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Sam Cooke's Song A Change Is Powerful Come

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The lyrics, “A Change Is Gonna Come” plays over and over in my head when I think about the sixties. In the sixties, there were a lot of significant events going on like the assassinations of the thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, and activist Martin Luther King Jr. Also, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. There were many ways people back then coped with the hard conditions. Tuning it out with music was one. The favored genre was pop but rhythm and blues are where the underlying messages came from. It was the freedom anthems that kept them sane. While the sixties are a pop culture decade, the blues song “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, addresses important issues, such as social change and Civil Rights issues in the sixties …show more content…

He was one of the eight children of Reverend Charles Cooke and his wife Annie Mae. He started singing very young in gospel groups. At the age of twenty, he was offered to be a part of "The Soul Stirrers". By 1950, Cooke had been promoted to lead singer. While still working with the group he released his first solo single "Loveable" under a pseudonym so it wouldn't interfere with his gospel group. Touring with the group was the first insight of how people can be treated unequally because of their color. Cooke refused to play at segregated concerts. Never the less, the gospel audience found out about the single and the record label released him so did the soul stirrers, which let him pursue his true dream as a rhythm & blues artist. He went on to make great hits. The inspiration he got for making the historical hit "A Change Is Gonna Come", was when he some of his friends were charged with disturbing the peace after they were denied rooms at a motel because they were black and the song "Blowing in the wind by Bob Dylan. This sparked his interest in history and

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