Bring It on Home: Black America Sings Sam Cooke

Illustrators: Eric Charge; Roger Armstrong; Tony Rounce.
Previous entries in Ace's Black America Sings series have focused on Bob Dylan and the Beatles, but also Otis Redding -- a singer/songwriter who shows up on Bring It on Home: Black America Sings Sam Cooke singing "Shake," a song that became more identified with Otis than Sam. This alone suggests how great Cooke's legacy is: he wove his way into the very fabric of pop culture, quite clearly influencing generations of soul and rock singers, but also shaping how R&B could cross over into pop, along with the parameters of how black musicians could set up their own independent enterprises in the music business. Cooke's SAR label has been documented elsewhere and, unsurprisingly, some of the acts show up on this 24-track set, but Bring It on Home has greater ambitions than to round up Cooke-associated acts. Certainly, there are some here -- including Bobby Womack's funky 1970 rendition of "I'm Gonna Forget About You," the Soul Stirrers, and Lou Rawls -- but this taps into the smooth strut of his crossover pop, the grit of his gospel, his easy touch with a love song, and his sly ways of breaking down borders, both musical and sociological. As this compilation rolls on, skipping between symphonic singles recorded while Sam was alive and rawer sides from the late '60s and early '70s, what impresses is how far and wide Cooke's influence resonates. Before Motown, he was the one singer who figured out how to bridge the gap not only between the church and the street, but the street and the supper club, all the while without losing touch with his roots. He didn't sell out, he bought in, and by hearing all these wonderful artists who followed his path -- Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, Smokey Robinson, Brenton Wood, Aretha Franklin, the Supremes, Sam & Dave -- it becomes apparent just how important he was. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine