Acceptable...but lacking.

Sure, it covers a lot of the big hits. However, it utterly pales in comparison to the RCA disc "The Man And His Music"...which is horribly out of print. I picked it up in 1996 or so. Best fifteen bucks I ever spent.



You can still pick it up used here or on ebay, but you'll pay for the priviledge, but its still well worth the money. Pass this by and get the real deal. A Sam Cooke disc without 'Another Saturday Night' and 'A Change Gonna Come' isn't much of a Sam Cooke disc.

Four #1 R&B hits and One #1 Pop Hit In His Short Career

1957 was a great year as three of the greatest singers debuted on the chart that year. Johnny Mathis with "Chances Are', Bobby Bland with "Farther Up The Road", and Sam Cooke with "You Send Me". Of the three, Sam's "You Send Me" was the only one to go all the way to #1 on both the pop and r&b charts.Mathis's "Chances Are" did hit #1 pop but only reached #12 r&b.Both songs were million sellers that year as well.Bobby "Blue" Bland, who was the first blues man to hit the top 20 on the pop charts in 1964 with the classic "Aint Nothin You Can Do", did well with his first national charter in 1957 with "Farther Up The Road", the song was #1 on the r&b chart for 2 weeks and even made it to #43 on the pop charts that year.Sam Cooke had more than one #1 hit.Sam hit the #1 spot a total of 4 times on the r&b chart. Starting in 1957 " You Send Me" was #1 for 6 weeks, then in the latter part of 1957 he hit #1 again with "I'll Come Running Back To You", it was #1 for 1 week on the r&b chart. Sam's next number one didn't come until 1962's "Twistin'The Night Away", this swingin classic was #1 for 3 weeks and later that same year he hit #1 again with "Another Saturday Night", it was #1 for 1 week. All total, Sam had 19 top 10 r&b hits between 1957 and 1965 ( and this includes the #1 charters) and he scored 5 top 10's on the pop charts between those same years and a total of 29 top 40 hits in his tragically shortened career.He was the greatest and we sure could use him around today. I miss him.

Omits His Greatest Hit Of All

Should have been five stars, but omission of "A Change Is Gonna Come" (Rolling Stone recently ranked it the #12 song of all time) is indefensible.