The lyrics, “It’s been a long, long time coming / but I know, a change’s gonna come” reflect the emotions of many blacks across the United States during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. Although not the official and well-known anthem with power like “We Shall Overcome”, “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke is equally as potent of a song. While both songs are inspired and modeled after traditional gospel structures, with a score that seems to belong in a sanctuary more than on a radio or in the streets, the lyrics add another political level.
In the case of “A Change Is Gonna Come”, it took centuries of pain and efforts to preserve African culture despite slavery and colonization before Sam Cooke had the background knowledge to compose a gospel song with political connotations that ultimately came across to listeners as pop or soul. Music has always been a crucial aspect of life for African-Americans, and while the music industry was segregated in all aspects, Sam Cooke used his talents and charm to compose music and perform shows that toppled racial barriers: physically in terms of segregated seating, and abstractly in terms of genre labeling.
Civil rights issues underscored his entire musical career, and the movement was in full force by the time both black and white audiences were familiar with his pop hit in 1957. Officially released in 1964 after his death, “A Change Is Gonna Come” reflected the long history of African-Americans, while still looking forward, and seizing upon the hopefulness found in the endless potential of the future. Music is a universal art that helps to express the feelings of those who are unable to put words to it themselves. For the African-American community in the late 1950s to mid-1960s, music played a crucial role in unifying the black community.
Through this unity, furthering the goals of the Civil Rights Movement became more achievable. Leading the way in desegregation and against Jim Crow (unintentionally at first) was Sam Cooke, whose gospel roots and pop hits built a novel fan base, made up of young blacks and whites alike. Sam Cooke was a pioneer, using the African tradition to create a new era of political crossover music with wide appeal that assisted the agenda of the Civil Rights Movement. Sam Cooke’s music was a way to express the feelings that the black community had, but were not ready to say aloud.
This paper goes through Sam Cooke’s career and his influence from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, before examining the historical context that makes music such a big part of the African-American experience. With the knowledge of Sam Cooke’s power and the legacy from Africa and slavery, we look at artists whose music shows the influence of a combination of the traditional African-American music experience, in addition to Sam Cooke’s groundbreaking breakthroughs, and how those artists fit into the Civil Rights Movement and the culture of the 1960s.
Although music is a crucial aspect of every culture, the black experience in America has been particularly influenced by various musical genres since the antebellum era. Beginning with spirituals that eventually turned into gospel, singing was a way to express feelings that the people were not allowed to say aloud, for fear of retribution. In addition to bonding over the way things they could not say, the form of the music itself helped to create relationships between the singers. Call-andresponse songs gained popularity in the black church and continued as a widely used structure, especially by crossover Motown artists.
The songs that were popular among white audiences and steeped in slavery and African traditions demonstrate the disconnectedness that existed in America. On one hand, black people in the US were treated as second-class citizens, but on the other hand, the music that they were making in the latter half of the 1960s appealed to white audiences all across the country. Sam Cooke began his career in gospel, singing at his father’s church, as many black musicians did. From there, his career took off when he joined a popular gospel quartet, the Soul Stirrers, and began performing and touring with them all across the country.
At this time, touring black musicians were not welcome to stay in hotels at all of the cities and towns they performed in, but since Sam Cooke and his friends, were gospel singers, they at least people did not treat them as poorly. In a TV documentary directed by John Antonelli, Sam Cooke’s tour friends recalled how Cooke did not care that he and his groups were not always welcome at these locations. His confidence and stubbornness at the time were not deliberate acts of civil disobedience, but people noticed every little move, and the small things add up.
Even though Sam Cooke was not always making an effort to further the Civil Rights Movement, he slowly gained an appreciation for the power that he had, and used that as a way to take a stand against Jim Crow laws and segregation. For example, Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin were scheduled to perform at a show in Memphis in May 1961, and when they found out just before show time that the audience seating was segregated, both singers pulled out of the show. This firmness against segregation stemmed from a lifelong stubbornness that existed within him.
Cooke’s niece spoke about how he would take her and her siblings to amusement parks during the summer, and although people stared because it was uncommon to see black people, they felt a sense of invincibility. She said that they knew that their uncle was capable of protecting them against whatever things other white people might try. From his home life, to his public performances, Sam Cooke’s ability to take a firm stand on whatever he believed in made him a popular figure to garner support for the Civil Rights Movement.
Balancing the line between gospel and pop proved to be a difficult thing for Cooke, even though his popularity was something that both black and white people supported, there was a generational divide that interestingly intertwined with race. The New York Times reviewed his first performance at the ritzy, famous nightclub Copacabana in Manhattan in 1958. Critic Robert Alden wrote, “most of the elders will not have heard of him,” and that “the performance is not at all good. ” According to Alden, Cooke’s one good skill was his “falsetto style that would inspire teen-age shrieks were teen-agers present. While his first performance at the Copa was a huge flop in front of an allwhite audience, the next time that Cooke performed at the Copa, the nightclub was integrated. Singer Smokey Robinson attributed the integration to him, saying, “Sam Cooke was the breakthrough” when it came to putting black and white audiences together. Although he crossed that race divide, the generational gap in the black community was still a vast chasm. Conveyed as a religious versus secular issue, once Sam Cooke began to record pop music and gain popularity in that industry instead of sticking to his roots, people’s perceptions of him changed.
He used to be a sweet singer who used his talents for good, but many older black people saw his transition as a step towards the devil’s music. Balancing the line and holding onto his gospel and his pop identities was something that Cooke worked hard to upkeep his whole life. Columnist Gene Santoro noted a perceived irony in his column in The Nation in 1991. To him, gospel has “fierce undercurrents of sexuality [that] are enough at times to make you want to tear somebody else’s clothes off despite its apparent prudishness and sanctified lyrics. The structure of soul music comes from gospel, but the lyrics and the themes of the songs greatly differ, as soul often discusses life, love, and sexuality. Santoro was not the first or only one to make these comparisons between soul and gospel. In the Boston Globe in 1960, the Catholic Chaplain, Father Norman J. O’Connor CSP, wrote about the ties among gospel, jazz, and soul. He wrote, “soul music today in jazz is gospel revival songs. ”
He continues to explain how the new soul music that was coming out at the time immediately reminded him of southern gospel songs because they both focus on the raw motion that comes from celebrating with music. For Sam Cooke, that is exactly what music was about. Despite the many people coming after him because of his fall from grace, Sam Cooke’s resistance was apparent in all aspects of his life as he continued to further his career in the commercial side of the music industry and produce top pop hits. Sam Cooke’s significance in Civil Rights history also came from the fact that he made the Billboard pop charts instead of the R&B charts. His first popular single was “You Send Me” which he released in 1957.
Despite its mainstream style, Billboard put the song in the R&B charts until the song became so popular that it reached number one on the pop charts and stayed there for three weeks. He was one of the first black artists to have his music on the pop charts instead of the R&B charts. Breaking that barrier and making people realize that black artists could create pop music as well opened up many doors for future artists to be free to make pop, R&B, and gospel music if they wanted. Having a black artist reach number one on the pop charts was a drastic change from the race records of the 1920s.