A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

"A Change is Gonna Come" was a 1964 single for Sam Cooke, written and recorded first in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after his death in 1964.  This song became unofficially a Civil Rights protest song recorded again and again by master singer, usually male, master singer--Al Green, Bobby Womack, Luther Vandross, Terence Trent Darby.  On the version included in the packet for the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, it is sung by Aretha Franklin to her own piano accompaniment in 1967.  According to Wikipedia, Cooke was moved by Bob Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind" in 1963, which was also a song about racism.  After speaking with sit=in demonstrators in Durham North Carolina following a concert, Cooke returned to his tour bus and wrote the first draft. Cooke's 18 month old son, Vincent, had also died by an accidental drowning in June of that year.  In the same year when Cooke and the band had tried to register at a "whites only" motel in Shreveport, Louisiana, they were arrrested for disturbing the peace.

A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

The young and stylish Aretha.  Nobody like her ever.

"A Change is Gonna Come" was a 1964 single written and first recorded in 1963 and released by RCA Victor shortly after Cooke's death in 1964.  The song came to be emblematic of the sixties Civil Rights Movement with its inflections of protest, utopian aspirations for freedom and soulfulness, as well as its blues and gospel blend. Recently learned how to sing this and accompany myself on the piano, albeit in a very rudimentary way. My piano voice teacher Jana Jillo and her husband guitarist Tony say that it feels like a lament, which also seems right. So many different kinds of ancestral sadness.

They say Cooke was moved to write it by two incidents.  The first was the death of his 18 month old son Vincent who was accidentally drowned in June of that year.  The second incident was when Cooke and his band were arrested for disturbing the peace for trying to register at a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana.  The change that he predicted was presumably relates to the loosening of racial segregation and hatred, which he would not live to see. Meanwhile everything continues to circle back as well as I am now in the South of France at the age of 66, 57 years after my first visit, and the French don't look anywhere nearly as happy to see me as they were in 1961when I was 9 and they were flabbergasted by international headlines concerning Civil Rights violence.

Aretha Franklin did a crucial recording of this song as well, accompanied on piano by herself,  mourning the premature death of her dear friend and musical mentor.  Otis Redding, whose death occured prematurely as well, also did an important recording of the song in 1965.

Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls - Bring It On Home To Me 1962

"Cooke was a ground breaking black music capitalist. He owned his own record label (SAR/Derby), music publishing company (Kags Music), and management firm with offices in the Warner Brothers Building in Hollywood. His influences can be heard in the work of artists as varied as Michael Jackson and the Heptones, but is most profoundly felt in the singing of Otis Redding, Rod Stewart, and Al Green. The 1994 compilation Sam Cooke's SAR Records Story 1959-1964 suggests that his impact as a producer, though less widely recognized, was no less important.

Sam Cooke was a true superstar in his lifetime. After his death [in 1964], his legend became even larger. His influence can be heard in the precise phrasing of Smokey Robinson, in the conscientious songwriting of Marvin Gaye, in the raw emotion of Lou Rawls and in Aretha Franklin's controlled passion." Ref. History of Rock

Sam Cooke's last composition, A Change is Gonna Come, a protest song and his response to the 1960's Civil Rights Struggle, was posthumously released and is considered to be his greatest hit.