Sam Cooke - Ain't That Good News

Ain't That Good News finds Sam Cooke at full stretch, swinging from party-starting soul to the song that became his signature, pressed here on 180-gram vinyl.

Released in 1964, it was his last studio album issued in his lifetime, recorded at RCA's Hollywood studio with producers Hugo & Luigi and arranger René Hall shaping the lusher ballads. Cooke had just begun a new RCA contract and was writing with fresh urgency, and you can hear him pushing at the edges of what a pop-soul record could hold.

Side one is pure good-time Cooke: the gospel-charged title track, the breezy 'Another Saturday Night' and the easy-rolling 'Good Times', all carried by that honeyed, effortless tenor. Then side two opens with 'A Change Is Gonna Come', a sweeping, string-laden plea for justice that grew from a modest hit into one of the defining songs of the civil rights era. Elsewhere he drifts between country, folk and pop standards with a crooner's polish.

Cooke died later that year, aged just 33, which lends the record a deep poignancy. It's the sound of a great artist at the height of his powers, and a cornerstone of any soul collection. Few albums capture the bridge between gospel-rooted pop and the protest soul of the later 1960s so vividly.