"Celebrating Victory with the King of Soul"
This week, I'll be checking out the Sam Cooke album above. It was Cooke's last album released within his lifetime and features one of my favorite songs, 'A Change is Gonna Come'. I first heard this song in 1992, at 11 years old, in the company of my brother's godfather and his son (my friend) at the premier of the Spike Lee film Malcolm X in an El Paso theatre.
Today, I was reading the Muhammad Ali Handbook by Dave Zirin and arrived to a chapter titled 'Celebrating victory with the King of Soul'... Here is a quote, "After the fight (vs. Sonny Liston in Miami), Clay (Cassius X) had nowhere to go because his promoters, not expecting a victory, didn't plan for a victory celebration. Instead he went back to Malcolm X's hotel to eat vanilla ice cream with Malcolm, Sam Cooke, and football great and political activist Jim Brown." ...Imagine that.
On March 13, 2004, I broadcasted a program called A Session of Malcolm X, which I also subtitled, A Session of Sam Cooke on KRUX 91.5 fm (NMSU). Throughout the two hour broadcast, rotation included speeches by Malcolm X, and various musicians including some of my favorite songs from Sam Cooke, 'A Change is Gonna Come', 'Peace in the Valley', 'Chain Gang', 'Wonderful World', 'Mean Old World' & 'End of My Journey'. It was what I considered at the time, my most accomplished moment on air.
3 comments:
Wanna know what was so interesting about that post-fight get together featuring Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X and (you failed to mention) Sam from Sam and Dave? It came out years later that the Feds had listening devices in Ali's dressing room and recorded every word.
Erik Greene
Author, "Our Uncle Sam: The Sam Cooke Story From His Family's Perspective
www.OurUncleSam.com
thank you for the information, especially the link to your site. will definitely be checkin' out your text. the Ali book I was reading also mentioned an album that Ali & Cooke worked on. your thoughts on that would be appreciated. have you heard these recordings?
Muhammad Ali and Sam recorded a song called "The Gang's All Here," and Ali sang a solo version of "Stand By Me." If the champ ever completed an album, it wasn't with Sam.
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