It was 60 years ago today that Sam Cooke played the Harlem Square Club & produced what I believe is one of the greatest live albums of all time.
I have it on now & suggest you all do the same.
12th January 1963 – Harlem Square Club
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Link to it here:
What a fantastic album it is.
I’m working at the moment so can’t put it on as I’m incapable of hearing it without getting dust in my eyes, but will do later on. The ‘crackle’ of interaction between Sam & the band & the audience is beyond gorgeous.
I believe Rod was a forthright champion of it & cited at one point as his all time fave LP.
30 years yesterday, Belly released their debut single on 4AD. In the 90s, I probably saw them live more than any act other than Bjorn Again.
That makes me feel old.
When they wrote about Gepetto his was still an apprentice joiner, that’s how long ago it is.
Funnily enough, that Belly fact makes the Sam Cooke album seem more recent to me. When I first got into music in 1973 there were only two genres: active pop stars who might turn up on TOTP and dead stars or disbanded acts (who, to my young mind, might as well be dead).
It’s true that ten years is a long time when you are 7, but I tended to regard the past as not so much another country as another universe (The Beatles, World War 2 and The Roman Empire were all pretty much equally far away as far as I was concerned). Additionally my older siblings induced in me what I might call a “TOTP mentality”, where the only thing that mattered in pop was what was happening now – I got some strange looks when my purchase of Scary Monsters (contemporary) prompted enough curiosity to go out and buy The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust.
That thing where time seems to accelerate as you get older actually brings the past forward. I have this idea of a life footprint – when you are 7 in 1973 your life footprint can project, like a compass on the number line, back to 1959. By the time you are 56 in 2023, your life footprint goes all the way back to 1910. The time from being born to now, which hasn’t felt all that long, in the minus direction, covers the entire history of human flight, the theories of relativity, the discovery that the Milky Way is not the universe, all of what I consider popular music, almost all of cinema and all of television etc
I’m not really a fan of live albums. There are only a few instances where I would encourage an impatient space visitor discovering our music to “get the live one first”. As great as it is, I wouldn’t even suggest The Wailers, but I certainly would with this record..
When you’re 75 in 2023, your life footprint goes all the way back to 1872. Gladstone was Prime Minister and Middlemarch was published.
Yes, I didn’t want to jinx it, but this line of thought inevitably throws up landmarks – creation of Dracula (69), The Time Machine (71) and Sherlock Holmes (79)..
For my money, THE greatest live album of all time. So good the record company had to suppress it for the terrible effect they feared it would have on the morale of every other singer then active.
Also the foundation stone of all my idle daydreams about what Cooke might have gone on to do had he just lived a little longer. God, what a voice.
Fans should go back to his time singing pure gospel with the Soul Stirrers.
Toward the end of the show, Sam cries “Everybody’s with me tonight!”.
And, of course, he’s right.
Incredible record.
Just reading that in my head I can hear him shout it (and the “Listen – let me hear you say yeah” that follows it). So good.
That rendition of Bring It On Home To Me is just the absolute high point. Not just of that record, but pretty much the human voice in general. What a tune, and what a performance of it.
Astounding album. In terms of singing, only Amazing Grace can compete. In terms of audience interaction, perhaps Bob Marley Live!! or At The Apollo.
Another in-concert album that has great audience interaction and a wonderful ‘live’ feel is Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall. I’m surprised it’s not mentioned more often in the regular online threads that celebrate the best live albums ever made.
It’s one of my faves. I recently bought it on double vynli in the HMV new year sales.
I was just listening to this yesterday on my commute to the city. A great, great album and his vocals are effortless. I agree with Bingo that Bring It On Home is its peak. If only he would have lived a few more years to see the heyday of soul.