Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick
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Book Reviews of Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Book Review: A must-read for 1950s-60s Music Fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Sam Cooke's life -- his amazing rise and tragic death -- is wonderfully told in Peter Guralnick's "Dream Boogie." The intensely researched book does a wonderful job of putting Sam's life in context. While there was too much detail on Sam's early days as a gospel singer for my taste, I admire the author's dedication to the details. I think the book really picks up when Sam moves to LA and tries to become a pop star. From there, his life and the entertainment factor of the book takes flight. Above all -- read it to the end, and then you'll get the reward of seeing how the tragedy unfolds. You'll close the book being supremely glad you read it. So go buy it!Book Review: Steer clear of this one.
Summary: 1 Stars
When I had first heard of Dream Boogie, a 700-page biography of the late Sam Cooke, I was ecstatic. Up until that point, I had only known of one other biography of Sam Cooke - You Send Me, which I haven't gotten around to reading. I eagerly bought a copy of the book from my local Barnes & Noble, expecting an enormous gem of truth about Sam, that would prove to be both through and entertaining. For readers of this review, there is now a third Sam Cooke biography, written by Erik Greene entitled: "Our Uncle Sam". Who is Erik Greene, you may ask? He's Sam's great nephew.
But let us return to Dream Boogie. Peter Guralnick is known as the definitive biographer of Sam Cooke, having written liner notes for digitally-remastered CDs and much more. Peter Guralnick worked on writing and gathering the materials for Dream Boogie for more than fifteen years. Therefore, one might well assume that he would write an enormous gem of truth that proved to be both through and entertaining.
Let us begin with the good points of this 700-page biography. Peter Guralnick chose to interview a large portion of the Sam Cooke family, something Daniel Wolff did not do. Naturally, Erik Greene did. Guralnick includes commentary from his father, his brothers, his sisters, his business associates, his close friends, and most importantly, his widow. Barbara Cooke, ever since the death of her husband, has never conducted any interviews regarding Sam for the past forty years. Naturally, she provides a unique but also a brutally honest commentary regarding her life and Sam's. However, Guralnick does not deviate from his course - he is still extremely through (to say the least) in the actual history of Sam's life. He doesn't miss a single thing.
In my opinion, there is a flaw to this. In the art of writing, if you're too through with a subject, you will bog the reader down immensely. Guralnick gets an A+ on this one. Throughout the 700-page biography, Guralnick succeeds in providing the reader with so very much information that is indeed interesting, but not important to the overall history of Sam. He also succeeds in doing the exact opposite over the more important and memorable aspects of Sam's life. In the 1950s, he stood up against the police in Memphis after the police told him to push the car to the side of the road. Specifically, he told him: "Sir, my name is Sam Cooke. If you haven't heard of me, your wife knows me. When you get home tonight, you ask your wife if she knows Sam Cooke. I don't push no car. This is my car, my brother ran out of gas. I'm not pushing it. You want to put a ticket on it, put a ticket on it. But I don't push no car. Not mine, not yours, not nobody's elses. I'm not a pusher. I'm a singer." Sam then proceeded to sit back in his car, his brother came with the gas, and they left. The police left them alone.
Depending upon your interpretation, this could be seen as one of the first steps for Sam regarding the Civil Rights Movement, which led to his greatest composition, "A Change Is Gonna Come", an African-American response to Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind". This also leads to another flaw in Guralnick's work, a complete lie over an important television appearance of Sam. Daniel Wolff also makes the same mistake. In February of 1964, Sam appeared on The Tonight Show and it's known that he sang "Basin Street Blues" as the performance still survives. However, according to both Guralnick and Wolff, Sam also sang "A Change Is Gonna Come" on the same show. I'm not sure what Wolff does in an attempt to prove this, but Guralnick uses a cue sheet with a similar title to "A Change Is Gonna Come" to prove that Sam did indeed sing the song.
I recently contacted a Carson archivist, and Sam never sung the song. It took me a day to figure it out. Guralnick worked on this book for more than fifteen years. If he went through such work to that the song was planned, why wouldn't he check the log book of the episode to see if Sam sung the song to be completely sure? During the days of The Tonight Show, some guests would exceed the length of time they occupied and therefore, some guests would never make it onto the show.
Perhaps that's not a very big flaw in the biography of Sam; it's only a single event. Consider this. On the eighth page of the biography, there is a picture with the caption "A very young Sam Cooke". The eighth page and Guralnick makes a major mistake. It's not Sam. It's his brother, L.C. Three months after the book was released, the mistake was corrected. If Guralnick cannot properly identify a photo of the person he's writing about, what other mistakes is he prone to make in the book?
Perhaps the biggest mistake Guralnick makes is stating that the official version of events concerning Sam's death was how it went down. As I read the chapter regarding Sam's death, I seriously considered whether or not Guralnick was employed by Allen Klein, whom Sam was planning to fire. Who was Allen Klein? I don't know too much about him myself, but I do know that he swindled the Cooke family out of the royalties of Sam's catalog with help from one of Sam's daughters and his widow. I do know that he also conned The Beatles as well as The Rolling Stones. That's about it. Yet, he uses Allen Klein's and Barbara Cooke's commentary exclusively. If you do a Google search about the death of Sam, you'll find an analysis of the "official" version of events that pokes five large gaping holes into the official version of events. In addition, the coroner's inquest was a complete joke and contradicted itself numerous times. Daniel Wolff didn't believe the official version of events, Sam's fans don't believe the official version of events, and Sam's family doesn't believe the official version of events. Pretty much no one believes the official version of events other than Guralnick.
I'm not sure what Wolff does to debate what really happened that night, but Erik Greene includes a report in his book that is extremely different from the official version of events. Well, you may say that he would naturally do that, considering Sam was a member of his family. Instead of using the "facts" from the coroner's inquest and related events, Greene chooses to tackle the mystery of Sam's death via a pathology report. Scientifically speaking, I believe that it's quite accurate.
Here's the rather discerning part. Peter Guralnick is known as the definitive biographer of Sam Cooke. But of course, no biography doesn't have its flaws. However, keep in mind that I do not cite all the mistakes made in Dream Boogie. I can probably cite four or five more off the top of my head. But I think I've trashed the book enough. What's the worst part? The flaws in Dream Boogie, known as the Sam Cooke Bible, could be perhaps passed off as truth by a less-than-familiar (historically speaking) Sam Cooke fan, and are blatantly obvious to the die-hard fans of Sam Cooke.
If you want a good biography of Sam that is entertaining, through, and truthful, either check out Wolff's biography or Greene's biography, which I highly recommend, which was by a member of the family of Sam Cooke.
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