Article: I first got the idea...

I first got the idea of writing this book in 1982, when I met J.W. Alexander, Sam Cooke's friend, business partner, and former colleague on the gospel quartet circuit (J.W. sang tenor for, and managed, the Pilgrim Travelers).

J.W. was one of the most wonderful people I ever met—warm, soft-spoken but with a ringing high-pitched laugh—and a born educator. In this case he was determined to teach me not just about Sam Cooke but about the world both he and Sam came from.

We spoke for three or four hours, and it was the beginning of a friendship that would be cut off only by J.W.'s death nearly fifteen years later. He filled me in on facts and figures, background history and business dealings that it would take me 20 years of research to fully understand—but by the end of the day I was totally entranced. Not just by Sam's music (I was already entranced by that), not simply by Sam himself, but by the richness of the life and the richness of his appreciation for the culture that was reflected in his songs.

I was working on a book called Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm, and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom at the time, and I incorporated my best understanding of what J.W. had to tell me into my portrait of Sam in the book. Not much after that, in the course of writing the liner notes for Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club (which is being reissued by Sony BMG this fall) I met Allen Klein, Sam's manager for the last year and a half of his life, and he in turn, along with J.W., introduced me to many of Sam's family and friends.

I went on to write a two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, but throughout the eleven years that it took me, I never set aside my goal of writing about Sam Cooke.

I continued to see (and to interview—though a lot of times we just went to El Pollo on Sunset) J.W. I started talking to Sam's protege and friend, Bobby Womack, in 1991, his brother L.C. (plus sisters Agnes and Hattie, and other brothers Charles and David) a couple of years later.

Researching the book was different than working on other books, because while I conducted interviews with as many as 2-300 different people, I conducted literally dozens of interviews with J.W., L.C., Bobby Womack, Sam's wife Barbara, the Soul Stirrers LeRoy Crume, Allen Klein, and Sam's first real manager, Jess Rand. This was because I wanted to talk to the people who knew Sam best, I wanted to tell the story as much as possible from the inside out.

I also continued to go back to my original 1982 interview with J.W. as I gathered dates and information that enabled me to better understand all the things he was seeking to tell me.

By September 2001, when I began writing, I felt as if I was finally beginning to understand!

Copyright © 2005 Peter Guralnick