I
finally finished reading Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
by Peter Guralnick. It was a very
interesting read. I have always been a
fan of Sam Cooke, but I didn't know all that much about his personal life,
other than that he died under shady circumstances. The book painted a conflicting picture of
Cooke. Obviously, he was a great talent,
and he was also a voracious reader, a civil rights campaigner, and very
generous to his friends and family. On
the other hand, he was a mysterious, quick-tempered philanderer, who seemed to
have gotten married only for the sake of getting married to the woman with whom
he had a child, and he kept his thoughts and feelings close to the vest. As for the subject of his death, I was hoping
to get a clearer picture of what really happened, but after reading the book, I
don't think that is really possible.
What we know is that, after a night of drinking, he picked up a girl
(who turned out to be a prostitute and a swindler) and took her to a motel. While he was in the bathroom, she left and
took his clothes (including thousands of dollars in his pockets that was never
recovered), except for his suit coat.
She went to a nearby pay phone and called the police, claiming Cooke kidnapped
her. Cooke got out of the bathroom and
was livid, so he went to the motel manager's office (wearing only his suit
coat), thinking the girl was going to be there.
Instead, the female motel manager was there. She and Cooke got into an argument about the
girl's whereabouts. The motel manager claimed
he attacked her. She shot him and killed
him. A coroner's jury didn't charge her
with anything, deciding that it was a justifiable homicide because she acted in
self-defense, although Cooke's lawyers were not given much of an opportunity to
cross-examine her or any other witnesses.
Of course, it was later determined that the woman who stole Cooke's
clothes had a history of taking men to hotels and stealing their clothes and
money while they were in the bathroom, and accounts of Cooke's body at his
funeral suggested a struggle greater than what the motel manager testified
about, which some have suggested means Cooke was set up to be robbed. A private investigator hired by Cooke's
manager and business partner stopped his investigation at the behest of Cooke's
widow. Thus, unfortunately, the book
didn't close any holes about Cooke's death, but that's not the author's fault,
since there does not appear to be anything out there to close those holes.
Books
read in 2013:
Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
by Peter Guralnick
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