Exposing man behind voice
‘ReMastered’ series explores singer’s activism, entrepreneurial vision — and his powerful enemies
An engrossing documentary looks at the controversial life — and death — of R&B singer Sam Cooke, who died in 1964 at age 33.
R &B singer Sam Cooke came to a tragic end at the age of 33 in 1964, shot dead in a seedy Los Angeles motel, supposedly by the building’s manager who claimed she was acting in self-defense.
This wasn’t supposed to be how things turned out for the hit-maker behind such chart-topping tracks as “You Send Me,” “Chain Gang” and “Twistin’ the Night Away” but who was much more than just a popular voice on the radio, as distinctive and extraordinary a voice as it was. The engrossing “The Two Killings of Sam Cooke,” the latest in this season’s eight-part Netflix series “ReMastered” about influential music figures, aims to expose the man behind the voice as well as shine a light on questions regarding his death.
After all, Cooke, in addition to his mainstream-ready image that earned him a substantial pop following, was also an entrepreneurial visionary — forming a black-owned record company where artists would get a bigger slice of the financial pie at a time when that was unusual — whose emerging political awareness saw him rubbing shoulders with Mu-
hammad Ali and Malcolm X. His ballad “A Change Is Gonna Come” became an anthem for the civil rights movement, its bittersweet longing echoing the burgeoning consciousness of the African-American community.
It’s for these reasons that some have scoffed at the official cause of death, claiming that Cooke had made a lot of enemies during his rise from a member of the gospel group The Soul Stirrers to a groundbreaking solo performer who angered the KKK when he appeared with host Dick Clark on an otherwise all-white lineup in Atlanta.
Members of the mob reportedly were not happy with his brush-off when they tried to muscle their way into his business activities, the music industry in general was uneasy with his politics, and he was planning to confront his manager (Allen Klein, who would go on to work with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) about being taken advantage of financially. On top of that, he may have been on the radar of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI because of his political affiliations. Cue the conspiracy theories.
Director Kelly Duane de la Vega does a good job of sorting through Cooke’s life, stitching together archival footage with interviews with those who knew or worked with him — including Quincy Jones, Smokey Robinson and Dionne Warwick among others — painting a picture of a man who wanted success on his own terms in both the white and black worlds, something fate ended up denying him.
But there’s no denying his epic talent and charisma, and if “The Two Killings of Sam Cooke,” whose title refers to his homicide and the murder of his broader musical crossover and sociopolitical dreams, can educate a younger generation of Cooke’s importance in the annals of popular music and convey that death — whatever the cause — took a talent far too soon, it has done its job.