The Best of Sam Cooke

Shhhhhh. The King of Soul is singing. We aren't going to go into any of the circumstances of his death, because Bertha Franklin very much did shoot and kill him, just like Claudine Longet. The sticking point in this case is that the question boiled down to whether or not she was afraid for her life, and there was no plausible evidence to the contrary, unreliable witnesses with questionable occupations and subsequently damning circumstantial evidence or no.

Ok, i like conspiracies as much as anyone, so my theory is that he was indeed flashing cash at the restaurant and that Carr and Boyer had the typical hotel owner/call girl arrangement. Franklin didn't really know anything, and night shift motel work is pretty sketchy on the best day in the history of motels. I don't believe it was premeditated, so we just have to say yeah i guess i believe she was scared shitless. She only shot him thrice (probably 'cause the first shot rendered her deaf and even more scared, unless it was a Derringer, Nelson Muntz assures me those bullets are powerful weak even though they aren't) and the mop handle beating afterward is completely undocumented in terms of severity. I can't really fault her for leaving LA afterward either (nobody likes LA), so there we are. Not nice, but legally probably the appropriate judgement. That's just a theory, but she hasn't killed anybody since then, so again there we are.

Man he really was an extraordinary singer, and as far as best of albums go this is exactly what they were designed for. Great songs from across his entire short career, brought to you by Hugo and Luigi on behalf of RCA Victor. If i have any criticism, it's that creating your stage name by just adding an "e" at the end is pretty lazy and uncreative. Luckily he's awesome, so that's completely irrelevant. I love the late 50s/early 60s, especially this crossover period of Cooke, Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, and Etta James. James Brown is the Godfather of Soul, but Cooke is King in my book.

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