1 of 1- johnnyaa
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Offline - From: Elon, NC
- Registered: December 31, 2018
- Posts: 17
The Two Deaths Of Sam Cooke
I watched this documentary on NetFlix yesterday and had a hard time with the idea being presented that Cooke's death was a conspiracy by federal authorities. His association with and vocal support of civil rights advocates is suggested as a reason. My feeling is that if someone wanted to knock-off Sam it would have been a lot easier to do it without creating a convoluted scenario of him picking up a prostitute and attacking a motel manager. Your thoughts?
For anyone not familiar with the story here's a good link.
- gopher
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- From: charleston, west virginia usa
- Registered: February 8, 2019
- Posts: 380
Re: The Two Deaths Of Sam Cooke
i read peter guralnick's very comprehensive bio some years back. in it, he runs down several theories but in the end pretty much concluded that nobody but sam knows why he ran into the motel lobby, or why he was shot (and, if i recall correctly, guarlnick also suggested that cooke may have been so out of it that perhaps he didn't even know where he was).
my thoughts are that maybe you could conspire to get sam cooke naked, but no way you could conspire to get him into that lobby to be shot.
well, you could come up with a big conspiracy theory about how the accepted events didn't happen, the motel was paid off to tell the story, etc... but that sounds more like internet hogwash than anything which could really be plausible to me.
Last edited by gopher (March 3, 2019 12:43 pm)
- memphis boy
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Re: The Two Deaths Of Sam Cooke
I tend to agree Goph. It was a crazy time back then and the rockers were on the edge. There's no telling what happened. They definitely enforced the parents fear of RnR because they did play the part so well. That's the devil's music boy!
- GrimsbyFan
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- Posts: 219
Re: The Two Deaths Of Sam Cooke
There have been a number of situations like this in rock and roll lore. Case in point: Bobby Fuller
- Flo
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- From: Coshocton, OH
- Registered: December 30, 2018
- Posts: 158
Re: The Two Deaths Of Sam Cooke
I recently re-read Guralnick's book, and the two things I took away from it were 1) what an absolute jerk Cooke was - he never had any consideration for anyone but himself, and because everyone around him was so charmed and smitten by him, they let him get away with it. and 2) how incredibly phony the whole gospel music scene of the time was. I never took seriously any conspiracy when it happened, and still don't. On the other hand, there could have been any number of people out there that he crossed that would have been more than happy to take a shot at him. I don't think they did, though, it probably happened just the way they say it did. As for the suggestion that he was too out of it to even know where he was, that was probably true.