You are listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner. We count it all joy that we are together today and this is our favorite day of the week because it is teach in Thursdays on Truth Time, and that we got something rocking that's so unique and different and just has it's blowing my mind. And so I am going to toss this to you right away for our teacher on Thursday. This Thursday, I'm good.
It was some time throwing in on towering figures who love black people who are willing to third I love and truth in this just a couple of days ago we had on our own life and with my seventy second birthday. But Brother Clifton and Brother Tavish is like a third brother. And so it occurred to me that in our teaching today it would be magnificent about somebody who got so much Fanny liut Hama and so much
with Martin King and Malcolm Exit Nina Simone. In a I told sister Nina, we need to talk about Nina turning us.
If you said in.
All humans, oh no, I don't know, Doc, I said, yes, indeed, we want to hear about your life. We want to hear about your calling here, about how you've been able to sustain yourself over these years with the longevity of integrity and a consistency of loving black people.
So let us begin at the beginning.
Tell us something about your fact, tell us something about where you come from.
Thank you Doc so much. And Doc laid it out. I said me no way, but Doctor insisted. And I am so humbled by that, said the oldest of seven and children. I grew up in the land and known as Cleve Cleveland, Ohio. Just you know everything about who I am. I was molded in this rustbelt rough let them know, rough and tumble environment here in Cleveland. We are very much fighters. My parents, very working class, working poor, as we would you know, describe it today. Very much
worked really really hard. We had some roller coaster rides, you know, some some mountaintop moments, a lot of valley moments. It is by the grace of God that I am here today, and everything that I am today, it's primarily because of you know, the whole notion of nature nurture. It is both the environment of Cleveland. It is both of my parents, It is my grandparents on both sides, my maternal and paternal although I was very much more
closer to my maternal grandmother then my paternal grandparents. Nevertheless, they all had an impact on helping me be who I am today.
And so your mama's name, your dad's name, your grandmama's name, and granddad was what.
My mama's name was. An emphasis on was doc. I think some in our audience may know. You know the story of how my mom died at the young age of forty two years old. Often say she died with her dreams deferred, quoting from the great poet from Cleveland himself, Langston Hughes. Fae is my mama's name. That is one of them old fashioned names, Faye, and then my maternal grandparents, and as ever saying, and then Oscar Oscar Steal Steal was his nickname, Emverson. My grandfather on both sides fought
in World War Two. Yeah, yeah, both of my grandfather's my other grandfather, John Hudson, they fought in World War two. Of those who were in the Vietnam War. My mother was an only child, so all of my aunts and uncles other than my grandparents siblings. But when I'm talking about my aunts and uncles and my mother's and father's generation. I'm talking about on my father's side because my mom was an only child.
So yeah, Johnny May Hudson, Yeah them, Johnny mays, Yeah.
I wasn't you decided to be a love warrior, freedom fighter and intellectual wounded healer?
Ooh, intellectual wounded here, Hiller, that speaks to me, you know, Doc, I don't think I had a choice. I really don't. I mean a certain thing of purpose and destiny and kind of finding it and when those things come together, certainly we all have choice. So let me back that up. When I say I didn't have much of a choice, there was a like a it was being pulled like
a magnet. That's what I mean by not really having a choice, although we all always have choice, but that that whole notion of what you're seeking and seeking you and at such a young age, I mean I didn't know. I mean there were times where I felt hopeless and helpless. You know, my parents got married very young and it didn't work out. My mom was married four times. My
dad was always a constant in our lives. My grandparents certainly always a constant, But we definitely grew up on the rough side of the mountain, a very transient you know, oftentimes when you're poor, your family is transient. So moving all over the place. We moved a lot within the city of Cleveland itself, and so that that breeds, as the science tells us now, a lot of instants and children having to start all over and not being able
to cope with new environments and all of that. So when I hear this new generation talk about that, although I know that the science is what it is, also think as a gen xer, like, wow, you guys wouldn't have made it, you know then, because it was a complicated and very challenging and a very hard life. And but for my maternal grandparents, and as an Oscar Emerson,
I just don't know where we would have been. Was food and secure at times, that is the social scientist's way of putting it out there, but just flat out did not have enough food to eat, hungry a lot of nights, a mother who prayed and cried, and parents who really they really tried. Sometimes when your parents try, though, they missed the mark and that has an impact on their children. And so I when you asked me what
got me here? I think a spiritual understanding of what I had to endure as a child and even as a grown woman, even to this moment, even though I'm blessed to have fancy titles and certainly experiences that somebody who grew up in my type of environment in terms of economics, because my environment was rich was love. We just weren't rich with money. Yeah, yeah, but it's my
keen understanding from whence I came. As James bald would put it, if you know, from whence you came, there's virtually nowhere that you cannot go, and so that's part of it. You're listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner on Our Teacher in Thursday. Doctor West's idea. We are talking about Nina Turner. When we
come forward, we will continue this most fascinating conversation. You are listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner on our favorite Truth Time day of the week, which is our Teacher in Thursday. On this Thursday, we are lifting up. We are talking about the light and the legacy of the one and only Sam Cook. He was born on January twenty second, nineteen thirty one, in Clarksdale, Mississippi in the United States of America, and he died.
He was murdered. We'll get into that on but he died on December eleventh, nineteen sixty four, in Los Angeles, California. He was shot to death. You know. One of his nicknames Doc and I didn't know that Dale Cook. I didn't know people. Some people called him Dale as birth name Samuel Cook, shortened Sam Cook, and as I said, very much known as the king of soul. Some would described his voice as being hypnotic smooth, and that he had these chisel looks. So you as your that's the
story that you told us. We were coming forward about how we were coming to the church singing and and the women would get both a coronal Holy Ghosts and the spiritual Holy ghost all at the same time.
That I don't know what that happened to with the spiritual Holy ghosts, but.
They were in.
They were in the spirit though we.
And it hit the brothers too.
Now the brothers didn't just fall out, but it hit the brothers too, Now, Lord Mercy, when I was little, first song we played without must have been eight years old with men on the chain game.
That's the sound of the men working on.
The chain gang, gold Dog working on the chain Gang.
Oh we played that thing and we were just little boys, but the parents were playing it for us, you know what I mean?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I remember that song again my grandma, And that's a jam of mine. I mean, I know people might think, are you kidding me? It's just something about that song and the words are so true, but the way you put them together and the music behind it, it just like wow. And you know when that part of the all day long, they going.
Ha ha ha, that's it.
I promise how all the is do? I will not quit my day job.
Oh no, shoe, we need to take this on the road. He's been old pressed and subjugated and repressed, yet at the same time, here he was, as a black man, transporting us to another world with his artistic genius. And he knew that he was doing that alongside others, and that is very important to keep in mind.
He was an intellectual who read intensely.
Richard Franklin who said he was her favorite artist, and I think w Reith was in love with Sam when they first met, but she said he was.
Reading all the time. Isn't that something now?
He's exposed to a whole lot of reading from the Bible and other texts. But he had this intellectual side to him, artistic side, spiritual side, and what we call a street side, all intertwined together. That's Sam cooking that eat that he put at the end of his name that he added nineteen fifty six when he left the soulsters and let them know, I'm mustering the courage like Ray Charles like a wreath to move from the church.
Into rhythm and blues.
Now, he was demised, he was vilified as the devil's music.
You've been singing about Jesus all.
Next thing, you know, you talking about Chain games and you talk about Chain's gonna come. He say, hey, there, he is a spiritual and religious sensibility to rhythm and blues when it's some right and done in the right manner. And he's absolutely right.
Yes, sir. And the key word rhythm and blues is telling the whole story of a people and using his gifts. A God definitely gifted him. There were some people who are talented and they enhanced that talent. There's some people who are gifted and talented, and it is very clear that people like Sam Cook, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Ray, Charles Luther. I mean, we can go on and on and on b B king them kind of people gifted
and talented, they're just not a talent. And his first single release was in nineteen fifty seven and it was You Send Me Oo. And that song sold over a million copies, and that was the song that catapulted Sam Cook into like international stardom. And as the stories go, some of the reports that producers were buying like they were fighting over trying to sign him.
M can you imagine no, Now he's twenty six years old, he's being camptapouted out into the world. And that's the song you Send Me, which has been transportant folk and transforming folk for the last seventy years and continues to do so.
Yeah, I mean just timeless. Generation after generation after generation will know Sam Cook. I mean, I play Sam Cook for my for my grand babies. I played me some moll too. That's how you keep it, That's how you keep it going, you know, I play I play Michael Jackson and Prince you know, even though they don't know who these people are, but then they are going to keep that tradition a live He was also a composer to doc not just a singer. So people should know
as you were laying out how he read. He was a voracious reader. All those those talents go hand in hand.
A absolutely.
You know he was born just within weeks of Tony Morrison, is that right? That's some nineteen thirty one January. She was born in February. He was born January. And in fact we should know, you know, within six weeks when he died in December sixty four, we lost Sam Cook, we lost Nat King Cole, we lost Lauree and Hansbury,
and we lost Malcolm x between my god, February sixty five. Yeah, very rare that you would have those kinds of geniuses and giants lost so quick, because I mean Nat King Cole if anybody had a beautiful voice in the history of the world, and Sam in the same zone, Laurence Frey, genius, Malcolm xIC. We don't have a language for all gone in six weeks. That's a major, major holes created in our culture just within those six weeks.
You talking about a seismic shift, That's.
That's the word I'm looking for, seismic shift.
It could have been just one of them would have been enough.
Yeah. Yeah, but when you put all them giants together, Dot and not just to be famous, to be famous like a lot of people think today, not that superficial fame. Were talking about people who were deep rooted, loved black people, loved humanity, We're not afraid to speak up and to speak out, and was risking a lot to do it.
That's absolutely so he was anointed. That's what I would say.
He was.
Definitely annointed. And I want my house to play for us a little bit of you send me, you send me, Oh my god, so he ain't change gonna come, which folks heard a little earlier. And Darling you said, well it's called you send me. But he says, Darland, you send me. I mean just from the moment he belts those words out, but from the moment those words leave his lips. You already you you caught up. You caught up. You can't you can't shake him after that.
That's real. And his friendship with Moham and Ali.
And yeah and Minister Malcolm Max Yeah. Yeah. Think somebody did a movie. I'm forgetting the name of it, but it kind of is edgemontatement. I want people to know, but it brought all of them together, uh in a in a fictitious but also you know a colonel truth way.
I remember that.
Some people say that he was killed because creating a constitution. He was creating his own label to get black artists off the plantation and ensure that we had our own independent and autonomous labels, which meant we would have made not just more money.
Would have had more power, would have had more leverage.
And just like Oldest Red and people said Sam Cook had been doing trying to do the same exact thing, Colchre was trying to do the same thing when he died at forty two with Amelotti ol A Tanji.
But it's something about these great.
Artists when they make a move to create their own black independent institutions in the music industry, because it's so much money and they getting ripped off every day, every week, every year, all that genius is just translated into money for somebody else. As Kendrick Lamar would say, people trying to pimp our butterfly.
Definitely, I mean they want our rhythm, but not our blues. And somebody said I cannot take credit for that quote, So I want our audience to know somebody said it. I don't know who, but it is true when they say that, And what they mean by they is the larger society, be a white society or other. That folks
want our rhythm. They don't want our blues. They love our gifts, but they're not gonna do anything to make sure that we live in a world where our gifts can be enhanced by having health care, by making a living wage. I know our audience like there, they go, Yes, we gotta link all of this stuff and not to think about how creative we are as a people, even under so much pressure.
Absolutely, absolutely, and the people still want to exploit it. They is all the creativity they can and translated into money for themselves and give us crumbs and then get upset when we ask for more than crumbs.
There it is, you're making me think of a movie that I also recommend. I know the name of this one family and the name of this movie is called Cadillac Records, and Beyonce was in it and some other folks were in that movie and it depicts doc to your point about how our stuff was stolen from us and we made other people being white people. Let's just go and tell the truth for shame the devils, my grandmother would say, from all ethnic groups wealthy and how
we were cheated. Now, Cadillac Records is edge maintainment, but the major thrust of the gifts of black singers, and also how the industry is self stole from us Dak when we highlighted we talk about Prince the Purple One often too, and how he wanted to make sure that he kept his his stuff, he kept ownership of of of of his of what he was producing, that it
was not owned by other other people. I wouldn't doubt to loop back to what you were saying about some of the theories as to why Sam Cook was murdered, that is totally plausible to me.
I mean, it's hard to know, but we know that he was not highly popular among the highest echelons of the music because he was such a genius when he came to his artistry, but he was such a politically astute brother when it came to not wanting to be on anybody else's plantation.
That's true liberation right there.
I'm telling you encourage.
Yeah, on your stuff, own your stuff. Now, let us note that he was voted the fourth greatest singer of the rock and roll era in the Rolling Stone magazine poll that was taken in two thousand and eight. Seems
almost like a lifetime ago. But the fact that he died in the sixties and in two thousand and eight they did a poll and he ranks number four tells us a lot about his genius and the general generational impact of his music, and that he also was a huge influence on other R and B artists, rock and roll type artists, which don't surprise us, but you had already mentioned Otis Redding and also Marvin Gaye considered Sam Cook one of his favorite artists of all time.
Yeah, yeah, Reith too, absolutely.
I mean Sam Cook, when you think about it, is one of the few brothers who is in the highest conceivable a vocal genius. And that tends to be the Black Sisters at the highest level. Sarah Vaughon, Billy Holliday, Elephizgerald, Carmen McCrae, Retha Franklin, Mahaya Jackson.
See, it's hard for brothers to get into that that club.
I'm telling you that right now, and Luther and others will be the first one to say, I know, I got a whole out of the offer. But when when well reatha come in, I'm sitting down, Von starts singing, I'm sitting down.
Sam Cook and Luther and Nat.
King Cole would be small group that could gain interest into the club. They're not gonna be at the center of it, but they're gonna be in the club. Oh yeah, Joe William got us, you got you got we got some brothers. Who's something. Donnie Hathaway would be in that club. You see what I mean.
You know, it's powerful when you recognize you you just in the in the room.
You're just in the room. Jael LeVert would be right on the edge, but he's in the club. I mean, it's but they would recognize when they looked at who was at the center of and they saw Maheia and Sarah and Billy and Ella, and they said, oh Lord.
We're so glad to be in the room. We don't know what to do.
If I could just touch to him of the garment of these of these great ones. You are listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornel West and Nina Turner. This is our teach in Thursday. We are teaching in about the One and Only Sam Cook born on January twenty second, nineteen thirty one, and he died on December eleventh, nineteen sixty four, in Los Angeles, California. Said, mister Cook was shot to death. When we come forward, we're gonna continue talking about his life and what he brought to all
of us. Truth time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner. This is our teaching Thursday talking about the one and only Sam Cook. If you are just joining us, welcome. We are so glad that you are here. If you have been on this ride with us from the beginning, thank you so much for that. Now, Sam Cook was married, doct it's important. I'm gonna lift up these spouses of Barbara Campbell and that was October ninth and nineteen fifty nine to December eleventh, nineteen sixty four. So she, you know,
was his wife when he was murdered. And they have three children. And then we have Dolores Elizabeth Milligan Mohawk and they were married in October of nineteen fifty three and divorced on November fifteenth, nineteen fifty seven. So the one and only Sam Cook was married twice. Three children, Linda m Womack, Tracy Cook and Vincent Cook.
Lord Lord. Yes, just a.
Little family background. And then Dr West. I know how you always love lifting up people's parents because but for the parents, we would not be here. And the names of his parents, Charles Cook and Annie May Carrol, those are his parents. And so he he changed the landscape of R and B. No doubt all of it. Like this type of music, it is connected to all of the different varieties of music. But he definitely shook all
of that up. And then his song The Change Is Gonna Come was really different from a lot of his other work. And I'm curious, I'm not sure if you know. Was it the the uprising of black people? The changing cultural dynamics of black people are fighting continuously fighting to regain their humanhood in this country. That made him like change up that way? I mean, Change Gonna Come is timeless.
Oh no, it's true.
I think he was always attuned to the struggle of black people. I think that when he wrote that song, something very very unique was happening inside of him that flowed from him.
But it had been from the very beginning.
I mean, that's my sense, because for example, people would say in talking to Sam Cook that he would always talk about black history. He was reading texts black history, and he was always relating the music