Keep Movin' On (Remastered) Sam Cooke

• 1 (Ain't That) Good News 02:28
• 2 Rome (Wasn't Built In A Day) 02:34
• 3 Meet Me At Mary's Place 02:41
• 4 Basin Street Blues 02:48
• 5 Cousin Of Mine 02:28
• 6 Tennessee Waltz 03:09
• 7 Falling In Love 02:43
• 8 When A Boy Falls In Love 02:33
• 9 Good Times 02:27
• 10 Shake 02:50
• 11 Yeah Man 02:32
• 12 It's Got The Whole World Shakin' 02:46
• 13 The Riddle Song 02:30
• 14 I'm Just A Country Boy 02:27
• 15 Try A Little Love 02:37
• 16 There'll Be No Second Time 03:01
• 17 Another Saturday Night 02:40
• 18 Sugar Dumpling 02:43
• 19 That's Where It's At 02:35
• 20 You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You 03:00
• 21 (Somebody) Ease My Troublin' Mind 02:53
• 22 A Change Is Gonna Come 03:11
• 23 Keep Movin' On 02:20
• Total Runtime 01:01:56

Info for Keep Movin' On (Remastered)

For the first time on HIGHRESAUDIO, Keep Movin’ On, a 23-song collection that encompasses some of Sam Cooke’s best loved and most incisive songs and represents the artist both at the very pinnacle and, tragically, at the very end of his ground breaking career. The songs that comprise Keep Movin’ On were, for the most part, written and produced by Sam Cooke following his successful fight for complete creative and economic control over his recordings and repertoire. The notion of artistic self-determination was an unheard-of concept for virtually any recording artist, let alone a young rhythm and blues singer in the early 1960s.

Originally compiled in 2001 on CD, this unique collection is available for the first time on vinyl. The collection probably contains his most important and influential songs – not least A Change Is Gonna Come – written by Cooke after hearing Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, this staggering milestone in popular music, united his origins as a gospel singer with all that he had learned and experienced in the ensuing decade and, channelled through the contentious subject of civil rights, became his greatest musical achievement — not his biggest hit, or his best known song even today, but his most accomplished piece of composition, singing, and recording.

Also present here is his foray into a New Orleans sound, on Basin Street Blues, which he’d never explored before (and which he shaped his own way) as well as his poignant recording of The Riddle Song, which was a way of his coming to terms musically with the death of his son; and Good Times, covered by the Rolling Stones and the equally compelling Another Saturday Night.

Remastered by Joe Yannece. Lacquer cutting by Carl Rowatti, Trutone Mastering

"This 23-song rarities compilation stands in Sam Cooke's output roughly where the four posthumous LPs released by Otis Redding stand in his catalog, with the major difference that Cooke's work included far fewer leftovers and sides that were justified simply by being available -- he seemed to throw a special effort into almost everything that ever recorded, and that goes double for this disc's content, which encompasses the final year of his recording career. This was a period in which he explored several promising musical directions and broke through both to an extraordinarily sophisticated synthesis of his gospel roots with topical songwriting within a pop context. Listeners won't find his most popular songs -- "You Send Me", "Chain Gang", "Only Sixteen", etc. -- here, a result of the split control of his catalog between RCA and ABKCO, but they will find his most important and influential songs. Cooke was inactive in the studio for a significant chunk of 1963, following the drowning death of his infant son, and when he resumed work late in the year it was under a new contract that was to ultimately give control and ownership of his recordings to him (or, as events worked out, his manager, Allen Klein). Represented here is his foray into a New Orleans sound, on "Basin Street Blues" etc., which he'd never explored before (and which he shaped his own way) as well as his poignant recording of "The Riddle Song", which was a way of his coming to terms musically with the death of his son; and "Good Times", the somber-toned party song of Cooke's that the Rolling Stones chose to cover, and the equally pensive and compelling "Another Saturday Night", a relic of the first half of 1963 that fits equally well with this later material. On any other R&B collection, all of those tracks would be perceived as extraordinarily fine records, but Cooke himself raised the bar so high during the final months of his career, that they pale next to the most important of his songs: "Shake", which embodied a harder, more visceral soul sound than Cooke had ever embraced before; and "A Change Is Gonna Come". The latter, written by Cooke in the wake of his hearing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", seemed to tie up his origins as a gospel singer with all that he had learned and experienced in the ensuing decade and, channeled through the topical subject of civil rights, became his greatest musical achievement -- not his biggest hit, or his best known song even today, but his most accomplished piece of composition, singing, and recording. Cooke never had a chance to follow up either, and died before he could even assess the impact of either song -- ironically, it was Otis Redding (who died almost three years later to the day) that took them into his repertory most successfully; so this disc not only brings us to the final, magnificent phase of Cooke's career, but also shows the door that he opened for Otis Redding and others. Keep Movin' On should probably not be the only Sam Cooke compilation that a neophyte fan should buy, mostly because it covers only his late career and leaves out a lot of essential material, but it is an absolutely essential companion (along with the Harlem Square Club live set) to his finest compilation, Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, or the box set Man Who Invented Soul, finishing the story that they start. Most of what's here had never been available digitally before, and even the tracks that had are improved so significantly in the quality of their transfer, that they're like new releases." (Bruce Eder, AMG)

Sam Cooke

Digitally remastered

Sam Cooke
the son of Reverend Charles Cook, Sr., (a Baptist minister) and Annie May Cook was born January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. He had four brothers and three sisters – Willie, Charles Jr., L.C., David, Mary, Hattie and Agnes.

Sam graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in 1948, where he distinguished himself as an “A” student as well as being voted “most likely to succeed.” During his formative years, Sam, together with his brothers Charles Jr., L.C. and sisters Mary and Hattie, performed as a gospel group “The Singing Children.”

At the age of 15, Sam became lead singer of the famous “teenage” gospel group the “Highway QC’s” until he was 19 when he was hand-picked by Roy (S.R.) Crain, manager of the “Soul Stirrers,” to replace the legendary R.H. Harris as lead singer.

In 1951, with the “Soul Stirrers,” he began his writing and recording career on Specialty Records with such gospel classics as “Nearer To Thee,” “Touch The Hem Of His Garment” and “Be With Me Jesus.” For six electrifying years he established a new standard for gospel expression.

“It isn’t what you sing that is so important,” said Sam’s father, “but rather the fact that God gave you a good voice to use. He must want you to make people happy by singing, so go ahead and do so.”

With these words of encouragement, he did just that. At the height of his fame in the gospel world and with the screams of believers raising him up and being raised by him, Sam left it all behind.

In June of 1957 he left Specialty Records, along with his producer/manager Bumps Blackwell, and three months later signed with Keen Records where he wrote and recorded such Number 1 hits as “You Send Me,” “Win Your Love For Me,” “Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha,” “Only Sixteen” and “(What A) Wonderful World.” Sam didn’t “cross-over” he “combined” – blending sensuality and spirituality, sophistication and soul.

After the success of “You Send Me” in 1957, Sam signed with the William Morris Agency, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and performed at New York City’s world famous Copacabana in March of 1958.

In 1959, Sam married Barbara Campbell, his childhood sweetheart, at her Grandmother’s house in Chicago, with his father performing the ceremony. They had two daughters – Linda and Tracey and a son, Vincent, who, in 1963, died tragically at the age of eighteen months. Sam also became partners in 1959 with J.W. Alexander in Kags Music (now ABKCO Music, Inc.) and later that year, with J.W., Sam formed SAR Records (now ABKCO Records). Kags Music would control not only Sam’s 152 classic compositions, but also the compositions written by artists signed to SAR.

In 1960, Sam signed with RCA Records, a deal negotiated by The William Morris Agency, where he continued to write and record such Number 1 hits as “Chain Gang,” “Twisting The Night Away,” “Bring It On Home To Me,” “Having A Party” and “Cupid.”

In 1963, J.W. and Sam appointed Allen Klein to manage SAR, Kags and all of the related companies; at the same time Allen became Sam’s manager. On September 1st of the same year, Sam signed a new agreement whereby all of his RCA business would pass through Sam’s record label, Tracey Records. RCA was now merely Tracey Records’ distributor. This new deal guaranteed Sam a minimum advance of half a million dollars over three years and established Sam’s complete ownership of his work. Everything he did from this point on would be by his own design and direction, and in fact even RCA’s distribution rights of the Tracey material were limited to 30 years from the term of the agreement.

Before producing his good friend Cassius Clay’s (Muhammad Ali) recording titled “The Gang’s All Here,” he and Malcolm X attended Clay’s heavyweight championship bout with Sonny Liston in Miami.

Sam died on December 11, 1964. “At the Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Los Angeles, a crowd of 5,000 persons, some of whom arrived five hours before the scheduled last rites, over-ran facilities designed to accommodate 1,500. In an emotion packed atmosphere, super charged by the singing of Lou Rawls, Bobby Blue Bland and Arthur Lee Simpkins, women fainted, tears ran down men’s cheeks and onlookers shouted. Gospel singer Bessy Griffin, who was to appear on the funeral program, became so grief stricken she had to be carried off. Ray Charles stepped in from the audience to sing and play ‘Angels Keep Watching Over Me’.” EBONY Magazine February 1965

For 14 years Sam sanctified and glorified his gospel heritage and forged new paths by being the first black artist to establish his own record company (SAR) where he helped such gospel oriented artists as the Womack Brothers (Bobby, Cecil, Friendly Jr., Curtis and Harry) who later became the Valentinos, R.H. Harris & His Gospel Paraders, The Simms Twins, Johnnie Morisette, Johnnie Taylor and Billy Preston, as well as giving continued expression to the Soul Stirrers.

Today, many years after he began his writing and recording career, Sam’s music endures with cover recordings by artists from all genres of the recording industry such as Aretha, Bryan Adams, Gerald Alston, The Animals, Arcade Fire, The Band, Billy Bragg, Solomon Burke, Jimmy Buffet, Eric Clapton, Shemekia Copeland, Jim Croce, Terrence Trent D’Arby, Gavin DeGraw, Bob Dylan, The Fugees, Art Garfunkel, Al Green, Leela James, Jon Bon Jovi, R. Kelly, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Nas, The Neville Brothers, Otis Redding, The Righteous Brothers, The Rolling Stones, Seal, Dan Seals, Nina Simone, The Spinners, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, The Supremes, James Taylor, Tina Turner, Luther Vandross, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack and Ray Charles, among many others. (Source: http://www.abkco.com)

This album contains no booklet.