crow bus,

and because no white taxicab driver

would take me from the airport to the city.

And negro cab drivers were not permitted to bring their cabs into the airport.

We used to play places in the South whereas the audiences,

even though they were integrated, they were segregated

because the white people would be upstairs,

and the black people would be downstairs or vice versa.

Or there'd be a big stage in the center of this arena,

and white people would be on one side, black people on the other,

not even hardly lookin' at each other.

They had signs that said, "General Admission... 2.50.

White spectators... a dollar and a half."

They'd sit up in the top of the places

and watch the black people dance, you know. It was sickening.

♪ Someone really loves you ♪

♪ Guess who ♪

- ♪ Guess who ♪ - There was a friend of... Jesse Belvin.

In February of 1960,

Jesse played the first integrated show in Arkansas.

It was a big deal.

After the show was over, everybody left, went their separate ways,

and about a half an hour out on the road,

Jesse Belvin had a... head-on-head-on collision,

and it was fatal.

Jesse Belvin, his wife, and three other people died.

At first, we thought it was an accident,

but later, we found out that his tires had been cut by some locals in the area.

It was very, very shocking, you know, 'cause he had a great future ahead of him.

Of course it was a message.

I think Sam sort of saw that potential and wanted him to be a bigger star,

and in that sort of terrible way, he was just sort of cut down. He was gone.

So now he wasn't just carrying Emmett Till,

he was also carrying Jesse Belvin with him and the things that he wanted to do

and the ways that he wanted to break down racism.

On May 12th, 1961,

we were playin' the Memphis City Auditorium.

Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson. It was at least about 12 acts.

So Sam asked the people that's in charge,

"Would the blacks sit at in the auditorium?"

The guy say, "Well, the back and the balcony,

but they can't be up-front."

So Sam said, "Well..." He said, "I can't perform here."

Sam would say... "How does it look?

You know, I'm a star, and I'm known the world over...

but in my own home country...

I'm goin' along with some shit like this.

I'm gonna perform while my people is up in the balcony,

and the people downstairs can dance and have a good time,

but my people can't dance?

I don't care what nobody else do. I ain't goin' for that shit."

Sam gathered a meeting with all of the entertainers...

to boycott the show.

And everybody agreed,

"Yeah. Yeah, Sam. You're right. You're right. Yeah, we with you, man."

Went back to the hotel.

I went to Beetle Street first and got me some bourbon.

I laid down, took a little nap.

And I got up later...

everybody... I went round and knocked.

Everybody had gone and went back to the auditorium.

I went to Sam's room. He was in the room. Had on a... never will forget.

He had on a white T-shirt, and he watching television.

And I says, "Sam, they all gone."

I said, "They said they was gonna stick with you," you know.

He say, "Yeah, I know." He said, "But..." He said, "I'm not goin'."

I'm not sure that Jesse Belvin's death

had an effect on the outcome of this boycott

Sam was trying to do

because they was afraid what could happen to them.

He was takin' a big risk.

He could've been hurt or killed there, you know, at that time, you know.

That's when I saw him in a different...

I had never seen that in him before.

And the hotel that time was the Lorraine.

Same hotel Martin Luther King was killed at some years later.

I've always detested people of any color, religion or nationality

who lack courage to stand up and be counted.

It is a difficult thing to do.

I hope, by refusing to play to a segregated audience,

it would help to break down racial segregation here.

And if I'm ever booked here again,

it won't be necessary to do a similar thing.

♪ Alabama's got me so upset ♪

♪ Tennessee made me lose my rest ♪

♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi ♪

♪ God... damn ♪

During that time period, there were major artists,

Nina Simone comes to mind,

whose music would get banned from parts of the country

for some of their political stances.

And Sam was taking a big risk by saying,

"I don't wanna play in a segregated space,"

you know, particularly because he was a major star.

♪ Well, don't you know ♪

♪ That's the sound of the men ♪

♪ Working on the chain gang ♪

Folks who didn't understand that Sam actually had some political concerns,

you listen to a song like "Chain Gang,"

which just the rhythm of the song immediately would resonate

for generations of black folks who know about places like Parchman

and other prison farms.

Yet you see these photos of Hugo and Luigi,

his two producers, and Sam Cooke,

and they're comically dressed up in their black-and-whites and little caps,

and so it's a way to take this song and bring it to mainstream white America,

but is also delivering a particular kind of critique

of what would've been a prison industrial complex

of the late 1950s,

in which white audiences and black audiences

hear that very, very differently.

And there had been so few examples of black artists

who could code switch in that way

and be recognized in both the black world and the white world and still be men.

What white people have to do

is try to find out in their own hearts

why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place

because I'm not a nigger.

I am a man.

If I'm not the nigger here...

and if you invented him, you, the white people, invented him...

then you got to find out why.

James Baldwin was one of his favorite authors.

He captured his attention.

Baldwin was a deep writer.

I could understand...

Sam respecting him and pickin' up on his...

meaning and what he's contributing.

He says, "You guys got to read."

And we weren't really carin' about no books or nothin' like that.

You know, we just wanted to sing and be on television and stuff.

But he's like, "Man, that's not all of it."

He say, "You got to be knowledgeable."

The country has arbitrarily declared

that kinky hair and dark skin, wide nose and big lips

is a hideous thing to be afflicted with.

Sam was the one who started the black guys...

to wearin' fros.

♪ My baby couldn't do the cha-cha-cha ♪

- ♪ I told her ♪ - Before that, our hair was processed,

and we were wearin' the slickback, the waves, and all that stuff like that.

Sam said, "No, that won't be me."

♪ She likes her cha-cha-cha ♪

He went on TV, where his mother almost passed out because of the hair.

Heh. She did not like it, and she said,

"Oh, look at my child."

Sam would talk to I.C. about,

"Man, you ought to get that process out your hair and let it go natural."

He felt that it was part of his history... his culture.

Switched over immediately.

All the black guys started gettin' the fros, you know.

Sam was a powerful man.

We were in Atlanta,

and in between concerts, he'd go to a newsstand and buy every magazine,

and one day, he went and bought a boxing magazine.

And there was this guy.

I said, "Sam, this kid is the shit."

He said, "All right, go get him."

And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Tell him I sent you."

I said, "Oh, my God."

I knock on his door.

His brother Rudy cracks the door, and I said,

"I'm with the William Morris..." and he slams the door in my face.

And I said... "Sam Cooke."

And his mother said, "Let that boy in."

And his mother couldn't stop talking about Sam.

So, we made a deal to do an album...

and they really bonded.

Sam was God to him.

This is Sam Cooke. As you can see, like me, he's awful pretty.

- Ha ha. - And we are here now

workin' on a record called "The Gang's All Here."

Would you like to give us a preview of this disc?

We'll do a lot better if we had the music here with us, but we'll try.

♪ Hey, hey, the gang's all here ♪

♪ Join in the fun ♪

Ha ha ha.

♪ Hey, hey, the gang's all here ♪

♪ We gonna swing as one ♪

♪ Do it again now... ♪

The joy that they brought out of each other and the laughter...

they were showing a range of emotions together.

A kind of black male freedom, if you will.

That was not really... heh...

something we saw a lot of at that time in America.

You know, you always saw, up until that point,

these really harsh, stereotypical images of black people

who were either, you know, buffoons and clowns

and, you know, exaggerated facial expressions,

eyes bugging out, stuff like that.

♪ We gonna swing as one ♪

- How you like that? - Let's think about a young Michael Jackson

or a young Prince Rogers Nelson,

who would've been five or six years old,

sitting around the television watching these two young men.

What Ali and Sam Cooke represented was possibility.

Right? That there was another way for them to be in the world

other than the way that the world

had dictated that black men had to be in the world.

It disturbed perceptions of what black masculinity was.

Cassius Clay very quietly was being mentored by a man named Malcolm X,

who was this fearless, and very much feared, black leader in America

who spoke, as he said, truth to power.

It's not hate to say that we were kidnapped and brought here. It's true.

It's not hate to say we were Jim Crowed, discriminated, and segregated. It's true.

Sam Cooke doesn't know Malcolm X yet,

but he's just seen how the Nation of Islam moves,

how they dealing with white supremacy,

He's, "Oh, this is kind of interesting." Right?

And he starts paying more attention to Malcolm X.

They eventually become friends.

Black men should have a hand in controlling

the economy of the so-called negro community.

He should be developing the type of knowledge

that will enable him to own and operate the businesses,

and thereby be able to create employment for his own people, for his own kind.

Just like the Civil Rights movement was basically saying, "Why not us?"

Sam was saying the same thing

as an entrepreneur, a black businessman. "Why not us?"

♪ My man's got a heart... ♪

Black blues musicians and jazz musicians and early black rock-'n'-roll artists

who didn't really make anything from their music.

It was like sharecropping, where you do all the work, you do the labor...

it's your creativity, your energy...

and then someone else reaps the benefits of it.

This publishers would rook songwriters out of their music.

Give 'em $25 and buy songs that became massive hits.

- ♪ In the still of the... ♪ - ♪ Shoo-doo, dooby-doo ♪

Black musicians didn't get treated fairly.

Instead of gettin' royalties, they would get...

they'd get... you'd get cocaine.

And that's just the way it was back then.

Disc jockey out of Philadelphia said,

"Sam, you know they're probably rippin' you off, RCA Records?"

And he says, "I got a good CPA friend that I want you to meet."

Allen Klein was an accountant in New York.

Klein had overheard conversations

about Sam's dissatisfaction with receiving royalty payments from RCA.

So Allen Klein audits RCA Victor...

and comes up with a bunch of money for Sam.

Sam was extremely generous,

always looked out for, not just his wife and children,

but also for his family members back in Chicago.

He could've had a perfectly fine career as a singer,

but it was always this idea there was something more.

He was always looking at what was gonna be next

because he had this sense of the bigger picture.

J.W. Alexander was a member of the Pilgrim Travelers,

and when that group disbanded,

he started a publishing company.

Said, "Sam, you're writing a lot of songs.

You need to own your publishing because that's where the money's at.

That's where the power's at."

Sam says, "Well, if we're gonna start a publishing company,

how about us starting a record company on top of it

and record our own artists?"

And that was the beginning of the partnership.

- Johnnie? - Hey.

I want you to sing this real plain...

♪ But everybody's got a smile ♪

- ♪ But everybody's got a smile ♪ - Right. We're in business.

He was Berry Gordy before Berry Gordy

when Sam started SAR Records with J.W. Alexander.

The purpose of SAR Records

was to give many of the gospel artists that Sam knew

an opportunity to record pop records, perhaps cross over.

He had Johnnie Taylor and Mel Carter.

And I loved... The Valentinos. I loved them.

There was a song called, "I'm Lookin for a Love,"

and Bobby sounded like Sam on there.

♪ I'm lookin', I'm lookin', I'm lookin' ♪

♪ I'm lookin' for a love to call my own ♪

♪ Someone to get up in the mornin' ♪

Sam Cooke and J.W. Alexander were both good businessmen,

but I know it was all about...

tryin' to help these artists out.

I am aware that ownin' a record company

is a losing deal much too often for comfort,

but this company of mine is concentrating on recording negro artists

I feel have the ingredients to become as successful as I have.

And if I lose a few dollars along the way, in the end, it will be worth it to me.

Morally, it's a worthwhile project.

People think the Rolling Stones' first hit was "Satisfaction."

It wasn't. It was "It's All Over Now."

♪ Because I used to love her ♪

♪ But it's all over now ♪

And few people know that that song was written by... Bobby Womack,

who was a member of The Valentinos,

which was a group signed to Sam Cooke's label.

The fact that they knew Sam Cooke and admired his music as much as they did

and would want to record something by an artist affiliated with Sam Cooke

isn't surprising at all.

SAR Records and Sam Cooke...

was a threat to every other record company in the country.

The vision was that

"We're gonna make the artist just as important as the owner...

and we're not gonna treat them as second-class citizens."

He was so forward-thinking

about the industry and the control of the money.

It's part of what makes Sam Cooke so dangerous.

What could be the greatest thing in the world that would happen to you?

The greatest thing to happen to me... if all the singers I'm connected with had hits.

Though he was making moves that could be identified as black self-empowerment,

his own record label, his own publishing company,

at the same time,

he was grappling with, "How can I be my authentic black self

and speak truth to what's happening?"

♪ How many roads ♪

♪ Must a man walk down ♪

♪ Before you call him a man? ♪

It's hard to sing "Everybody Likes To Cha-Cha-Cha"

when there were songs like "Blowing in the Wind."

The combination of this Jewish brother, Bob Dylan, and that song,

and these black-and-white folks and other people comin' together

in places like the march on Washington

gave Sam the fuel to say,

"Okay, in some of my performances,

I'm gonna start to weave in songs like "Blowing in the Wind."

♪ How many times can a mountain exist ♪

♪ Mm ♪

♪ 'Fore it's washed down to the sea? ♪

♪ Tell me ♪

♪ How many years can some people exist ♪

♪ Before they allowed to be free? ♪

Even if I'm gonna speed the song up

so you may not catch exactly what I'm doing,

but those who know will know,

"Hey, he's now performingan anthem, a political anthem."

♪ Oh, the answer, my friend ♪

♪ Is blowin' in the wind, ah ♪

♪ That answer blowin' in the wind, oh ♪

Sam is moved by the ideas in "Blowing in the Wind,"

but he's also embarrassed.

Why is it Bob Dylan, this white artist,

who is speaking to the masses about social change at this moment,

during the midst of the Civil Rights movement?

Why aren't we seeing black artists do that themselves?

♪ There been times that I thought ♪

♪ I couldn't last for long... ♪

I came by the session when they were recording "Change is Gonna Come,"

and my hair stood up, you know.

He wanted to write things like that,

and it was amazing how well that came out.

♪ It's been a long ♪

♪ A long time comin' ♪

♪ But I know ♪

♪ Change gonna come ♪

You know, as a singer grows older,

his conception goes a little deeper because he lives life,

and he understands what he's trying to say a little more.

I think if a singer tries to find out what's happening in life,

it gives him a better insight

on telling the story of the song he's trying to sing.

I told him, I said, "Man, it sounded like eerie.

It sounded like death or something, you know."

He said, "Well, you know what? It is like death.

It's the death of the old me

and a birth of the new me."

He said, "That's what I was thinkin' about when I wrote this song.

That, uh, it's gonna come,

but I wanna be a part of makin' it happen."

There is no doubt about Sam

moving more into the center of the movement

because the satisfaction of hit records...

didn't do it.

Just like touchdowns didn't do it for me.

Browns' Jimmy Brown blasts his way right down the middle

with a sensational scoring run.

And if you were a popular celebrity that had crossover value,

you did have the pressure of were you going to be careful,

or were you going to be truthful? Were you going to be real?

I'm ready to rumble.

I can't be beat.

I'm the champ.

Sam and I and a bunch of people all went to see the fight.

All of a sudden, all these Muslims were around us.

Malcolm X was there. I shook his hand.

Malcolm X, Sam Cooke,

Ali and myself.

It was a rare experience for all of us to be in one place at the same time.

We're almost all set to go

for that World Heavyweight Championship fight.

When I found out that Jim Brown, Sam Cooke,

Muhammad Ali aka Cassius Clay,

and Malcolm X were all connected,

I said, "What an amazing connection,

but what a huge threat to America at that time."

Malcolm X is the oldest of them, the political theorist, if you will.

Sam Cooke's only 33 years old.

Great well-known singer, but in many ways, a business genius, right?

And then you have these two 20-something professional athletes

who young and white folks adore.

What you see is this interesting kind of moment

in the early stage development of what we might call black power.

I am the greatest.

Overconfidence. This can happen.

This is the legend of Cassius Clay,

the most beautiful fighter in the world today.

Look at the guy yawning.

This brash young boxer is something to see,

and the Heavyweight Championship is his destiny.

He is the greatest.

They might be stopping it. That might be all, ladies and gentlemen.

Get up there, Joe.

Sam Cooke is front and center,

and he watches Clay become heavyweight champion in the world.

At that moment, Clay's yelling at the sportswriters,

tellin 'em that, "I told ya." He's pointing fingers.

And he yells out, "Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke's the greatest.

Come on, Sam. Come up here."

Hey, let that man up here. Let Sam in. World's greatest rock-'n'-roll singer.

This is Sam Cooke.

Sam Cooke, a very good friend, a good vocalist, with Cassius.

Excuse me. Move back, if you will.

- Did I shake up the world? - You are beautiful.

We all ended up that night in this little black motel.

It became sort of historical.

We just shared our thoughts.

Standing up was a big thing for all of us...

because we defied second-class citizenship

and being considered inferior.

Being outspoken, the risk was to lose money

or to lose your popularity with Middle America...

but those of us who, uh...

were there that night cared nothing about that.

We were talkin' about standing up as human beings and demanding our rights.

That black male energy that Sam Cooke possessed,

that Malcolm X possessed, that Cassius Clay possessed...

unfortunately for some people in power in this country,

represented a threat that had to be stopped,

and that's why informants were all around those folks.

And little did we know that one year after that,

both Sam Cooke and Malcolm X would be dead.

Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were being surveilled by the FBI.

So Sam Cooke gets caught up in all of that, also.

In these FBI documents,

you know, he's this negro recording star from Los Angeles

who's spending time with Muslims. Well, that was Sam Cooke.

What was he doing politically that they might find threatening.

If you're J. Edgar Hoover,

who was always concerned and fearful

of the radicalization of black people,

and you're looking at these four men,

Sam Cooke might be the most dangerous to you

because he's already in white American living rooms.

Cassius Clay announces the next day, "My name is now Muhammad Ali."

Clay was a white man's name. It was a slave name.

And I'm no longer Clay, I'm no longer a slave,

so now I'm Muhammad Ali.

Because he's a clean-living young man,

and this is the main thing that the honorable Elijah Muhammad

does teach in spreading the religion of Islam throughout the...

among our people in this country.

We saw a picture of Sam with Malcolm X,

and we were askin' him, "Was he thinkin' about turnin' to be a Muslim?"

And he's like, "Nah, man."

Sam was drawn to the economical part of it...

owning and having your own.

We didn't see the Muslims here as spiritual.

It was more educational.

About self independence.

That's what it all was about.

I'm sure the RCA marketing people

would've had great concern that Sam was hanging out with Malcolm X.

They would've feared the loss of considerable portion of Sam's audience.

If you're RCA, you don't want your mainstream black artist

talking about those kind of politics,

so there's a second verse of "Change is Gonna Come"

that was famously deleted when it was initially released,

that very explicitly talks about segregation

and Jim Crow segregation in the South.

♪ And I go downtown ♪

♪ Somebody keep telling me ♪

♪ Don't hang around ♪

And I think it's very telling that, you know,

the record company deleted that verse because they were concerned

about what kind of reaction the public would have

with this very political verse in the song.

At that moment in his career,

Sam was a musical icon, a culture hero, who had reached out to white audiences,

and had a real foothold in those white audiences,

and could play a show like the Copa, and it's incredibly successful.

And yet, he never had left his black audience.

And you hear all of that in "Live at the Harlem Square,"

and "Bring It On Home To Me"

is just such an amazing, powerful moment on that record.

♪ I'll always be your slave ♪

Ha ha.

♪ Till I'm buried ♪

♪ Buried in my grave ♪

♪ But while I'm livin', bring it to me, Bring back... ♪

There's something else in that "Harlem Square" recording

that's so much grittier and blacker.

♪ Everybody's with me tonight ♪

♪ Look, listen, let me hear you say yeah ♪

There is something terribly tragic

that folks didn't get to hear the "Harlem Square" album... until 1985.

I think there's probably several reasons

why it wasn't released at the time it was recorded.

I can't discount the fact that RCA didn't relate to it on a commercial level.

Forget about... you know, too R&B, too black... or whatever.

That was not the guy they wanted playing Vegas and the Copa,

which were things Sam wanted as well,

but Sam felt there was room to do both of those. The record industry didn't.

I think the more they pushed it aside, the more Sam pushed forward with it

because he had to be who he was. He had to fulfill that.

These things had been important to him for a very long time.

Sam really wanted to build an empire.

He felt he could do it,

and he was not afraid to do it.

Sam had an ideal of getting all the big entertainers

like Jackie Wilson, James Brown... to put all their money together,

and let's start our own big record company and booking agency all within one.

The mob has always been involved in the record industry...

simply because it's a lucrative business.

He would get phone calls, and he would get visits from mob figures

who wanted a piece of his businesses.

There were some guys that came up to Sam's dressing room,

and he would never let us leave the dressing room.

He said, "Anything you can say, you can say with my little brothers."

So they were like, "Sam, look here.

We hear you're tryin' to start a music union of your own,

and we want you to leave that alone."

But he's like, "Well, fuck all y'all.

I don't give a damn about that shit.

Hell, I'm gonna... I will do what I wanna do."

And Sammy Davis even called Sam, said, uh...

"You got to listen to these guys. These guys are serious guys."

It was very courageous and was scary, too, you know, 'cause a lot of people was...

"Oh, man. Oh, no, you can't mess with that." You know.

"I don't wanna get killed." You know.

I got a phone call at the office,

and they wanted to have him come home... immediately.

There was trouble.

And he went home and found out that his son died.

Vincent was... by the pool,

and Sam's wife went in the house for a little while,

and he just slipped into the pool... and he died.

And, uh, it affected Sam a lot.

It took a long time for him to be able to even talk about it.

And then it was a touchy subject

that you don't wanna bring those kind of things up to anybody.

Every time he walked in the house, he walked right by the pool

in the front yard that his son died in.

So he didn't have a lot of peaceful days at home after that.

It affected his marriage a lot.

I would sit many a time at the dinner table...

and Sam would get up to go out.

And Barbara suspected what he was doing. Every... we all knew.

He was a womanizer.

He started drinking a little bit more Beefeaters.

He... It changed him.

After Vincent died, all he wanted to do was work.

He poured himself into his work.

Immediately wanted to go on tour. "Let's go."

♪ And I know, I know, I know ♪

♪ A ring that's rollin' ♪

♪ Has no end ♪

♪ And, oh ♪

♪ A baby when it's sleepin' ♪

♪ There's no cryin' ♪

♪ A baby when... ♪

He's masking the very real pain and loss in his life...

the loss of a son.

And that's in concert with just the added pressures

of being Sam Cooke,

as being famous, as being a celebrity,

as being what most white folks

would've thought of as a credit to the race.

That doesn't come without a price.

It was renegotiation time at RCA...

so Allen Klein, who's become Sam's manager,

"I'll tell you what. I'll negotiate the contract."

And they came up with a concept where they'd create their own record company,

separate from RCA, and then lease the material out to RCA.

The company was named Tracey Limited,

and Tracey was the name of Sam's middle daughter.

And how it was explained to Sam

was that this would be a venture

where Sam would own the company,

own the rights to the recorded materials,

be in charge in the studio, which is something he really wanted.

It turns out that Sam was bedridden around this time.

He had the flu.

What that time period did was give Sam a chance

to look through his papers,

and he realized that there were things that weren't right

as far as the ownership of his music business,

and he realized that, "Wait a minute. Things are very wrong."

I can imagine... it would be quite a shock...

when he learned that the real effect of all of this paperwork

is that Allen Klein was the owner of Tracey Limited,

which, in effect, makes Sam...

an employee... of Allen Klein.

Before he died, Sam said to me, "I'm gonna leave that asshole."

That Thursday, he had proclaimed that he was gonna fly to New York Monday

and make a whole lot of changes, including firing Allen Klein,

but he never made it through the weekend.

Sam and I had talked earlier in the day,

and we were gonna meet... for dinner... at Martoni's,

which was a big music hangout on Cahuenga.

I had brought my wife at the time, Joan, with me.

Sam had... a few martinis.

He liked his martinis, and, uh...

and we were talking about... we were gonna do a blues album.

Sam pulled out a big wad of money from his pocket.

I mean, it was like a fistful of money.

And he said to Al, he said,

"I just came in off the road and look what I got,"

or "Look what I earned," or something like that.

And Al said to him, "Yeah. Sam, don't be flashing that money here.

Put it back in your pocket. Don't show that around."

And Sam kind of laughed, you know, because in Sam's mind,

nobody ever would try to take money from Sam Cooke.

Are you serious?

I mean, in his mind, he was invincible.

When we got up to leave,

Sam went up to the bar, and this woman was there.

When we left... as I recall, he was still at the bar,

you know, talking, laughing, carrying on.

Now...

there's all kinds of things that go on with what happened after that.

The number is PL79984.

- 79984? - That's a telephone booth I'm at.

Uh-huh. What street are you on?

- I don't know. - What's your problem there?

Well, I-I was kidnapped.

- You were kidnapped? - Right.

But you have no idea where you're at?

No, it's pretty dark here.

Can you stay right there in the phone booth?

- Right. - I'll find out where you are.

- You stay right where you're at. - I will.

- Ok. - Bye.

What is your name?

Joan and I got home... went to bed. Five o'clock, the phone rang.

And I heard that Sam Cooke...

was shot.

I went to the police station,

wanting to know more details about what had actually happened.

The desk sergeant said, "What is going on here?

We've had calls from everywhere.

We even had a phone call from London. Who the hell is... Sam Cooke?

Just another n-word killed in Watts. What is the big deal?"

So I told him he was a fucking idiot.

I joined the Los Angeles Police Department in May of 1959.

The attitude of the police at 77th Street toward the black community

was just purely suppressive.

All blacks look alike, and all Asians look alike. Right?

The official story is that Sam went out the night of December tenth

and met a woman named Lisa Boyer

in a restaurant called Martoni's,

and he left with her and went to the Hacienda Motel.

And he... dragged me into that room.

I started talking very loudly, and I told him, "Please take me home."

He latched the night latch on... and, um...

he pushed me on the bed, and he says, "Well, we're just gonna talk."

I knew that he was about to rape me...

so while he was in the bathroom,

I picked up my clothes, my shoes, and my handbag.

I opened the latch, and I ran out.

She grabs his pants... runs out,

so he went to the manager's door and started bangin' on the door,

'cause he thought... the girl was in there.

Miss Franklin stated that the deceased came to the door...

and started pounding and shouting and asking if his lady friend was inside.

And at this time, the deceased...

broke the door open.

And he grabbed both of my arms

and started twistin' 'em and asked me where was the girl.

I started kickin', and I... he maybe have a bite. I don't know.

But I tried bite him through that jacket.

You tried to bite Mr. Cooke?

Yeah, I was fightin', scratchin', bitin' and everything.

Finally, I got up and grabbed a pistol.

I started shootin'.

And how many times did you fire this pistol?

Three times.

Did you know you struck Mr. Cooke?

Yes, 'cause he said, "Lady, you shot me."

I didn't believe that Sam was killed the way they say they did.

I didn't make sense of that, and Papa Cook didn't make sense of that.

I don't believe it. That's far as I go with that.

That just didn't sound like him at all, at all.

I never seen him be aggressively at-at-at a lady.

Sam wasn't that kind of a guy.

That's totally bullshit.

He wasn't that kind of a guy that had to be domineering

or have power over people.

I never saw that in Sam ever.

It turns out that she was a hooker, and she was a Hollywood hooker.

There was the idea that the girl had come to this place before,

and she threw his pants out the window, which had all his money in the pant...

the $5,000 I told you about earlier.

Somebody was out there, her pimp,

and grabbed the pants, and then she ran out with that person.

And rumor had it that Bertha was in with the mob.

That she was like a pimpess or something.

It was ruled that Bertha Franklin shooting Sam Cooke

was a case of justifiable homicide,

and nobody bought that.

It just didn't seem like he was the person that got shot down in the way that he did.

There had to be something more in play,

and that's what fueled the idea of this being some sort of conspiracy.

Elvis believed that there was a sense in the music industry

that Sam was getting too powerful and had to be stopped,

which echoed what a lot of people in the black community thought.

You know, that this was about a black man who didn't know his place,

and to stop him, he had to be murdered.

They didn't mind Sam seepin' through the cracks

and being successful on his own.

But the problem was that too many other entertainers

were watching Sam and listening to Sam.

That was the problem.

There's another wild theory that Allen Klein killed Sam Cooke.

Well, from what I hear...

he had the argument with Allen,

maybe two, three days before.

Allen Klein loved Sam Cooke, but he also was a thief.

He used his love to steal his songs.

Klein was ready to take everything.

He did a similar thing to the Rolling Stones,

and he was one of the forces that broke up The Beatles.

Well, the problem with that is that in 1964,

Allen Klein didn't have the kind of power to set up this big, elaborate murder

where the police is gonna be a part of it, too?

And the district attorney? Allen Klein... he wasn't that powerful yet.

I was on a plane coming back from New York,

and I hadn't seen Barbara in quite some time,

and as I recall, she said, "I sold Sam's work, and I got $50,000."

Or something. Some ridiculous amount of money.

I mean, obviously it's worth millions and millions and millions of dollars.

KAGS, which was the publishing company, and SAR Records...

all went to Allen Klein.

J.W. Alexander died broke.

What it is is inequality.

What it is is someone was in a position to take advantage and they did.

It's a double pain. The pain of losing Sam and the pain of, uh...

losing what he worked for,

what he was all about, what he fought to establish.

Whether or not there was any real conspiracy that went down,

we won't know because there wasn't a thorough investigation done to find out

because to many people in the LAPD who were investigating this case,

and just to be quite frank, Sam Cooke was another nigger...

and this was just more nigger shit.

And it didn't deserve any more attention than what it got.

When you see someone as prominent as Sam Cooke...

get killed like that under very mysterious circumstances,

and even his life is not valuable enough to have a real investigation

by local law enforcement there in Los Angeles...

it's not a surprise that to this day,

there are a lot of people who still believe

that there was some sort of cover-up,

some sort of conspiracy around the death of Sam Cooke.

I mean, what else are we gonna think, particularly given our history in America,

our relationships with law enforcement all over the country,

and the fact that if you happen to be a black person

who speaks out in any kind of way,

who does anything that seems to be empowering for the black community,

you are automatically a target.

If we were to transpose today back to then,

we would say black lives matter. Right?

And in 1964,

even Sam Cooke's black life didn't matter. Right?

So... it's-it's-it's just hard to overcome that.

Do I think that the events of Sam Cooke

and the institutional attitude

contribute to the upcoming riots here?

Well, absolutely. Absolutely.

I don't wanna say Sam Cooke's death caused the Watts riots.

I don't wanna say that.

But Sam Cooke's death

is a really big example of a million things

that caused dissatisfaction among black people in America.

Those people being, you know, murdered, being enslaved, being imprisoned.

Like, all of that, is why.

And Sam Cooke is yet another example of that.

Black people don't trust law enforcement for good reason.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility to a lot of people

that the FBI was somehow involved in Sam Cooke's death.

That he was set up in some way,

that he was murdered because he was just becoming too threatening,

you know, through the work he was doing, the people he was associating with,

and the music he was now gonna start making.

See, it's one thing to have a little meeting.

It's another thing to put out a song that could sell a million copies

and is on the radio, and everyone's gonna start to hear and absorb.

So, you know, people, whether it was true or not...

deeply felt that, you know, the government was involved in this.

In a very short period of time...

Medgar Evers, Sam Cooke,

Malcolm X,

King a little later.

Langston Hughes isn't killed by the state, but, you know, there are very real losses.

Something really...

powerful and important and intimate to blackness,

it gets lost with those deaths.

That's a part that white America will never fundamentally understand.

What we know is that we never got to see him as a fully mature artist

and thinker and activist

who, had he lived, would've had a dramatic impact on the next generation

of artists, thinkers, and activists.

We could've had this monument to what was to come.

"A Change is Gonna Come," there it is. But that's all we have.

The song isn't released until after he dies.

"Change is Gonna Come" is the perfect ending

for a career that was way too short... for a life that was way too truncated.

It was a long time coming in 1964,

and it is the shame of this nation...

that that song should still be so relevant.

The activism is one thing, but the music is powerful.

"Change is Gonna Come"

communicates the rent of black life in America,

and Sam Cooke taps into that with such poetry.

♪ Oh ♪

♪ There've been times that I thought ♪

♪ I couldn't last... ♪

It's meant to touch the soul, you see. That's what this song is about.

♪ Now I think I'm able ♪

♪ To carry on ♪

♪ It's been a... ♪

It's his eulogy, the greatest gift he could've given us.

♪ A long time comin' ♪

♪ But I know ♪

- ♪ A change gonna come ♪ - ♪Change gonna come ♪

♪ Oh, yes, it will ♪

Yes, it will.

All I can say to you, darling, is Sam Cooke's yours.

He'll never grow old. Sam, it's been nice.

- It's been wonderful. - Thank you.

You're welcome.