I was confused by some gaps in the iTunes music store (more on this in a later post), and ended up digging into the state of Sam Cooke re-issues, and found a pretty complex picture.<\/p>\n

Cooke made some of the best and most influential gospel and early soul music in the late 50’s and early 60’s before his untimely (and somewhat bizarre) death in late 1964. We bought The man and his music<\/cite> back in the early 90’s, which is a tremendous overview is his career, starting with his gospel work with the Soul Stirrers, running through a bunch of his great soul hits, and ending with “A change is gonna come”, one of the best songs to come out of the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n

I discovered tonight, however, that the iTunes music store didn’t have “A change is gonna come”. Wow. They have five albums by Cooke, including a single disc Greatest hits<\/cite> and a box set entitled The man who invented soul music<\/cite>. Both of these are on RCA, which is the label of The man and his music<\/cite>, so it wasn’t clear why they didn’t include what is widely regarded as one of Cooke’s best and more important songs. WeatherGirl guessed that it was probably to do with permissions and licensing, and turned out (once again :-) ) to be right.<\/p>\n

A very helpful review<\/a> on Amazon of the box set by Paul Williams (who was in fact the producer on the project) explained that the rights to the recordings from Cooke’s last year (including “Change”) had all reverted to the Abkco records. This means that A man and his music<\/cite> is no longer available, and explains why RCA hadn’t included them in either of their collections.<\/p>\n

Happily, in 2003 Abkco released Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964<\/cite> that has a very similar playlist to The man and his music<\/cite> (including “Change”), and apparently has much<\/em> better audio quality. To be honest, I’ve never objected to the audio on A man and his music<\/cite>, but the reviews are all pretty adamant that both the box set and the Abkco collection sound much better. Unfortunately, I’ve not actually heard any of these more recent collections, so I can’t actually comment on their sound quality or contents.<\/p>\n

I can say with complete confidence, though, that Cooke’s work remains some of the most wonderful music made in the 20th century. Songs recorded over 40 years ago, and which I’ve been listening to carefully for over 10, still sound fresh and captivating. The great shame, perhaps, is that for most people this brilliant music has been relegated to “Golden oldies” elevator music. This only serves to drain the life from songs that in their day must have both made parties happen and totally changed people’s sense of the possibilities of music, and perhaps life itself.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was confused by some gaps in the iTunes music store (more on this in a later post), and ended up digging into the state of Sam Cooke re-issues, and found a pretty complex picture. Cooke made some of the best and most influential gospel and early soul music in the late 50’s and early … Continue reading “The complexity of Sam Cooke’s music”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-music"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":810,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/03\/02\/theyre-onlywhat20-years-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":0},"title":"They’re only…what…20 years late?","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"2 Mar 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Is it just me, or is this a desparately classic case of old folks (i.e., people my age) just not realizing that the world has moved on a wee bit? The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology is proud to announce that the University of Minnesota is soon to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"You must protect yourself from those evil marketing rays","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/136\/326820913_ac438a1ed2_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":279,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/12\/26\/time-to-mix-it-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":1},"title":"Time to mix it up!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"26 Dec 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, I bet this is gonna be fun! The good people at ccMixter.org (related to CreativeCommons.org) are sponsoring a cool contest: This is a contest for artists to mix audio tracks under 4 minutes which use provided voice samples from Ben Franzen and Kembrew McLeod's forthcoming film, \"Copyright Criminals.\" Samples\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"'my new hot and sexy diamond' from frischmilch on Flickr.com","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/43\/73956114_76074b00b7_m_d.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/02\/11\/jocp-ed-hall-for-sale-on-line\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":2},"title":"JOCP!!!* – Ed Hall for sale on-line!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"11 Feb 07","format":false,"excerpt":"I just discovered that one of my mostest favoritest coolest bestest albums from when I lived in Austin, TX, in the late 80's is readily available on-line! Go buy music now! Ed Hall (a band, not a person) made some great garage punk noise back in the day; it was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/01\/17\/i-survived-my-mlk-day-music-in-the-civil-rights-movement-talk\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":3},"title":"I survived my MLK day talk on “Music in the Civil Rights Movement”","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"17 Jan 05","format":false,"excerpt":"In a fit of flattered silliness I agreed (several months ago) to give a talk tonight at the PRCC on \"Music in the Civil Rights Movement\" in honor of MLK day. I then mostly ignored it for ages, and of course had to scramble all day today to get it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/01\/20\/a-potentially-cool-way-to-see-your-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":4},"title":"A potentially cool way to see your music","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"20 Jan 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Levi (KUMM's music director) pointed me at musicmobs.com, and it looks like it could be pretty cool. There are two main ways to use it. First, you can just go to their web site, enter three bands, and get a list of other bands that you might be interested in.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/03\/24\/musicmobs-works-for-me-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":48,"position":5},"title":"MusicMobs works for me now!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"24 Mar 05","format":false,"excerpt":"As I reported earlier, MusicMobs is this potentially cool way for people to share preferences about music, but it didn't work for me. (Presumably my iTunes library was just too big for it to handle.) 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