In 2003 Sam Cooke “Portrait of A Legend” was released.
I was 9 years old.
It was around that time (give or take a few years) that I came upon the CD in our family computer room. It was my first exposure to his genius and story. His music is impossible not to love, and often hard to separate from his legacy and tragic death.
Something that struck me maybe the most of everything on the album as a child was the hidden track at the end; Sam Cooke’s 8 Bars of Soul.
In it he’s asked by an interviewer (the DJ Magnificent Montague I think) to hum 8 bars of what soul represents. He proceeds to hum one of the most heartbreaking, tender, beautiful, melodies of all time. Effortless yet immaculate.
It ends with an unsettling closing statement from the interviewer, saying, “Sam Cooke's yours; he'll never grow old.”
The duality of that line as a retrospective on his life in 2003, while also being an affirmation on his timelessness and importance when it was recorded 50 years earlier, baffled and depressed me as a kid. And kind of still does.
Thanks for listening,
Will