Sam Cooke

Photo credit wikipedia.org

Photo credit last.fm

Sam Cooke was born on January 22, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He began singing when he was nine years old in a children's group called The Singing Children.  As he grew older, he joined many other gospel groups until in 1956, he cut his first secular pop single "Lovable." He took off in the pop world and was quickly at the top of the Billboard R&B chart. One of his most famous songs was A Change is Gonna Come. He had many hardships in his life, but the worst was the when, in 1963, his 18-month-old son Vincent accidentally drowned. This put him in a dark depression, which caused him to turn to alcoholism and drugs to take away the pain. One night on December 11, 1963, he was in a drunken or high craze at a motel in Los Angeles, and broke into the manager's office, saying he was looking for a woman who had come with him. She pulled out a gun, and in her fear, shot him in the torso, and he ran at her saying, "Lady, you shot me!" and she hit him in the head with a broomstick and shot him two more times until he died.
Sam Cooke was a brilliant artist, and I would love to be able to sing his songs one day.
Arias