At his 75th birthday, Sam Cooke still sends us

"Sam was like a magnet," the late Lou Rawls once said about his friend and fellow singer Sam Cooke. "Wherever he went ... the minute he walked into a room, you knew he was there. You always wanted to be around him."

Cooke, born 75 years ago this coming Sunday, has been gone for years. Lucky for us, then, that the essence of his personality — the cocky confidence, the bubbly joy, the charisma — lives on in his music. You just always want to be around it.

Cooke's deceptively simple songs and soaring voice made him a star twice over, in the gospel and pop worlds. The first single under his own name, "You Send Me," soared to No. 1, sold in the millions and still thrills half a century later. Many more followed: "Cupid," "Bring It On Home To Me," "Wonderful World," "Havin' A Party."

Cooke also was a successful businessman, a pioneer in an era when few musicians — especially African Americans — controlled their financial destinies. He had a huge influence on future soul singers. And he helped bring white and black together during the volatile civil-rights era, if only because both audiences loved him.

A sweeping new biography, "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke" (Little, Brown), by Peter Guralnick, details the singer's life in rich detail. It's an amazing story.

Samuel Cook (the "e" came later — the singer thought it added class) was born in Clarksdale, Miss., on Jan. 22, 1931, one of eight children born to the Rev. Charles Cook and his wife, Annie Mae.

The family relocated to Chicago when Sam was a toddler, landing smack in the middle of the burgeoning gospel movement. The '30s was the beginning of gospel's Golden Age, and Chicago was its heart.

Young Sam sang in his father's choir and a family quartet, but by 19 he was the lead singer in the Soul Stirrers. The thrillingly close, unaccompanied harmonies of this famous group regularly "wrecked the house," whipping audiences into rapturous ecstasy.

Women cried and fainted, strong men had to be carried out. And Cooke was their ace in the hole, blessed with songwriting talent, charismatic good looks and that honeyed voice.

Cooke became gospel's first teen idol. The Stirrers had been a top group, but with Cooke on board, young fans swarmed them. Founding Soul Stirrer Jesse Farley recalled, "In the old days, young people took seats six rows from the back, the old folks stayed up front. When Sam came on the scene, it reversed itself. The young people took over."

But Cooke was restless. Like Mahalia Jackson and many other gospeleers, he loved blues and jazz (listening to it in secret from his disapproving family). And the lush promises of a pop career were temptations too powerful to resist.

The devil's music

In the mid-1950s, he began recording secular music — a radical step, regarded with horror and disdain by most sacred performers. Pop, after all, was the devil's music; gospel virtuoso Shirley Caesar once declared, "The U.S.A. doesn't have enough money to make me sing rock 'n' roll!"

Cooke expected controversy, so his first solo single in 1956 was thinly disguised under the name "Dale Cooke." No one was fooled, but the gospel world was devastated. Rebert Harris, Cooke's mentor in the Soul Stirrers, commented, "It broke my heart when Sam went pop. He was so great and the church community loved him so much."

Cooke tried to compromise, continuing to appear occasionally with the Soul Stirrers. Gospel audiences never welcomed him back, but in the pop world he was a shooting star.

Cooke's success there altered the course of American music. Just think how different things would be if generations of gospel singers had not been inspired by Cooke to shift to pop; we'd be missing the contributions of (among others) Lou Rawls, Aretha Franklin, Dinah Washington, Johnny Adams, Little Richard, Bobby Womack and Dionne Warwick.

Cooke was a complex guy. He had a sober and dark side — quick-tempered, foul-mouthed, stoic in the face of his infant son's accidental drowning, passionate (if sometimes conflicted) about religion and civil rights.

In business and in the studio, he was a perfectionist who maintained a steely control. The dozen-plus takes needed to nail even an apparently transparent song like "Chain Gang" were typical. Cooke worked hard to make it seem effortless.

But he also liked his fun, and he absolutely loved the material perks of stardom (dig that white Cadillac!). And, though he was married with children, Cooke's enjoyment of female companionship never slackened — until it led to his death.

In December 1964, at a seedy L.A. motel, the singer drunkenly stormed the manager's office, wearing only a sports coat and shoes and looking for a woman he said had stolen his clothes and money.

Motel manager Bertha Franklin, thinking she was in danger, shot the singer in the chest. His last words? "Lady, you shot me."

It was a sad, abrupt end to a tumultuous but fruitful life. Sam Cooke's 75th birthday is on Sunday. I don't know about you, but — to borrow a song title — I'll be havin' a party.

Seattle writer Adam Woog is the author of many books for teens, including a history of gospel music. His column on crime and mystery fiction appears on the second Sunday of the month in The Seattle Times.