Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke Read Online Free PDF

used to cluck over that baby bass singer who put himself into the music so earnestly, and the handsome lead singer—he was a big boy who carried himself in a manly fashion—but no one missed the little tenor singer, either, the one with the sparkle in his eye, who could just melt your heart with the way he communicated the
spirit
of the song. Sometimes, when he got too many preaching engagements, Reverend Cook would send them to sing in his place. “When they’d come back, the people would tell me, say, ‘Anytime you can’t come, Preach, just send the children to sing.’”
    All the children were proud of what they were doing, both for themselves and for their father. And their father was proud of them, not only for causing the Cook family sound (
his
sound) to become more widely known but for adding substantially to his store of entrepreneurial activities: the church, the revivals, the riders he carried out to Reynolds each day for a fee in his nearly brand-new 1936 Chevrolet, soon to be replaced by a Hudson Terraplane, and, when Charles was old enough to drive, a pair of limousines (“Brother, I made my money!” he was wont to declare in later years with unabashed pride).
    But Charles, a gruff, sometimes taciturn boy with a disinclination to show his sensitivity, soon grew disenchanted with the spotlight. “Aw, man, my daddy used to make me sing too much. I used to get so tired of singing I said, I’m gonna get up there and mess up, and he won’t ask me to sing no more, but once I got up there, that song would get so good, shit, I couldn’t mess up. I couldn’t mess up. But I said, if I ever get grown, if I ever make twenty-one, I’m not going to sing for nobody. And I didn’t.”
    Meanwhile, Sam, the irrepressible middle child, made no secret of his own impatience for the spotlight. Even L.C., who slept in the same room with him and appreciated wholeheartedly his brother’s wit and spark, was taken aback by Sam’s undisguised ambition. Charles could easily have resented his brother’s importunity, but instead he retained a strictly pragmatic point of view. “Well, he had such a pretty little tenor—I mean, it was kind of undescribable, his tone, his singing. But we didn’t have nobody to replace him. So we wouldn’t let him lead. We were the lead singers, my sister and I. We pretty much had the say-so.”
    I T WAS A BUSY LIFE. The children all went to Doolittle Elementary School just two blocks west of the Lenox Building, and they were all expected to do well. Both parents checked their homework, though even at an early age the children became aware that their mother possessed more formal schooling than their father, and she would even substitute-teach at Doolittle on occasion. Reverend Cook, on the other hand, conveyed a kind of uncompromising rectitude and pride, which, in all of their recollection, he was determined to instill in his children. “He had a saying,” said his youngest daughter, Agnes, “that he would write in everybody’s course book when they graduated, and he would recite it to you constantly: ‘Once a task is once begun / Never stop until it’s done / Be the labor great or small / Do it well or not at all.’ He always told us, ‘If you’re going to shine shoes, be the best shoe-shine boy out there. If you’re going to sweep a street, be the best street sweeper. Whatever you strive to be, be the best at it, whether it’s a small job or working in top management.’ He always felt that you could do anything that you put your mind to.”
    Everyone was expected to contribute. The girls did the housework. Willie, the oldest, the adopted cousin, was already sixteen and working for the Jewish butcher at the chicken market across the street. At eleven, Charles went to work as a delivery boy for the Blue Goose grocery store. Even the little boys helped their mother with her shopping.
    Charles joined the Deacons, a neighborhood gang. Sam and L.C. freely roamed the streets, but