Tapping Into the Gospel Side of the Legendary Sam Cooke

The latest Soul Stirrers retrospective CD from Specialty Records begins with the first single the gospel group released after future pop star Sam Cooke joined it in 1951.

According to the album’s liner notes by Lee Hildebrand and Opal Nations, Cooke’s arrival in the group wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm by Specialty owner Art Rupe.

The label already had one of the nation’s leading gospel groups in the Pilgrim Travelers and it signed the Soul Stirrers at the suggestion of the Travelers’ J. W. Alexander.

One lure of the Stirrers was R. H. Harris, one of gospel’s most influential and acclaimed singers at the time. But Harris suddenly left the group after just two Specialty recording sessions, leaving the Stirrers to bring in Cooke, just 20, to replace him.

“I don’t want this kid,” Rupe reportedly complained. “I’ve got a contract on Harris.”

It didn’t take long, however, for Rupe to realize that the group had found someone special in Cooke.

“Jesus Gave Me Water,” the first Stirrers single with Cooke, became a gospel hit, and Cooke’s youthful good looks added to the Stirrers’ drawing power.

“Unlike Harris, a balding man in his late 30s at the time of his retirement from the Soul Stirrers, Cooke had a boyish handsomeness that instantly appealed to younger members of the audience, especially the women,” according to the album’s liner notes.

As Stirrers bass singer J. J. Farley once remarked, “In the old days, young people took seats six rows from the back; the old folks stayed up front. When Sam came on the scene, it reversed itself. The young people took over.”

Because of Cooke’s obvious star quality, there were attempts as early as 1955 by record labels to sign him as a secular artist, but it wasn’t until 1957 that Cooke made the transition. His future was assured that year when “You Send Me” went to No. 1 on the pop and R&B; charts. Among Cooke’s other Top 20 pop hits: “Bring It on Home to Me,” “Another Saturday Night” and “Shake.”

You don’t hear that secular side of Cooke in these early gospel recordings, including eight previously unreleased alternative tracks. But there is in Cooke’s voice a warmth and youthful desire that is inviting indeed.

Tragically, Cooke--who influenced a legion of soul singers, including Otis Redding and Al Green--was shot to death under somewhat mysterious circumstances in a Los Angeles motel in 1964.

The Stirrers’ “Jesus Gave Me Water” album is one of five new releases in Specialty’s “Legends of Gospel” series. The others are the Pilgrim Travelers’ “Walking Rhythm” (which contains the group’s own, earlier version of “Jesus Gave Me Water”), Brother Joe May’s “Thunderbolt of the Middle West,” the Detroiters/ Golden Echoes’ “Old Time Religion” and the Meditation Singers” “Good News.”