This is one of those albums that breaks through your stereotypes about musical genres. I discovered this album after listening to a radio interview with an author of a book on Sam Cooke. One Night Stand: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club was mentioned as being a recording of a classic 1963 live show of this early R&B singer. Now, I’m not much of a fan of Soul or R&B. Whatever had trickled down to me seemed over-produced and scrubbed clean of all the spontaneity that you would hope would accompany music borrowing Gospel-style singing (then, somewhat scandalously) and dealing with more worldly matters.
Aside from the historical importance of Cooke in the early development of Soul music, this is a recording that has aged amazingly well. Cooke sounds like a man who loves what he is doing. While the songwriting style is reminiscent of the early 60s, the performance is not. In this sense, the album reminds me of Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison, a live show that has also aged remarkably well itself.
The music itself is exuberant. In the opening song, “Feel It (Don’t Fight It),” Cooke comes off as something of a flirtatious bad boy. But his enthusiasm is so infectious that it’s hard not to imagine women swooning for him and men wanting to be him after seeing his shows. This is all the more reinforced after the convincing innocence of “Cupid,” in which Cooke contemplates his apparently unrequited love. Cooke is a player, but he’s so good at it, that you wind up cheering him on. Again, Cooke is such a performer that you believe him in each of these songs, whether he’s a scoundrel or someone hopelessly in love with a woman who has done him wrong (“Nothing Can Change This Love”). The album closer, “Having a Party”, makes you want to cheer for an encore.
Given how tightly focused this concert feels on the ups and downs of young love, it can be hard to keep in mind that he was killed a year later under somewhat mysterious circumstances or that his posthumously released “A Change is Gonna Come” might become an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement. One Night Stand is not that Sam Cooke. But the album is a still a classic in that it shows that live shows can sometimes bridge the felt distance between a performer and the audience, or listener at home.
