Several years ago I spent a good part of an evening trying to find Sam Cooke videos. They didn’t exist, at least not on youtube, except for music only videos, which are not allowed on this feature. I think I settled for Fats Domino, but I noted on the post that I had been frustrated on the Cooke front.
Much to my surprise I got a comment from Sam Cooke’s nephew, who wrote that there was some sort of legal dispute that was preventing videos from being circulated.
Cooke was one of the greatest. You have to wonder what he would have created had he been around during the creative ferment of the late 60s.
Anyway, I have periodically checked back and I now find that there are some actual videos on-line. I’m not particularly crazy about this one, but it’s the best of what I could find. From the Ed Sullivan show:
There are extensive notes about this video on the youtube site from which I got it. He was booked to sing the song on the November 3, 1957 Ed Sullivan Show, but Sullivan didn’t get to him until the last minute, and the producer cut away for Ronald Reagan and The General Electric Theater within moments of the start of the song. Remember, the show was live.
Sullivan got tons of mail, to which he alludes between the two songs. This video is from Cooke’s return trip when Sullivan made up for the slight.
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