Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke was the most technically accomplished singer to cross from gospel into pop. As lead tenor of the Soul Stirrers in the early 1950s he was already famous — his smooth, ornamented phrasing setting a new standard for gospel performance — before he made the move to secular music in 1957 that scandalized the church and changed American pop.

His pop hits (“You Send Me,” “Wonderful World,” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Another Saturday Night”) were smooth, radio-friendly, and deliberate: Cooke founded SAR Records and managed his own career with unusual business acumen for the era. But his ambitions ran deeper than the pop charts. “Chain Gang” documented prison labor; “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964), written after he was turned away from a white motel in Louisiana and inspired by Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” became one of the great civil rights anthems.

He was shot and killed in a Los Angeles motel in December 1964, age 33, under circumstances that were officially ruled a justifiable homicide but have never been fully explained. He left behind a template that Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Al Green would develop into the soul music of the 1970s.