Sam Cooke - Live at The Harlem Square Club,1963

 

The elegant Sam Cooke was one of the most successful crossover R&B stars of the Sixties. On this January night in 1963, performing for a black audience in a packed Miami club, he let his raw, soulful side break free ("don't fight it," he tells the audience, "we're gonna feel it"). Cooke's connection with the rapturous crowd is electric, the band swings like crazy and his versions of classics like "Having A Party" and "Bring It On Home To Me" rock as hard anything else going at the time. RCA Records found the results a too intense for his pop image, and shelved the performance — when they did release a live album it was 1964's comparatively toned down At the Copa. The album was finally released 20 years later to critical acclaim. Jon Dolan

  Feel it - Chain Gang - Cupid - Medley -(It,s Allright - For A  Sentimental Reason)- Twisting The Night Awaw

Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 has generally been considered among the best live LPs ever released. In the year of its release (1985), it was ranked at number 11 on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll, as well as being named number 7 on NME's albums of the year. Steve Leggett for AllMusic feels that "Not only is this one of the greatest live soul albums ever released, it also reveals a rougher, rawer, and more immediate side to Sam Cooke that his singles only hinted at, good as they were [...] the crucial key is and was always Cooke's vocals, and while he was a marvelously smooth, versatile, and urbane singer on his official pop recordings, here he explodes into one of the finest sets of raw secular gospel ever captured on tape. It is essential listening in any version."

Somebody Have Mercy - Bring It On Home To Me - Nothing Can Change This Love -Having A Party  

"Cooke was elegance personified, but he works this Florida club until it's hotter than hell, while sounding like he never breaks a sweat [...] when the crowd sings along with him, it's magic," said Rolling Stone.

The band: Clifton White – guitar,Cornell Dupree – guitar.Jimmy Lewis – bass guitar.Albert "June" Gardner – drums.George Stubbs – piano,King Curtis – saxophone,Tate Houston – saxophone                                           

                                                    Sam Cooke – vocals                

Sam Cooke, artiestennaam van Samuel Cook, (Clarksdale (Mississippi), 22 januari 1930 – Los Angeles (Californië), 11 december 1964)