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Yes ladies and gentlemen this is a live album review. While it is true that for jazz these recordings are essential due to the largely improvisational nature of their craft, in terms of other genres the abundance of well-reviewed live albums used to make little sense. That was until I first listened Sam Cooke’s masterpiece Live at the Harlem Square Club.
In the 1950s and 60s recording artists such as Sam Cooke, as well as many others like Jerry Lee Lewis and Sarah Vaughan, were restrained by their record companies to release an album with the ultimate wide appeal. Thus it is only on their live albums that they are able to cut loose, reach their full creative potential and produce their best work.
If there is one thing that needs to be said about Sam Cooke, it is that this guy had charisma by the shed-load. If the recording is to be believed, as it should be, then he had this audience feeding out of the palm of his hand. When he says to scream and shout, by Jove do they scream and shout. When he says twist, you just know that the entire crowd is there in front of the stage twisting away. The second thing that needs to be said is that he is able to offer one hell of a show. He single-handedly raised the bar for all the live albums ever released, as well as those within the soul genre.
But what is it makes Live At Harlem Square Club such a classic? With many albums, Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band included, there is always one or more duff track which inevitably gets skipped. This is not the case on Sam Cooke's album, where each of the nine tracks makes for essential listening. If pressed to pick out the best tracks on this album, however, then the honourable mentions would have to go to ‘Cupid’ and ‘Chain Gang’. Yes, these tracks both appear very early on but they are definitely the best on here. ‘Chain Gang’ makes you want to get up and do dance like Johnny Bravo, whilst ‘Cupid’ is just one of those immortal songs meaning as much now as it did way back when.
Timelessness in an album is pretty much a rarity since every album has a telltale sign of the times, whether it be a musical style, a particularly used instrument or cultural references that have become lost in the quagmire of a shared consciousness, yet this album doesn’t have any of this. This might be down to the fact that a few years ago we had a 60s musical revival with Amy Winehouse, Christina Aguilera’s Back To Basics and Duffy all achieving widespread success. Thus such a soulful outing is not that much of an alien listen, but one to which we have become accustomed. These all tend, however, to have a better production value compared with those of the 60s, including Live At Harlem Square Club. So why doesn’t this factor date this album? Pure and simple, it’s a live album. The production values are pretty much the same as those of Bjork’s Live Box or Madonna’s many attempts (which ultimately proved she couldn’t sing live).
Thus Sam Cooke, likely through sheer work and some accidental factors, has given us an album of class, genius and timelessness of which all artists dream.
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