30 Greatest Hits: Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964

又一位灵魂乐牛人，Sam Cooke的知名度较同时代的几位大师似乎略低，也是因为他过世得太早——他在1964年就因为一起疑点重重的“自卫”案件而告别人世，但即使在他去世之后，他的演唱风格仍然影响了无数后人，他也在1999年获得了葛莱美终身成就奖，获奖原因是：“在福音歌曲、R&B及流行歌曲上都有流畅、共鸣的演唱风格，这使他成为早期灵歌音乐的创始人之一，而且自他1964年去世后仍对每一浪漫歌手都有非常实际的影响”。 “灵魂歌王”这个头衔似乎用得有些滥，但根据wiki百科的记载，1957－1965年间美国的40首榜首歌曲中，Sam Cooke就占了29首，这是个简直恐怖的数据。他最著名的歌曲包括"You Send Me", "Chain Gang ", "(What A) Wonderful World" （原来他才是原唱者）和 "Bring It On Home To Me"等。他确实是灵魂乐史上的一段传奇，所以他的精选集也被命名为“传奇的轨迹”。 本专辑发行于2003年，收集了Sam Cooke最有代表性的歌曲。 这张专辑在滚石杂志选出的500张历代最强专辑中排名第106位。 Some 46 years after his first pop hit, and 39 years after his death, comes only the second attempt at a comprehensive Sam Cooke collection. Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 eclipses RCA's early-'80s The Man and His Music, going it better in running time but losing some important recordings — "That's Heaven to Me" and "Soothe Me," arguably one of Cooke's most important songs — in the process of summing up his career. From 1951's Soul Stirrers' gospel classic "Touch the Hem of His Garment" through to 1964's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Shake," we get highlights of Cooke's career presented in state-of-the-art digital audio; superior in every way possible to the audio quality of The Man and His Music. What's more, this is a hybrid disc with SACD capability, and the sound on that layer is almost as much of a jump above the quality on the CD layer as this remastering is from the old The Man and His Music disc; and either the standard CD or the SACD playback makes that 1980s-issued compilation sound faint and anemic. There's also annotation here — which was totally lacking on the earlier CD — by Peter Guralnick, which delves very effectively into the background of each song. And the producers have taken the trouble to be a little inventive in the programming — it would have been easy enough to follow a strict chronological approach, but instead the disc opens and closes with tracks that reveal Cooke's gospel roots, which is pretty much where his music started and where it ended up, bookending his first hit with songs from his first session ever.