Sam Cooke, 'A Change Is Gonna Come'

 

Writer: Cooke
Producers: Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore
Released: Dec. '64, RCA
7 weeks; No. 31

In 1963, Sam Cooke — America's first great soul singer and one of the most successful pop acts in the nation, with 18 Top 30 hits since 1957 — heard a song that profoundly inspired and disturbed him: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." What struck Cooke was the challenge implicit in Dylan's anthem. "Jeez," Cooke mused, "a white boy writing a song like that?"

Cooke's response, "A Change Is Gonna Come," recorded on January 30th, 1964, with a sumptuous orchestral arrangement by Rene Hall, was more personal — in its first-person language and the experiences that preceded its creation. On October 8th, 1963, while on tour, Cooke and members of his entourage were arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, for disturbing the peace after they tried to register at a white motel — an incident reflected in the song's third verse. And Cooke's mourning for his 18-month-old son, Vincent, who drowned that June, resonates in the last verse: "There have been times that I thought/I couldn't last for long."

On December 11th, 1964, a year after he recorded it, Cooke was fatally shot at an L.A. motel. Two weeks later, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released, becoming Cooke's farewell address and an anthem of the civil rights movement.