Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963

Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 is considered one of the finest live soul albums ever made, capturing a musical, spiritual, emotional, and social journey. It reveals his days with the Soul Stirrers and his hit singles as a solo artist, exploring how he reconciled disparate elements on a Florida stage in 1963. The album's timeless message of self-reflection and connection resonates with audiences today.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 04 November 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club,1963, is considered one of the finest live soul albums ever made. It captures a musical, spiritual, emotional, and social journey played out over one night on the stage of a sweaty Miami club. Cooke's music encapsulated everything he had ever cut, channeling forces that would soon birth "A Change is Gonna Come," the most important soul song ever written. This book covers Cooke's days with the Soul Stirrers, the gospel unit that invented a strand of soul in the 1950s, and continues on to his string of hit singles as a solo artist. It reveals far more about this complex man and the complex music he was always fashioning.

A writer and an agent of social change, Cooke absorbed the teachings of Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan while reconciling his own identity and what fans expected of him. Fleming explores how Cooke reconciled so many disparate elements on a Florida stage on a winter night in 1963—a stage that extended well into the future, beyond Cooke's own life, beyond the 1960s, and into a perpetual here-and-now.

Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 will resonate as long as we all have the need to look into ourselves, square our differences, and become more human and connected with others in our humanity.

Dimension: 165 x 121 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501355547