The Original Soul Man - Sam Cooke
May 28th, 2008 by soulman
Sam Cooke is the undisputed pioneer of Soul Music. Cooke had 29 Top 40 hits in the U.S.
Today we review this great CD box set “The Man Who Invented Soul”
This is a 4 cd box set in the form of a book from RCA records. It has 91 tracks by Sam Cooke. If you are a fan or new to his music this collection is a great listen. Hard to believe the date he recorded some of these songs, well ahead of his time.
Disc 1 of this set compiles his 1957-1959 recordings for the Keen label, which had tamed the former gospel tiger into a sweet, wry songwriter with a taste for crooning standards and a signature yodel that marked every song as his property. The second and third discs do the same for his RCA career’s singles and album tracks, which, for all their orchestrated slickness, left an indelible mark on soul and even rock (compare “That’s It, I Quit, I’m Movin’ On” to Elvis Costello’s “Blame It On Cain”!). Lastly, there’s a disc with two complete albums from Cooke’s stylistic poles: Night Beat (after-hours cool soul) and Live at the Harlem Square Club (Cooke as hard-hollering crowd mover). As a survey of the middle period of Cooke’s career, this set is totally solid.
You can pickup a copy of this box set from Amazon here: The Man Who Invented Soul
Enjoy!
