He was born, as the song goes, “by a river, in a little tent”, but other details of Sam Cooke’s biography are less familiar. Most remember the smooth voice of You Send Me and A Change Is Gonna Come. Some hazily recall the circumstances of his death at a seedy Los Angeles motel, but it is the forgotten detail that concerns this new film. In ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (available now on Netflix), the streaming service’s music/true-crime documentary strand may have found its perfect subject.
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The film crams a lot into its 74-minute running time, because Cooke did so much in his 33 years: he was a soul music pioneer, sure, but also an inspired songwriter, savvy businessman and tenacious civil rights leader. Several directions only hinted at would make for satisfying spin-off docs in their own right.
The Whitney Houston story has already been done (twice) and there are obvious similarities with her pop parable. A generation earlier, Cooke too came up through the gospel choirs of the black church, transitioned to secular music, and was then required to suppress the more interesting parts of his artistry to appeal to white audiences.
Yet Cooke could never be dismissed as teeny-bop fodder. A clip from a 1964 talkshow has him gliding from stage to seated anecdote with a poise that is almost supernatural. Here was a man who could key change and code-switch with the same effortless grace, yet being a star was the easy bit; changing the world was what challenged him.
R&B Singer Sam Cooke came to a tragic end at the age of 33 in 1964, shot dead in a seedy L.A. Motel, supposedly by the building’s manager who claimed she was acting in self-defense. Jean-Alexander Ntivyihabwa, the executive producer of the 2017 documentary, “Lady You Shot Me: The Life and Death of Sam Cooke,” told the Crusader that while he was enthusiastic about the.
Many prominent artist-activists of that generation didn’t make it out of the 1960s alive, but most of those who did pop up here. Quincy Jones describes the conditions endured while touring the segregated south: “We used to have to sleep in mortuaries … us sleeping in a cot and six bodies up there in caskets” (suggested spin-off doc No 2); Dionne Warwick remembers Cooke standing up to some racist cops; Smokey Robinson credits his old pal with popularising the ’fro; and NFL player Jim Brown remembers the friendship between himself, Cooke, Malcolm X and Cassius Clay (spin-off doc subject No 3 – in fact the play, One Night in Miami, already exists).
Cooke’s courage also manifested in his approach to the music industry. He rejected the routine way that black artists were cheated out of royalties – described by one contributor as “like sharecropping” – and instead started his own publishing and recording company. The week before he died, he was planning to confront his business manager Allen Klein over some paperwork (Klein would go on to screw both the Beatles and the Stones in a similar fashion; The Dubious Dealings of Allen Klein is spin-off doc No 4). Could Cooke’s willingness to stand up to powerful vested interests have been a factor in his murder?
Back then, the LAPD felt Cooke’s black life didn’t matter enough to warrant a full investigation. This doc makes that clear, but goes no further. Which brings us to suggested spin-off No 5: Isn’t it time some enterprising film-maker did a deep dive into Cooke’s death?