Sam Cooke "Ain't That Good News" [1964]

Sam Cooke's last studio recording put together before he was beaten and shot to death without any pants on, "Ain't That Good News" smacks of incredible irony to everyone who wasn't a racist who worked for the FBI in 1964. But it's also ironic from a music critique standpoint: it marks the time when Cooke clearly displayed he was past his prime -- Smokey Robinson had by then already picked up the ball Cooke had fumbled. The nodules on his vocal chords had obviously progressed while his simpleton writing and lyrical stylings had obviously not. Further, all those cheesy Ray Charles horn charts were a step backwards, not forwards; just because Elvis had been hijacked by Colonel Tom and bound to the Paramount Studios lot doesn't mean Cooke shouldn't have known the electric guitars were coming anyway. I mean, even Berry Gordy could figure that one out. So Sam Cooke wrote and recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come" -- but in what practical way was he able to implement this, either professionally or personally? Well, he wasn't -- maybe that's the real tragedy here. He sounds tired on this track, like he'd been running around hotels with his dick swinging free for far too long. OK, that's really not fair -- that chick stole his clothes; but what exactly excuses the use of Lawrence Welk's orchestra to cheapen all of Cooke's ballads and decorate them like grotesquely out-of-date birthday cakes? If this was Cooke's way of making peace with his legions of haters, it clearly didn't work.