Album: Sam Cooke

The Man Who Invented Soul, RCA

Sam Cooke was the first black superstar of the modern era, an American icon in whom the values of talent, beauty and integrity combined in a way that would later be emulated by Sidney Poitier and Muhammad Ali in their respective fields. The latter, like many, unequivocally considered Cooke "the greatest singer in the world", and there's an openness and honesty about Cooke's soaring tenor that could both bring the best out of a standard like "When I Fall in Love" and enable him to effortlessly nail a fun piece like "(What a) Wonderful World"; but the former gospel heart-throb's influence was also felt on a deeper level, as through his pioneering record label SAR he demonstrated that blacks could actually own and run their own businesses for themselves. Sadly, there's yet to be a definitive Cooke compilation that does justice to both the sacred and secular sides of his art, and this four-CD compilation of his RCA years is no exception, ignoring gospel classics such as "Wonderful" and "Touch the Hem of His Garment", recorded with The Soul Stirrers, but including several minor MOR trifles. Nor can it even be considered a definitive account of Cooke's pop output, omitting as it does both "Shake" and the landmark civil rights anthem "A Change Is Gonna Come". It's still a dazzling collection none the less, particularly when the strings are replaced by jazz horn arrangements for the My Kind of Blues album in 1961, where the sweetness of his tenor is spiked with occasional harsher, guttural touches to devastating effect on tracks such as "Trouble in Mind" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out".