Sex, Fire, Soul and Spirit: An Ode to the Magic of La Lupe

By Francesca Harding

Let’s talk about Guadalupe Victoria Yolí Raymond. Stage name La Lupe. Nickname
La Yiyiyi. Rightfully named the Queen of Latin Soul. A firecracker of a woman with a voice electrifying beyond comprehension.

La Lupe gained massive recognition as a singer of boleros, guarachas and Latin soul in the late 1950’s and into the 1970’s, first in her home country of Cuba and again in New York City soon after immigrating to the States. She was a hurricane, a Santería-practicing wild woman known just as much for her controversial shows as she was for her magnetic voice. At the peak of her career she was the first Latin artist to sell-out Madison Square Garden, was twice voted “best singer” by the Latin press, helped to pioneer the ascendance of salsa music that exploded across the globe and enjoyed a level of acclaim that no other Latin artist had previously achieved in the U.S. But as quickly as she became a household name, her career was ripped from beneath her: issues with her record label, specifically their decision to pull financial support in favor of a rival, more demure singer spelled the end of La Lupe’s decades-long run. In the end, La Lupe represented an identity that was too raw, too unrefined and quite frankly too Black for a prejudiced society and was punished for it, cast aside as quickly as she had been exalted.

She was born in the small barrio of San Pedrito, Cuba on the 23rd of December 1936. Described by her sister Norma as “just another Black girl that no one paid attention to”, Lupe was an earnest child who loved to sing and dance and to chase behind musicians as they performed in the streets of her neighborhood. In 1954 while on pace to earn a degree in teaching, the teenaged Lupe is said to have walked from her hometown to Havana in order to enter and eventually win top prize in a singing contest by impersonating the popular Cuban singer of the time, Olga Guillot. Lupe’s win not only allowed her to sing on the radio but to also meet Guillot in person, forever changing her life’s trajectory. The veteran singer’s advice to the budding vocalist: find your own sound, find your own personality. Guillot’s foreboding words resonated deeply and Lupe went on to hone a never-before-seen style that catapulted her to stardom. Soon after her contest-win she joined the trio Tropicuba as a vocalist and also married the band’s leader, Eulogio “Yoyo” Reyes. Tropicuba enjoyed success in Havana’s nightclub scene where rumba, jazz and tango mixed to create nightlife unlike anywhere else in the world. However, at the height of Tropicuba’s popularity and amidst a tumultuous marriage full of cheating and abuse allegations, Lupe was fired from the group. In response, she at last launched a solo career, vowing to make something of herself without her now ex-husband’s help. The magic of La Lupe was born.

To watch La Lupe perform was to witness the convergence of the everyday world and the spirit world in real time. She’d take the stage, steadied and relaxed. As the show progressed and the music quickened, she appeared to summon the ancestors with every note she sang, every shriek and howl that would escape her throat, every thrash of her arms, pull of her hair and shake of her legs. She’d sensually rub her breasts while mimicking the sound of an orgasm, lift her skirt, physically hit her accompanying pianist to play faster – she was a sensation. By the show’s end, her wig, rings and clothes would be strewn around the stage (and in later years a medic would await her backstage with an oxygen mask because her performances would thoroughly deplete her). Now a regular performer at Havana's fashionable La Red nightclub, her unique voice and notorious stage shows were the stuff of legend. All the while, audiences were thrilled or appalled and sometimes both, unsure of what they were witnessing, but unable to deny that it was spectacular. As the story goes, Lupe was eventually warned that Fidel Castro considered her “antics” on stage anti-revolutionary and unsuitable for Cuba. Rather than conform, she fled.

After a brief stay in Mexico, Lupe arrived in New York City in 1962, unknown and penniless. But just as her name caught on like wildfire in Havana, much the same happened for her in NYC soon after her arrival. She linked with fellow Cuban musician Mongo Santamaría who immediately recognized her dynamism and began to incorporate her as front woman within his live shows. Being introduced to Mongo’s well-established fan base was lightning striking twice for the soul singer. Their joint 1963 album "Mongo Introduces La Lupe" solidified her as a star once again. She then caught the attention of legendary musician and record producer Tito Puente who didn’t waste any time in ‘stealing’ Lupe away from Mongo. Forging a new partnership with Tito Puente was, on its face, another solid step for her career. The two had undeniable chemistry in both the studio and on stage – Lupe gave Tito’s band edge; Tito attempted to polish some of Lupe’s unbridled energy. Born out of this tension were ballads like Que Te Pedi, their biggest hit together. Four, successful full-length albums later, their relationship ultimately soured. Some allege that Tito Puente couldn’t handle her star eclipsing his. Others point to Lupe’s unpredictable behavior as the source for their rift. Whatever the case, the two parted ways by 1968 and with the blessing of her label Tico Records, Lupe was once again a solo artist.

She forged ahead, recording some of her most classic hits such as La Tirana and Puro Teatro. Never fully without controversy, she fought rumors of drug use, dealt with an increasingly divisive relationship with her second husband who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was continuously shunned by many for openly practicing Santería. And then there were her risqué performances, one of which resulted in her being banned from Puerto Rican television for tearing her clothes off during a live broadcast. When the decision was made to sell Tico to Fania Records in 1974, her career’s decline could not be stopped. Company executives at Fania chose to pour resources into the more demure and less-controversial Celía Cruz; a half-decade later, La Lupe was living in destitution.  

By the time of her death in 1992 from a massive heart attack at age 55, La Lupe had sworn off secular music and rebranded herself as a gospel singer and evangelical preacher. A deep dive on YouTube uncovers old, grainy videos of an aged, tired Lupe dressed in modest clothing and perched in front of a pulpit sharing her newfound commitment to the gospel. Gone were the heydays of Lupe the Latin soul singer who represented ferocity while remaining soft, who was both feminine and masculine, partly unhinged but always in complete control. Gone was the Lupe who seemed to be all things at once yet still somehow managed to remain un-definable. Considering how much she gave the world while alive, there was a shockingly lukewarm response to the news of her death. Her passing didn’t make the cover of mainstream news publications, parades weren’t held in her honor. An icon that had always made such impact somehow died much more quietly than she had ever lived. And the question we’re left pondering is how? Or perhaps it’s what - what made La Lupe disposable where she once had millions of adoring fans?

In surveying her rise and fall it would seem that respectability politics were always at play, throughout her career and surely up until her disappearance from the public eye. She paid the ultimate price for representing a cultural identity unaligned with European standards of etiquette. Whatever the acceptable version of a Black Latina may have been, La Lupe was not that. She was as fiery as she was loud in the way she held space for her art and her background. Before her conversion to Christianity, she had openly practiced a religion much too African to merit any type of respect from an intolerant, general public. La Lupe fell victim to the ageless practice of society deeming anything falling outside of proximity to whiteness as unworthy. That Fania Records had two massively successful artists signed to their roster but chose to work with Celía Cruz – who was seen as regal and sophisticated – while blatantly turning their backs on La Lupe was a painful reminder that society insisted on dictating the type of Blackness that was worthy of celebration and promotion. Years later, not much has changed.

Earlier in her career, La Lupe shared her perspective on why she tended to make audiences uncomfortable. She proposed that it likely stemmed from her doing “what they'd like to but can't get free enough to do”. And that was La Lupe, who moved to the beat of her own drum regardless of the consequences and in doing so, gave everyone around her permission to do the same. Before La Lupe’s untimely death she recorded more than twenty albums, was a household name all around the world and inspired the stage show of generations of performers who would come after her.  It was in the way that she gave of herself completely and without restraint that makes the legacy she has left behind so tremendous. While our society still struggles with fully accepting Blackness in all of the ways that it is vast and varied, the levers of power continue to shift in the direction of those who refuse to be silenced or cast aside on racist whims. While we fight to hold space of our own, we do it in the name of the likes of Guadalupe Victoria Yolí Raymond, unapologetically Black, forever wild and free.

Larry Levan, Our Founding Father

By Francesca Harding 

Until recently, when it came to the state of the DJ world, there were unwritten truths that we held as self-evident: Music lovers with a passion for songs falling outside of the mainstream knew with certainty they could flock to an underground club to quench their thirst for a left-of-center fix. There’s the phenomenon of the celebrity DJ – individuals propelled to superstar status for their production and turntable skills, or simply for their larger-than-life personalities. There’s the remix – a reimagined adaptation of a pop song weaponized to ignite the dance floor. And we’ve all stood mesmerized by the staccato flashing of programmed lights, the thump of a pristine bassline buzzing within our core and us, open-hearted, certain that the DJ and the music would save our lives.

Like all institutions the DJ world has a moral code, a set of standards responsible for our culture being able to thrive. These values exist to ensure that DJs conduct themselves with integrity and exhibit the utmost respect for the craft. Now accepted globally, these principles were in fact, unconsciously created by Larry Levan, a New York-bred master of all trades. Born in 1954, Larry was just 23 years old when he positioned himself at the helm of the legendary Paradise Garage, the first underground dance club. During his decade-long residency at the Garage, the dots of his life would converge beautifully, soon forging him into the world’s first famous DJ: he was Black and gay, meticulous and inquisitive, had a golden ear for music and a voracious appetite for a good time. His parties quickly turned into family affairs where folks of all types were welcomed under one roof to release stress, celebrate life and to affirm their racial and sexual identities, all while sound tracked by Levan’s marathon, cross-genre DJ sets. By 1987 when the club had run its final lap, Larry had cemented his legacy while providing a blueprint for party throwing that generations of DJ’s, producers and club-promoters would do our best to follow.  At a time when the future of DJ’ing hangs in the balance, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s all the more fitting to highlight Larry Levan, a visionary whose legacy persists throughout every core aspect of DJ’ing as we know it. 

The DJ as Storyteller

Who hasn’t experienced those nights at the club where the DJ is so tapped-in that every song is a crowd favorite? Where every transition, loop, scratch, juggle, and backspin is so perfectly placed that it feels like we’re telepathically communicating what our bodies want to hear? In revisiting old interviews, documentaries and first-hand accounts from Paradise Garage regulars, it’s clear that Larry’s primary concern had always been song selection. His DJ sets told the stories of the attendees within that room, and he wove those stories together by placing more importance on matching the feel and vibe of records over beat-matching. Beyond an ability to read his crowd and know almost intuitively what songs would work, he reveled in taking creative chances: Larry didn’t hesitate to play what we now call open-format - weaving disco, funk, soul, Chicago house and rock all into one of his notorious, multi-hour sets. He was one of the first DJ’s to have live accompaniment, inviting musicians to play instruments over the tracks as he spun. He would let a song play in its entirety and then stop the music completely, the crowd filling the silence with chants and screams for more before he’d drop the needle on a new tune. And then there were those instances when he’d loop a song lyric over and over and over again until the party, firmly in the palm of his hand, would teeter on the edge of explosion. 

Larry Levan embodied the now nostalgic way that DJs used their platforms to introduce new music. While another DJ might stick to playing recognizable hits during the club’s peak hour, Larry would drop an unreleased tune at the height of a night without hesitation. If a song he believed in didn’t go over well, or cleared the dance floor, he’d continue to incorporate the song into his sets, sometimes playing the remix version, until he essentially programmed his audience to love the record. It wasn’t long before he had colossal influence over what songs became popular enough to cross over to mainstream radio. It wasn’t uncommon to see lines wrapping around the block at vinyl stores with people clamoring to purchase records that Larry had played at the Paradise Garagethe night before. From literally shining disco balls while a track was blaring, to running out onto the floor to re-adjust speaker positions, to controlling the lighting throughout the night, Larry Levan was ubiquitous - an undeniable trendsetter who normalized the art of using every resource at his fingertips to speak love to his audience and elevate his DJ sets.

 
Parties as Safe Spaces

Underground clubs have always had a greater function than simply playing the music not specifically intended for mainstream consumption. People who find themselves marginalized by society have for decades turned to clubs as places where leaving themselves at the door isn’t a necessity, where they can find their tribe and feel secure to honor their individual identities. Through the years, the term “safe-space” has become popular within the lexicon of event promoting and is a goal that many DJ’s work hard to achieve. But how did we get here?

As club lore tells it, The Paradise Garage was the world’s original underground party. While other NYC clubs preceded the Garage and contributed to the practical ways an event could act as a buffer to an intolerant world, it was the Paradise Garage that solidified the underground as a viable club-type and movement. At the onset of the Paradise Garage’s launch onto the scene, however, the owner’s intention was never for it to become a haven for Black and Latinx gay men. But in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots and with Larry Levan at the helm, the Garage’s clientele would quickly become predominantly Black and gay. Every Friday and Saturday night, club-goers became a united family, committed to loving one another and to surviving the brutality of bigotry that lay just outside of the club’s walls. The Garage’s stringent door policy helped to safeguard patrons by being strictly word of mouth and requiring membership for access. People could apply for membership during off-hours at an undisclosed location that only other members would be able to identify. 

In many ways, the Paradise Garage stood as the antithesis of Studio 54 happening in mid-Manhattan at the exact same time, known for its hollow celebration of celebrity and restrictive door policies based on one’s appearance.The Garage was special in how it differed, perhaps lacking in glitz and glamour but teeming with heart and soul. Devotees went to dance, substituting fancy sequins for sneakers and sweatpants. The club itself had an industrial feel made entirely of concrete. A stage housed the likes of Grace Jones, and other live acts, who performed in between Levan’s DJ sets. There was a movie theatre in the back, beautiful art pieces commissioned from artists like Keith Herring on display and a rooftop created to feel like club-goers were in the Pines on Fire Island. Not least of all was the club’s award-winning sound system that Larry and famed engineer Richard Long designed to give the space a type of three-dimensional sound that many claim to be the best ever heard. With the Garage, the love was in the details and every facet of a guest’s experience was attended to. It was here, under the explicit curation of Larry Levan, that “the underground club” was birthed, where the very act of being oneself, of expressing joy, and of existing unapologetically on the dance floor was a true act of political resistance – the type of movement that is as important as ever now, some thirty years later. 

 
The Rise of the Remix and the Birth of House Music

In all of the ways that Larry Levan would forever shape DJ culture, his most immeasurable contribution was his influence in house music’s creation. As the disco era began to wane, a more electronic sound, based around syncopated drum machine rhythms, took root in the belly of the predominantly Black gay clubs that served as part therapy, part celebration. 

 Larry’s musical input helped to pioneer the evolution of disco into modern dance music. His remix style for artists such as Gwen Guthrie, Esther Williams and The Peech Boys was sparse, dub-heavy and electronic. He amassed hundreds of remix credits to his name throughout his career and inspired up-and-coming producers to both mimic and develop this sound. At the same time in Chicago, Levan’s childhood friend Frankie Knuckles was cementing house music as a genre with his own original productions while resident DJ of The Warehouse- a gig he secured when Levan turned down the offer and recommended Knuckles in his place. Similar to the Garage, The Warehouse was predominantly Black, Brown and gay. Knuckles, who had begun editing disco breaks on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, was praised by patrons for providing a musical experience that was deemed religious in nature. His congregation eventually gave name to the electronic music emanating from Knuckles’ DJ booth-turned-pulpit, calling it ‘house’- short for The Warehouse- and a nickname for Knuckles’ sonic approach. Some 800 miles away, Larry was also shepherding the multitudes to spiritual ecstasy. His weekly residency had been nicknamed “Saturday Mass” and his eclectic DJ sets and remixes were the sermon. As the first NYC DJ to consistently spin house records coming out of Chicago, his was a crucial contribution in fueling the reach and scope of this new genre. 

 Larry continued to put his personal touch on disco and boogie tracks of the era and to strengthen his signature sound as a remixer. Noting Larry’s influence, record labels began to create house remixes of pop songs and place them on 12-inch vinyl records with the specific intent to have Larry play these house-remixes for his audience. House or “club mixes” as they were often called, could turn a pop song with not much buzz into a megahit after being exposed to the Paradise Garage’s trend-setting crowd. Labels simultaneously began to hire DJ’s to create club remixes, Larry of course being a natural go-to. Before long, 12-inch singles containing house mixes of mainstream tracks proved to be quite lucrative: the musical oasis that Larry established at the Garage undoubtedly led to 12-inch singles flourishing and becoming a standard for music-lovers and vinyl-diggers around the world. 

 In short, house music and the rise in popularity of the remix were born out of the creativity of Levan and Knuckles. It was further solidified by Black, Brown and gay patrons, using music as their chisel, to carve a slice of sanity and inclusivity for themselves from societal prejudice. DJs of today inherit a responsibility to understand the genre’s evolution and to proudly credit its pioneering creators, solidifying their place in history.

Levan’s Lasting Legacy and the New Normal

With the 2020 pandemic still lingering, everything we’ve known about the DJ world has been turned on its head. What the future of DJ’ing will look and feel like in the months and years to come is anybody’s guess, this painful truth made more real by the numerous closures of venues faced with the impossible task of surviving this economic recession. Musicians and DJs have already begun to pivot in hopes of finding new, sustainable systems to forge ahead. 

 Uncertainty aside, the essence that Larry Levan embodied remains. He was by no means perfect, but it’s doubtful that his community was ever looking for perfection from him in the first place. What they wanted, and needed, he supplied with generosity – a love of the music and an endless focus to ensure that every person who walked through the Garage’s doors felt free and uplifted, and by the end of the night had had a damn good time. The lessons that Levan has left behind should inspire us all to strive for perfection, and to push the limits of our creativity each and every time we step foot behind the decks. 

 Levan died much too soon, as superstars are prone to do, succumbing to a dogged drug addiction that took his life when he was only 38 years old. But what a tremendous life to have led. Frankie Knuckles once shared that when it came time to DJ, Larry was the idol he turned to for inspiration. Knuckles wasn’t alone in this; Larry’s life work continues to inspire generations of DJ’s - whether they know his name or not. In truth, no matter how dance culture will evolve in the face of the new normal, the groundwork of Larry Levan’s genius will survive the test of time. 

Big Mama Thornton: Queen of Rock and Roll

by Francesca Harding

 It’s always amazed me how easily history can be suppressed. More often than we’d like, facts are watered down, twisted into unrecognizable versions. It’s tragic really, that we can spend days, even years in a particular city, walking down its streets, jogging around its lakes and partying in its bars never knowing that the very corners we’re standing on were places where entire movements were birthed – history quite literally at our fingertips without us having the slightest clue. This happens time and again in the art space: innovators whose talents and hard work have had an immeasurable impact on the cultural landscape yet are somehow forgotten. 

Such is the case with Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, a singer-songwriter whose musical style had tremendous influence on the blues, R&B and most poignantly on rock and roll. I myself didn’t come across her work until about six or seven years ago, which is a really embarrassing admission. But doing a deep dive into the specifics of Willie Mae’s life proved more difficult than I had anticipated. Relatively speaking, there isn’t a ton of information available about her. By most accounts, she was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1926. She had at least four siblings (though some sources place the count closer to seven) and grew up in the church, her father a minister and her mother a singer in the church’s choir. As the story goes, she was forced to get a job at a local tavern when her mom passed away. One evening, the singer who was scheduled to perform at the venue was too drunk to take the stage. Despite a lack of formal training and singing experience, a 14-year-old Willie Mae volunteered to perform in her place and the rest is history, albeit a complicated one filled with stunted success and unjust losses. It is also a history that is in danger of being forgotten all together. 

Willie Mae would go on to have a career that spanned over four decades, propelled by the deep, gritty texture of her vocals – grit that undoubtedly reflected her life’s hardships. It’s no wonder that she took on the stage name “Big Mama” Thornton. She toured the chitlin circuit throughout the 1940s, a string of performance venues in the Midwest and the South that provided a space for Black performers to play in a then-deeply segregated U.S. but would eventually find herself wowing audiences across the nation, from New York to Los Angeles. Settling in Houston in the late 40s, she continued her influence on the music scene by helping to shape the sound and style of “Texas-blues”, an evolving blues sub-genre known to incorporate swing and big band elements. 

It was in 1952 when she decisively shaped history. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had written what we now know as the hit-record Hound Dog with her in mind and approached her to record the track. It’s worth mentioning here that Leiber and Stoller tried to give her direction on how to sing the lyrics but she quickly shut that down, knowing full well how to breathe heart and soul into the words on that page. The record came to life, fashioned in her rough yet glorious likeness in just one take and in less than 20 minutes. But when we talk about loss and the all-too-common practice of casting pioneers to the wayside, this is a prime example. The record sold 2 million copies and held the number one spot on the R&B charts for seven weeks. Big Mama Thornton’s compensation? A mere $500. Three years later, a 21-year old Elvis Presley would re-record the song. Young, white and digestible to the masses, mainstream audiences couldn’t get enough of the more watered-down version, which would go on to spend 11 weeks at the top of the pop charts, sell 11 million copies globally and cement Elvis’ place for many as the “king of rock and roll”. In the documentary Gunsmoke Blues, Big Mama Thornton recounts her team’s attempts to get her and Elvis on the same bill to perform Hound Dog together. Unsurprisingly, Elvis’ camp refused. In the end, Hound Dog made him an incredibly wealthy man; Big Mama Thornton would, years later, die in relative obscurity and poverty at a boarding shelter in Los Angeles.

It’s impossible to discuss Big Mama Thornton’s life without commenting on the likes of Elvis who first mimicked and then profited greatly from Black culture at the detriment of those who created the music and art in the first place. That said, to solely view her life from the vantage point of a system that crippled her success on account of her race and gender would be a further injustice to her legacy. She was so much more than a footstool for unoriginal artists that many attempted to reduce her to. She was a powerhouse of a woman, confident in her sound, her size, her sexuality. While the stories about her life run scarce, by every account she was tough as nails and wildly talented. Her unique sound fueled the foundation that early rock and roll was built upon and her voice birthed generations of singers that would follow. And there have been artists who have sited her impact on their careers, the most prominent being Janis Joplin, whose cover of Big Mama Thornton’s Ball and Chain would serve as Joplin’s break out record. Simply put, had there never been a Big Mama Thornton, rock and roll as we know it would look and feel much differently. 

If you want to see Big Mama Thornton’s regality and splendor on full display, watch any archival footage of her performing live, especially before the 1980’s when her health began to visibly deteriorate. In these old clips you’ll see a colossal woman, standing just as tall and sometimes towering over the men she shares the stage with, her 6-foot frame likely draped in a pin-striped men’s suit that was her signature attire while performing. She’ll look beautiful, her high cheekbones and deep-set eyes lending itself to a face full of expression. And when she sings, it’s as if her voice reaches back to some mythical reservoir of communal grief; every hoop, howl and growl a different color blending together in a painstaking portrayal of universal suffering. Big Mama Thornton knew our pain, understood us every time we faltered, extended a hand for every time the world dealt us a blow that would have us question our worth and our beauty. Big Mama Thornton sang our heartbreak and our resilience. 

I’ve thought about her often over the past six years since I’ve gotten to know more about her through song and story. And I wonder about past traumas, how to heal the injustices of the past, if it’s even possible to do so and if it is, what that might look like. Her story is so common, a brilliant artist who was never given her just due while alive, which no doubt contributed to an abuse of alcohol that would lead to her death in 1984. She was deserving of all of the accolades that were bestowed upon Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lewis but remained under-appreciated. What a travesty that her potential wasn’t truly nurtured or celebrated, through no fault of her own. Even more egregious is that Big Mama Thornton’s name is often left out of modern conversations discussing the inception of rock and roll. Is it enough to remember her? To listen to her music and to find joy in the blues she sang with such familiarity? 

What is clear is the need to understand historical context as it relates to music’s evolution. If we take stock of the current musical landscape, we should know that we didn’t get here by happenstance. More specifically, rock and roll isn’t a genre that was created out of thin air and it certainly didn’t get its start from a young white dude wildly swinging his hips and flapping his arms around on a Memphis stage. Rock and roll was born out of the talents and pain of Black musicians, many whose names we’ll never know. 

But we know of Big Mama Thornton, the howling, tough-as-nails singer from southern Alabama. Big Mama Thornton is the queen of rock and roll – a title she is just as deserving to carry as any. 

Press play (below) to hear a Big Mama Thornton tribute mix.

Sam Cooke Changed the World: Revisiting One Man’s Influence on Music and Culture, Five Decades Later

by Francesca Harding

If we’re talking all-around, best to ever do it, Sam Cooke had better land somewhere near the top of your list. 

I discovered Sam’s G.O.A.T. status as a teenager. I had been sifting through used vinyl at my local Goodwill store, where I came across his greatest hits record ‑- the one with the yellow background, block letters boasting only a fraction of his numerous hits and Sam flashing that signature, easy smile. Months prior I had finally saved enough to get my hands on a record-player and every weekend afterwards was spent at thrift stores around town in search of vinyl gold.  I remember purchasing the album for less than $10 and damn near sprinting home to give it a listen. 

After dropping the needle on the record, it didn’t take much time to realize that the soundtrack of Sam’s catalogue had accompanied some of my life’s most pivotal moments: when I was no more than 7 and my mother corralled my two sisters and I into our living room to teach us to cha-cha, we did it to the Sam Cooke song of the same name; during my short stint learning the upright bass as a 10thgrader, playing Summertime was my song of choice; when my best friend Herick died suddenly during my first year away at college, playing Bring It On Home over and over was one of the few things to soothe my bruised heart. Years later while Djing a 2008 presidential election party, I played A Change is Gonna Come when Obama clinched the win. As absurd as it may now sound, in that moment -- with Sam’s voice prophesying a time in the future where equality might be realized -- we all secretly hoped that the world he’d envisioned had finally arrived, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. 

But 12 years seems like a lifetime ago and the notion that the world was attempting to redeem itself of the sin of treating folk with melanin as subhuman was an illusion, the picture Sam painted of a changed, more compassionate world as far away as ever. Still, pressing play on any Sam Cooke record, even today, is therapeutic. His voice remains the sweetest, most soothing sound I’ve ever heard, his message of empowerment and political advancement still just as timely. 

This man, credited with the creation of ‘soul music’ as we know it, who broke barriers with the start of SAR Records along with a publishing imprint (one of the first Black men to achieve this feat); who grew an Afro in defiance of Western standards and boycotted concerts with segregated audiences; who in his early days as a gospel singer managed to popularize the genre among young people; who was the first Black, solo artist to top the Billboard pop chart landing 29 Top 40 hits in nine years; who paved the way for the likes of Aretha, Al, Curtis and Marvin; this man -- our first, Black, crossover superstar who achieved all of this and more in just thirty-three years, is the prototype for unapologetically taking space and demanding to live on one’s own terms. Fifty-five years after his untimely death and Sam’s life serves as a blueprint for navigating today’s waters. 

Deciding which artist gets to occupy G.O.A.T. status can be a haphazard exercise, dependent on the perspective of a subjective listener using some ethereal measuring stick to quantify and qualify greatness. As futile as this exercise may be, it is still an irresistible one. If you have me tell it, timelessness is the most important identifier and the eternality of Sam’s messaging naturally posits him as frontrunner. He sang of love, pain and injustice. In a vocal style that wasn’t particularly flashy or exaggerated, he sang us towards resilience and healing. Songs like Good News, Goin’ Home, and That’s Where It’s At urge us to improve our present circumstances while reminding us to consider what might exist beyond this world once we’re gone. With a knack for arrangement, unmatched vocal dexterity and the ability to sound like he was always singing straight from the depths of his soul, Sam could encapsulate the most complex of subjects into chewable bites, decidedly taking us wherever he intended us to journey to.  

It’s on the album, “Ain’t that Good News” where Sam sings what I believe to be the most memorable lyric of his career:

Because where there’s light, there’s hope.

And really, isn’t this what we want music to do? To make us hopeful, to inspire us and to give us peace during times of uncertainty? Quite literally, we need music to keep us sane. And if there is any artist equipped with an archive diverse enough in both sound and emotion to do just that, it’s Sam. I encourage anyone in search of solace or stimulation or both to hit play on any Sam Cooke record, sing every lyric at the top of their lungs, and find calm between every measure.  

*Press play (below) to hear an hour-long mix of some of my favorite Sam Cooke tunes.