More than half a century after the legendary soul singer Sam Cooke recorded his live album at the Harlem Square Club in New York, a new Australian production pays homage to the King of Soul.
ARIA-award winning Gary Pinto’s tribute show charts Cooke’s journey from gospel singer to best selling pop artist to writer of the legendary activist anthem, A Change Is Gonna Come.
The show includes many of the 30 US Top 40 pop hits of Cooke’s career, including ‘You Send Me’, ‘Cupid’, ‘Chain Gang’, ‘Wonderful World’, ‘Another Saturday Night’ and ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’ as well as some lesser known B-sides and a rendition of ‘Stand By Me’ which, although was not written by Cooke, was based on a spiritual he had written.
This is very much Pinto’s own interpretation of the music, not an impersonation but an impassioned tribute. Pinto rose to fame in the 1990s as part of chart topping R&B band CDB, and his versatile voice suits the song style. He captures the religious soul of the gospel numbers with passion, perhaps due to his own religious conviction. The toe tapping feel of the pop numbers are well handled, and have the audience itching to get to their feet.
The staging is reminiscent of the famous Harlem Square Club in downtown New York where Cooke recorded a live album in 1963, featuring appropriately moody lighting if not the smoky atmosphere. The rawness of the New York gig is somewhat missing, though. The backing band, The Champions of Soul, who Pinto personally chose, only really come in to their own when they get the chance to play solos in the second half. At this point the show takes on more of the feel of a jazz club, but the sense of sorrow and struggle of what was arguably Cooke’s most important song, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, is absent.
Cooke wrote ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ in 1963; the same year Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I have a Dream’ speech. The song was penned partly in response to Cooke’s own experience of prejudice as a black man. It was a humble call to keep hope going in the dark days of the black Civil Rights movement, and has become an anthem of the oppressed worldwide. The Harlem Square Club recordings, which captured the pain of the era so well, are a gritty and raw reflection of those times. Too gritty and raw, in fact, for the record label executives of the time who blocked its release; the album was only released 20 years after Cooke’s death.
Pinto undoubtedly has a great voice and one which Cooke fans will appreciate, and the gospel is sung with conviction. The gravel of Cooke’s voice, and the roots it sprung from are not really represented, however. Pinto seems more comfortable when he is singing his tribute than presenting it, and the show also has little in the way of a script, so although we get a good sense of the music, we don’t get much of an impression of the man who created it.
The show premieres in Brisbane, before a national tour over the coming weeks.
4 stars: ★★★★
Songs and Times of Sam Cooke: A change is gonna come by Gary Pinto
Brisbane Powerhouse
31 January to 2 February 2019
Visit samcookesongsandtimes.com.au for tour dates and details.
