L.C. Cooke portrait by Paul Natkin

L.C. Cooke sits on a regal chair in the center of the pulpit of Christ Universal Temple church in Calumet Park, just south of Chicago. He is surrounded by an air of satisfaction.

There is light, but there are no shadows.

Cooke, 81, is the brother of  Sam Cooke, gospel icon and member of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

L.C. Cooke has released his first music in 50 years and he is here to share the good news.

“The Complete SAR Records Recordings” hit the streets a few weeks ago on ABKCO Records, the label of future Beatles manager Allen Klein. Fourteen  tracks were cut between 1960 and 1964 under the  supervision of Sam Cooke. The first ten tracks of the CD were planned for an L.C. Cooke solo album but the project was shelved after Sam  was murdered on Dec. 11, 1964 at the Motel Hacienda in Los Angeles. He was 33.

Until now, L.C.’s music has only been heard in snippets, on the 1994 “SAR Records Story 1959-65)” on ABKCO and with Clay Hammond, Willie Rogers and others on the 1990 P-Vine import “We Remember Sam Cooke.”

The “L.C.” in L.C. Cooke sometimes stands for “Loads of Charm.”

L.C. sounds a lot like Sam, except where Sam was a crooner, L.C. sings in more playful tones.

His sense of diction clearly comes from the pulpit and back in the day the purity of L.C.’s vocals were compared to Chicago jazz-soul singer Dinah Washington. Of particular note is the “session chatter” on “Gonna Have a Good Time” from the compilation. Sam tells L.C. to “remember our heritage” by pronouncing “before” and “fore.”

“That’s the only thing Sam ever told me,” L.C. says in a late August conversation at the church.  “I was saying bee-fore, which was the correct pronunciation.  But Sam wanted me to keep it black. “

“The Complete SAR Records Recordings” include Sam’s top of the line session players like drummer Earl Palmer, teenage organist Billy Preston and guitarist Bobby Womack. Sam Cooke wrote or co-wrote 12 of the 17 songs on the album.

A ringer is L.C. Cooke’s composition “Do You Wanna Dance (Yea Man)” recorded in March, 1965 at Universal Recording in Chicago. With an introduction reminiscent of the Isley Brothers “Shout,” L.C. takes call and response gospel to the dance floor. Background singers include two sisters of late Chicago soul singer Major Lance and David Cooke,  L.C.’s last surviving sibling.

If there’s Bob Dylan’s “Basement Tapes” there can be room for L.C. Cooke’s “Heaven Tapes.”

Cooke’s long time wife Marjorie Cook (Cook is the family birth name) is assistant minister of Christ Universal Temple.L.C. and Marjorie’s first date was to see Jackie Wilson at the Regal Theater in Chicago. L.C. is a long time member of the church. His face is as smooth as his inner soul. Over the last couple weeks he has been asking about my mother’s illness and he sends prayers her way. L.C. is a good man.

L.C. Cooke was his own singer before September, 1960 when Sam ushered him into United Recording studios in Hollywood, Ca. In 1959 L.C. was recording for the Checker imprint of Chess Records in Chicago and two of those tracks appear here: the L.C. Cooke compositions “If I Could Only Hear” and “I’m Falling,” a cresting, hand-clapping soul rave.

“We didn’t allow Leonard Chess in the studio,” Cooke says with a firm smile.  “As a matter of fact we put him out. He couldn’t tell me how to sing. Sam told me I should be with his label.” In addition, L.C. would own publishing rights at SAR.

Here is L.C.’s “Put Me Down Easy,” which combines the honey soaked vocals of the Cooke family with my love of Carolina Beach Music. There are two versions of the track on the new CD:

Sam Cooke formed SAR Records in 1959. He was the first African-American artist to own his own record company and publishing. SAR stood for founders Sam Cooke, Alex (as in his manager J.W. Alexander and Roy Crain, Cooke’s road manager and the founder of the Soul Stirrers. Cooke also signed artists like Bobby Womack and bluesman Johnnie Morisette (“The Singing Pimp”) to SAR.

“Sam wrote the songs for my personality,” Cooke says. ‘Take Me For What I Am.’ (a 1963 jubilee gospel-pop number that leads off the record)  ‘Put Me Down Easy’ (a swing tune cut in 1964)”

The dance track “The Wobble” is a fine companion piece to Sam Cooke’s 1962 hit “Twistin’ the Night Away.” The lush, looping strings and boastful lyrics of “The Lover” create more cheese than you would hear in a Sam Cooke song.

L.C. sang in a higher register than his older brother. He explains, “I had sense enough to know I couldn’t be Sam singing Sam. His wife could not tell me from Sam on the telephone because our voices were so much alike. I came up with my own thing. I sound like Sam, but I don’t sing like Sam.”

L.C. (which does not stand for anything) Cook was born Dec. 14, 1932 in Clarksdale, Ms. His family left Clarksdale when L.C. was two months old. “My mother (Annie Mae) brought all of us on the Greyhound bus,” he says. “My father (Charles Cook, Sr.) left Mississippi with 45 cents and preached his way to Chicago. He preached at mostly white churches. He would tell them the truth and they accepted the truth.”

L.C., his mother and father and seven  siblings settled at 35th St. and Cottage Grove on the south side.

“I have good memories,” he says. “We lived in a four-flat building. Two apartments in the front, two in the back on each floor. You could go from one porch all the way to the other.  Me and Sam were entrepreneurs as kids. Sam got his styling from (the pure, gliding tenor) of William Kenny of the Ink Spots. They sang all those pretty songs and that attracted Sam because he had the voice for it. So I would knock the (apartment) door and someone would come to the door. Sam would start singing. When he got through I would pass the hat. They couldn’t refuse us. I was 7 or 8, Sam was 9 or 10.  Sam had the personality that could charm a bird out of a bush. We made some kind of money. Imagine all the apartment doors we knocked on.”

L.C. Cooke fronting his group the Upsetters circa 1966 in a mid-south club. L.C. inherited the Upsetters from Sam Cooke.

Not long after settling in Chicago, Charles Cook, Sr. began a regular ministry in Chicago Heights. He drove 30 miles to the south suburb.

“We eventually started a family group called ‘The Singing Children’,” Cooke says. “I sang bass. Sam sung tenor. My sister Hattie sang baritone. My older sister Mary sang lead. Mt brother Charles sang lead. We sang in churches. At one time we were so popular we had our own limousine. My Daddy had a Dodge limousine and a Cadillac limousine.”

The Cook family lived well. As early as 1942 they owned one of the few wind up phonographs in the 3500 block of South Cottage Grove.

Away from the church, Sam and L.C. became part of the loosely formed “Dirty 30’s ” group  that sang along the sidewalks of 35th Street near Doolittle School. “Me and Pervis (Staples of the Staple Singers) sang in the same group,” he says. “He doesn’t live too far from me in Pops (Staples)  house. Lou Rawls. Johnnie Taylor came up with us later. Johnny Carter of the Dells. My group (the Nobleairs) was the first quartet he ever  sang with. After the family group broke up I got my own group and Sam named us the Nobleairs.” The group was singing in the Noble nightclub.  At the time Sam was singing with the Highway Q.C.’s. Rawls replaced Cooke in 1951 when he left the Q.C.’s to join the Soul Stirrers.

Cooke continues, “There was a streetcar line that ended at 35th and Cottage Grove. Everybody had to get off the street car. Ain’t  nothing but a crowd. Me and Sam were savvy enough to stand on the corner and sing when everybody was getting off the street car. Here’s what he told me when I was seven years old. He had 12 wooden popsicle sticks and he would stick them in the ground. And he would sing to these sticks. He said, ‘To me, they’re not sticks. They’re people. I’m grooming myself to sing to an audience.”

Sam Cooke in his Bob Dylan phase. Cooke thought he should have written “Blowin’ In the Wind,.” released in 1963. So he wrote the 1964 civil rights anthem “A Change is Gonna’ Come.”

L.C. Cooke has no plans to perform the music live and discounts theories that the songs were lost.

“ABKCO was so busy putting out other  people,” he says.  “That’s all I can tell you.” In recent years ABKCO has released compilation projects of early Rolling Stones and Animals music as well as Herman’s Hermits and stuff from the Cameo-Parkway label (Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp and others.) “Allen Klein offered to give me the music in 1986. But I refused it. I just said, ‘When you put more stuff out send me some money.’ He said, ‘We don’t pay artists first.’ I said, ‘I’m L.C. Cooke and you’re going to pay me first and if you don’t I will come to New York. And if I come to New York you wouldn’t like it.

“That’s how me and Allen Klein got to be tight. He later sent me $20,000.  See how good God is? Ever since then ABKCO has been taking care of me. I get a check every month. They treated me fair. When Allen died (in 2009)  his son started the same thing. I get a new car every three years. One is sitting out there right now. I pay for nothing but gas, oil and to have it cleaned. That’s how good ABKCO is to me. Allen always said if he hadn’t met  Sam (Cooke), he wouldn’t be  where he was. I know that’s how he got the Beatles (in 1969). John Lennon said if he could manage Sam Cooke, he could manage the Beatles.”

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