Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke Page 6

  They spoke constantly of achieving the celebrity and success of groups like the Soul Stirrers or the Famous Blue Jays, they dreamed of escaping the neighborhood—going all over the country, like the Soul Stirrers, with five different changes of uniform and their own limousine. They even talked about singing pop because they knew “that was a fast way to get out there in the world,” Creadell observed. “Of course we never did it, but we would talk about it.”

  They didn’t really need to sing pop, though, to see their reputations growing. Or to see the gospel world expanding far beyond the limits that might previously have been imagined. Mahalia’s hit single focused attention not just on the majestic voice of the woman who would some two years later headline the “first all-Negro spiritual gospel concert ever to be presented in famous Carnegie Hall” but on the commercial potential of the music as well. The speaker above the door of the Blue Jays’ record store at Thirty-sixth and Cottage Grove broadcast not only their own recordings but the recordings of such well-known local figures as Sallie Martin, the Roberta Martin Singers, and the Soul Stirrers, not to mention the nationally known groups who appeared on the Stirrers’ regular bimonthly programs at DuSable High School, including Cleveland’s influential Wings Over Jordan Choir, the Spirit of Memphis, the Fairfield Four out of Nashville, Detroit’s Flying Clouds, and Los Angeles’ Pilgrim Travelers, whose first release on the Specialty label, “I’m Standin’ On the Highway,” was outselling even the Stirrers.

  Chicago was a hotbed of gospel activity, as the Travelers’ new manager and tenor singer, J.W. Alexander, appreciatively recognized. “The competition was very strong. You had Robert Anderson and the Willie Webb Singers, Silas Steele was singing lead with the Blue Jays, and Rebert Harris was with the Soul Stirrers. Groups would walk in on other groups and get called up to do a guest number, and they would try to take over the program. So it was very competitive.” But, as Alexander was quick to point out, the spirit of cooperation offstage was just as prevalent, and it was the Stirrers who took the Pilgrim Travelers out on their first national tour and the Travelers who returned the favor by introducing the Soul Stirrers to California. Onstage, said J.W., it was nothing short of open warfare, with each group doing everything in its power to wreck the house, but offstage there was a sense of shared enterprise, the clear knowledge that they were all doing their best to make their way in a world fraught with dangers, a world in which they were thrown together not just by choice of vocation but by the unavoidable accident of race.

  It was in this spirit that sometime in the winter of 1947-1948, Rebert Harris and Charlie Bridges, the lead and second lead singers of the Soul Stirrers and the Famous Blue Jays respectively, along with an Oakland, California, gospel singer and entrepreneur named Abraham Battle, put together an organization conceived as a kind of clearinghouse for the advancement of quartet singing in general and the training and education of gospel groups in particular.

  The National Quartet Convention was, in Rebert Harris’ words, an attempt to “professionalize” the field. “I listened to other groups, and I felt, along with the other Soul Stirrers, that they needed a change from what they were doing at that time. They wasn’t being accepted by the public because of their language, their pronunciation, their diction—all of that was completely out of order.” What Harris and Bridges and their respective groups did was to establish an organization, and an annual convention, at which courses of instruction would be offered not just in singing technique but in how to present yourself to the public, how to meet people and book and publicize your appearances, how to carry out the business of music in a dignified way, in a manner, as Rebert Harris saw it, that was “spiritually educational,” not the scattered “vaudeville-type” approach that he felt at the time was all too prevalent.

  The first convention was held at the St. Paul‘s Church of God in Christ at 4528 South Wabash, and seven states were chartered. Not long after that, the association established its “national headquarters” in the same storefront location at 3838 South State out of which the Young Men’s Christian Club had long operated as an interdenominational gathering place. It rapidly became a focal point for the teenage gospel movement, a drawing card every weekend and a kind of central casting call which the Stirrers and Blue Jays frequently attended, along with any other well-known quartet that might happen to be in town. J.W. Alexander would always recall the first time he saw Sam singing with the Highway QCs on one such occasion. The QCs did not impress him all that much—in his view they didn’t yet have their own sound—but the young lead singer, for all of the evident influence of Harris upon him, had “something special, he had a particular charisma. People just liked the guy, they could relate to him. I thought to myself: this guy’s a jewel.”

  The Soul Stirrers appeared to have something of a different reaction to the brash young quartet, at least as the QCs saw it. From their point of view, Harris and the other Stirrers were just jealous. They never heard a word about it directly from the older group. But every time they showed up at a Soul Stirrers program and the people would clamor for them to sing, naturally—because what else would they be doing there?—the Stirrers acted as if they didn’t even know their young protégés were in the house, and then, when the QCs’ fans started to chant their name, Harris would call them up for one song, and one song only. It may well have been that the Soul Stirrers simply didn’t choose to interrupt their program—they were on top of the gospel field, after all, and Harris was a supremely self-confident, some might say an almost arrogant individual—but the QCs to a man were convinced that the Stirrers were scared of them, that they could begin to see the handwriting on the wall.

  Fifteen-year-old Lou Rawls, a regular at the “singing battles” at 3838 South State, would almost certainly have agreed. He sang with the West Singers out of his grandmother’s Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church, along with any number of pickup quartets of his own, but he saw the QCs as representing the kind of unassailable professionalism to which all the young quartets aspired. And he saw Sam Cook as possessing the kind of suave assurance, easygoing manner, natural good looks, and irresistible charm that any one of the quartet singers would have given his eyeteeth for. “We figured if we could all dress alike, that would give us an edge, but Sam just stood out. He didn’t have to call attention to himself. It was just there.”

  Rawls ran into L.C. first at 3838, with his new group, the Nobleaires (Sam had given them the name; the Nobles were L.C.’s gang). He met Sam and the QCs not long afterward, and soon he got to know the whole family. A grave, somewhat taciturn youth whose life had been marked by the absence of both parents (his father’s mother had raised him over by the Ida B. Wells Project on Thirty-eighth after his father had left and his mother had gone out to the Coast for war work), he envied the Cooks their relative affluence and stability. “They had a big flat, not one of them little kitchenette apartments, and we’d just go up there and hang. They were just a normal family, you know, children of a preacher, with the usual restrictions, but Sam’s mother, if you came around with Sam or L.C. or any of the others, then you were just part of the family. She would feed you, if she saw you doing something wrong, she would chastise you—but you knew she was doing it out of love.” He was crazy about Mrs. Cook, he was crazy about the whole family, really, but most of all he was taken with Sam. L.C. he recognized as a player, someone with his eye out for success just for the sake of success—it didn’t really matter how it was achieved. But Sam was single-minded in his vision: whatever else was going on in his life, he was going to express himself through his music. There was lots of talent at 3838, but Sam, in his mind, overshadowed everybody, not just for his talent but for his determination. He had no doubt that one day Sam and the QCs would make records and be known throughout the world. Just like the Soul Stirrers.

  THE QCS’ FIRST REAL EXPOSURE to the Soul Stirrers’ world came about in a curious fashion. R.B. Robinson was one of the Soul Stirrers’ three baritone singers, a “utility” voice who
could sing a number of different parts. Two years earlier, at the age of thirty-two, he had married nineteen-year-old Dora Walder in Los Angeles, her hometown, and they had subsequently made their home in Chicago, where the rest of the Soul Stirrers all lived. He had known Creadell’s father for some time, and through him he began to hear all about this quartet that Cope was training and in particular about the group’s new lead singer. He also met Cope’s daughter, Georgia (“Babe”), who was about to graduate from Wendell Phillips with Sam, and before long, he was coming around to the house both to see Babe and to hear the quartet.

  From that point on, whenever R.B. came back into town, Cope would call a rehearsal, and R.B. soon was actively coaching them, teaching them the songs that the Soul Stirrers sang and giving them the Stirrers’ own arrangements and voicings. It seemed odd to them at first that R.B. should be “training” them, and odder still when R.B. told them not to say anything to anyone because he would get in trouble. But they took him for a friend and listened entranced as he told them tales of the road, of making as much as $700 or $800 for a single program. The Soul Stirrers’ booking policy was scientifically worked out, he explained: if they played Chicago on a Sunday afternoon, they played Gary that night, if they played St. Pete on Sunday, it was Tampa on Monday—and everywhere they went, they went first-class. If there had been any question previously, there certainly was room for none now. With R.B. in their corner, there was no doubt in any of the QCs’ minds of where they were heading. It was only a matter of how long it would take to get there.

  IN THE MONTHS before Sam’s high school graduation, the fortunes of the group rapidly improved. They were booked on a big Mother’s Day musicale presented by the Gay Sisters at Holiness Community Temple that ran directly up against the Stirrers’ annual presentation at DuSable with the Pilgrim Travelers as their special guests. They were traveling more frequently to Detroit, Gary, even Indianapolis. And they were gaining more and more public recognition as the up-and-coming young group.

  Sam was going with a girl named Izetta who was in L.C.’s class at school and who was responsible for what turned out to be L.C.’s last whipping. At fifteen L.C. was no more enthusiastic about formal education than he had been as a child. “So this one time I ditched school, and Izetta was over the house. She said, ‘L.C., we had so much fun at school today, you should have been there.’

  “I mean, we’re all at the table eating, and I’m saying, ‘Shh, girl,’ but Papa heard. He said, ‘Annie Mae, did L.C. go to school?’ She said, ‘He left out of here going to school, Brother Cook.’ So he asks me, ‘L.C., did you go to school?’ I said, ‘No, sir, Papa’—’cause whatever you did, Papa taught us, don’t lie. I said, ‘Mama sent me out of here, but I didn’t make it.’ He said, ‘What you mean you didn’t make it?’ And he started whupping me. And everything he would whup me for, I was supposed to say, ‘Yes, sir’ to. So he asked me, ‘Are you gonna be good?’ and ‘Are you going to do everything your mother tell you to?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, Papa. Yes, sir, Papa.’ But then he tricked me.

  “He said, ‘You think you a man, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, Papa.’ And then he really whupped me. Afterwards, I sat down with my father, and I said, ‘Papa, I can’t stand no more whuppings.’ He said, ‘What you mean?’ I said, ‘Papa, if you whup me any more, I’m just gonna have to leave your house.’ He said, ‘You are going to leave the house?’ I said, ‘Papa, I’ll do whatever you tell me to, but I can’t stand no more whuppings.’ And he never whupped me no more again.”

  Sam had girls everywhere he went—in his friends’ and family’s observation, he had more trouble fighting them off than he did attracting them—but there was one girl in particular, Barbara Campbell, not quite thirteen and just finishing up eighth grade at Doolittle, to whom, to everyone’s astonishment, he seemed inextricably drawn. According to L.C.: “She was my girl first—when we were in grammar school—we wasn’t nothing but kids. But then she moved away.” She moved back because her mother had just gotten divorced and was about to marry her fourth husband, and her Grandmother Paige, her father’s mother, said enough was enough, she was going to keep these poor children together for a while. So they all moved into Grandmother Paige’s comfortable, two-story home at 3618 Ellis Park, Barbara and her twin sister, Beverly, and their older sister, Ella, and before long, she began meeting up with all her old friends from the neighborhood.

  She ran into the Richards’ sister Mildred, whom she had originally met through QCs “announcer” Raymond Hoy when she was living with her other grandmother over on Rhodes. Mildred, whom everyone called “Mook,” told her about her brothers’ new singing group, and then a friend named Sonny Green reintroduced her to Sam standing in front of the chicken market, where Sam’s brother Willie worked.

  3618 Ellis Park. Inset: Barbara Campbell, age eight.

  Courtesy of Barbara Cooke and ABKCO

  Sam said, “I know her!” And Sonny Green reacted with surprise. But she repeated her name, reminded Sam that she was one of the twins, and when he asked, “How old are you now?” at first she said, “Oh, I ain’t gonna tell you.” Then, when he pressed her, she told him fifteen, and when he challenged that, she compromised on fourteen. Sonny raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything, and she told him afterward, with that peculiar mix of flirtation and intimidation that always seemed to fascinate men, “You better not tell on me—’cause I really like that guy.” She knew she loved him from the moment that they first met.

  Mildred was the one who helped facilitate the first stumbling steps of their love affair. Barbara would meet Sam over at the Richards’ house—they would sit out in the hall and smooch once they were able to get rid of Mook’s brother Curtis. Then Barbara started going to church at Highway Baptist, where Mildred led the children’s choir. Her grandmother encouraged the friendship because the Richards were preacher’s kids, and Barbara started sleeping over at their house on Saturday night and walking to church with Sam on Sunday, stealing kisses along the way. Even though she had other “boyfriends,” she had never really cared about anybody before. But they didn’t do anything else, because there was nowhere else to do it. Soon Sam started coming around every day, and Mildred helped Barbara sneak out of the house a few times at night, telling her grandmother that she needed to speak with her, giving Sam and her a few minutes to smooch on a park bench. Barbara’s grandmother was very strict, so they had to be careful, but with Mildred’s help they were able to carry on their “play” affair right under her nose, and before long, Barbara’s older sister, Ella, joined them at church when she started going out with Mildred’s brother Jake.

  Anyone looking at them from the outside might have thought that Barbara was being ensnared by this sophisticated “older man,” but to Barbara it was a case of the hunter being captured by the game. She loved Sam, she thought he was so cute with his marcelled hair and pug nose, and she knew he liked it when she told him so. She didn’t like it at all herself when he would tease her about her height or the fact that she had no breasts—but she could tell by his impish smile that he didn’t really mean it, and anyway, they would grow. And, of course, he never stopped coming around. She knew he had lots of other girls at his beck and call, but with her determination, Barbara felt, for all of his supposed sophistication, he didn’t stand a chance.

  SAM GRADUATED FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS in June of 1948. He was clearly a young man with a future but not necessarily a future that anyone around him could clearly discern. He had announced his intentions to friends and family: he was not simply going to sing for a living, he was going to be a star. But how exactly he was going to achieve that stardom, whether gospel music would be the vehicle, the QCs the engine of his success, not even he could have said for certain, even though no one who knew Sam Cook could imagine him singing anything but spiritual music.

  He was, in a sense, what they all wanted him to be, providing girlfriends and friends, casual acquaintances, mentors, and fans with the sense that they were
“the one,” that however little time he might have available for them, all of his attention, all of his intellect, emotion, and charm were theirs for that moment. That was undoubtedly the key to his remarkable ability, both onstage and off, to communicate a message as sincere as it was convincing. And yet at some point inevitably he disappeared, he would vanish into a world of his own—whether the unexplored vistas that reading revealed to him, the vast territory of his unrealized ambitions, or a vision of the future that none of them was vouchsafed. For the most part he did it with a grace that minimized resentment, and few doubted that he would get where he was going—but they all felt his absence at one point or another, the elusiveness, the gulf between his apprehension of the world and their own.

  That summer, with everyone out of school, the group really started to travel—on programs with the Flying Clouds, the Meditations, the CBS Trumpeteers, and the Fairfield Four. With R.B.’s encouragement, there was more and more talk about making a record. The Soul Stirrers recorded for Aladdin in Los Angeles, and R.B. was always telling them that he was going to set them up with this guy or that guy, but nothing ever came of it. On their brief tour with the Trumpeteers, they cut some dubs one afternoon in a church auditorium in Detroit, but no one knew what to do with the acetates, Cope had no earthly idea, and they just played them once in a while for themselves.

  Cope was becoming more and more of an embarrassment, not just to the group but even to his own son. “My dad was the kind of person that Saturday nights he would go out and do a little too much. And Sundays we’d have a program, and he just couldn’t make it. So we had to do them by ourselves. That began to happen with more and more frequency, so after a while, we were just sort of out there.” He was hard on Bubba, too, forbidding him to travel to any of the weekday programs that would interfere with his education and refusing to even entertain the idea of his son quitting school like some of the rest of them were now talking about doing.