Sam Cooke pushed the worries to the back of his mind and pulled his Ferrari into Lou Rawls’s driveway. A visit with his old friend Lou would be good for his soul. Sam knew Lou from way back. Two decades slinging the gospel at the tops of their lungs throughout Chicago’s South Side churches will bond you to a fellow. You can hear that bond and the ease of their relationship in Lou’s effortless harmony in the call-and-response chorus of Sam’s 1962 classic, “Bring It on Home to Me.”

Lou’s six-month-old son began crying upon Sam’s arrival. Sam loved babies, but Little Lou Rawls Jr. was having none of him and Sam, in return, was getting emotional around the little dude. The next week would have been the third birthday of Sam’s own son, Vincent, who had drowned in the family swimming pool the year before. The death put an increased strain on what was already a strained relationship with his wife, and led Sam on a path of recklessness.

Nineteen sixty-four was tough on Sam. But it was also productive. It had been his most prolific as a songwriter and in a lot of ways his most rewarding creatively as he began turning his pop craftsmanship to more serious social issues. After hearing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” just two months after his son died, Sam realized the answer wasn’t blowin’ in the wind at all, but the answer was inside him. Just sitting there. Waiting to be exorcised and unleashed onto the world. So Sam wrote, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It was a less esoteric, more contemporary take on what Dylan had done with “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It was a direct claim on the happiness that eluded black America and his audience. It was unabashedly hopeful. Nearly sentimental but completely devoid of cheese. It was also Sam taking a swing at reclaiming some personal happiness for himself after the death of his son. And America loved it.

The baby wouldn’t stop wailing.

Sam picked up Lou Jr., playfully looked the crying infant in his eyes, and asked, “What’s the matter with you, man?”

Sam tried humming “Wonderful World.” It was the song that had earned him his nickname of Mr. Wonderful, and it usually did the trick. Women, babies, didn’t matter. Sam’s voice could fix most anyone’s problems. But not today. Lou put his son in his room, and the two old friends retired to the living room.

Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls met before they were even teenagers, forming a quartet and singing doo-wop on street corners in Chicago. They both joined a gospel group called the Highway QC’s. The QC’s were onto something but were not going anywhere fast enough for Sam, so he joined the Soul Stirrers at the age of nineteen. The Soul Stirrers were well established. They’d been slinging it on the gospel circuit since 1926, before Sam was born. The group’s members were immensely talented, but Sam had a unique and natural gift all his own. Sex appeal, though subversive, was always part of gospel performance, but Sam Cooke brought a different kind of sexuality to it; it was subtle, less suggestive, more sophisticated. It was innate and as effortless as his uniquely intimate style of singing.

And his singing style was indeed unique. It wasn’t like what other gospel singers brought to the game. It wasn’t all emotion. It wasn’t all truth. Like Frank Sinatra, Sam’s voice transcended style. It transcended technique, and it effortlessly balanced vulnerability and authority. Like Cupid’s arrow, Sam Cooke’s voice was a shot to the heart. And it made him irresistible.

Irresistible to record executives who saw in Sam a crossover into secular pop music and who wanted a big payday. Irresistible to seasoned musicians who knew a special talent when they saw it and wanted to go along for the ride. Irresistible to young black men who saw a successful artist and businessman who they wanted to be. And irresistible to women who just wanted him.

Lots and lots of women wanted Sam Cooke.

Forget Cupid’s arrow. With that voice, Sam Cooke might as well have been Cupid himself.

When Sam was in the room, you felt his sexuality. Mavis Staples referred to him as “Sam the Seducer.” Back in the Soul Stirrer days, Sam hadn’t quite graduated to bespoke suits yet, but he dressed impeccably and had that tight, processed hair. He kept himself looking good and out on tour as a Soul Stirrer; Sam was as much a sexual conquistador as he was a gospel missionary.

There were women in every town. Either waiting for him or waiting to meet him for the first time. Old girls. New girls. Black girls. White girls. Sam referred to white women as “snow” and sleeping with black women as, quote, “shoveling coal.”

It was a well-developed circuit. One that to a young man must have seemed bountiless. And unwanted pregnancies? Well, that was just the cost of doing business. By the time Sam was twenty-one, he’d had three children with three different women.

But it didn’t matter. He was Teflon. The out-of-wedlock pregnancies and rep didn’t stick. His image remained squeaky clean.

If that nice boy next door with the wide smile and polite manner, the one who keeps himself so clean and sings like an angel, if he wants to sleep with my granddaughter, then better him than that flashy, campaign-shouting Southern diplomat from down on the corner. If it’s got to be someone it might as well be Sam Cooke. Or so went the thinking of little old lady churchgoers everywhere.

Understanding the effect Sam Cooke had on people both onstage and off isn’t easy. He was good-looking, charming, and immensely talented but beyond that, he legitimately had that “thing.” The little extra something that is elusive, impossible to describe, and contributes to one’s star quality. Sam Cooke had it. And onstage, particularly in those early days with the Soul Stirrers, “it” was a weapon. To truly understand Sam Cooke’s appeal, you have to understand that he learned how to reach people by being a gospel singer.

Back when his name was spelled C-O-O-K, before he added the E at the end for sophistication, before he was topping the pop charts or seen ripping through Hollywood in his cherry red Ferrari or out on the town dressed to kill in a Sy Devore suit, before that Sam Cooke, there was Sam Cook. No E at the end. The polite son of a Chicago-by-way-of-Mississippi minister. Sam’s dad was a fire-and-brimstone country preacher who took his musical family—Sam included, of course—on the road to perform gospel music at various church services throughout the Midwest.

This gospel touring circuit was where Sam Cook started to hone his performance chops. The point of gospel music might have been to celebrate the Lord, but the point of gospel performance was to captivate the audience and vanquish all rivals. Gospel performers were highly competitive. And they had to be. The amount of talent within the scene was astounding; the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, Mahalia Jackson, and the group Sam Cooke would one day join and lead, the Soul Stirrers, all shared immense gifts.

So Sam knew how to get to people on a spiritual level by using all his God-given gifts to shake you to your core and hold you. You were enraptured. You were powerless against his charms. And because of this, Sam Cooke—aka Mr. Wonderful, aka Cupid, aka Sam the Seducer, aka the man with the golden tongue and the unbridled libido—grew very accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted whenever he wanted it.

Sam had gotten what he wanted, all right. A shot at the big time. It wasn’t easy, but he was able to navigate his way out of the gospel scene and for the most part avoid the dreaded “sellout” rap. His first single, his first single, “You Send Me,” went to No. 1 on the pop charts. Not just the R&B charts. The top of the pop charts.

And getting to the top sometimes seemed like a giant pain in the ass, but it was worth the sweat. Success was indeed sweet. And Sam deserved it. He was special and he knew it. When most of his peers were blowing their bread willy-nilly, Sam was investing in himself.

He founded his own record label, SAR, and was writing and producing and giving younger soul musicians on the come-up a shot. And his new manager, the very astute Allen Klein, had just swung a deal with RCA Records, where Sam Cooke, a black man in 1964 America, would own SAR’s master recordings. This was a big deal. It meant power in the music industry. An industry that, in the early 1960s, was entirely controlled by white men and gangster con artists whose record labels distributed their music through a national syndicate of mafia-controlled jukeboxes and who relied on the mob to employ a network of crooked radio promo men to bribe DJs to play their records on the airwaves and thus increase record sales and generate profit from the exploitation of the master recordings owned by the labels and the publishers. Now Sam Cooke owned the master recordings. And the label. This was not only rare for a black musician at the time, it was rare for any musician. Still is, actually.

Sam Cooke—a black man and a real artist—was also an executive producer who controlled his own future and was able to provide real opportunities for young black men and support, with both his voice and his wallet, the growing civil rights movement.

It had been a long time coming for sure, but change—in some ways—had come. Sam had come a long way from selling “race records” out of barbershops and shoe-shine stands to hanging with Muhammad Ali and headlining the Copa.

And now, a stable of younger artists depended on him for guidance, material, expertise, and tour and financial support. Plus, his own career still needed minding.

He complained to Lou about the pressure. Lou Jr. was still screaming in his bedroom, and the screams were pressing down on Sam’s last nerve.

“Hey Lou, what do you say we get out of here? I’ve got dinner with Al, and I’m gonna meet some radio folks at P.J.’s later.”

P.J.’s in West Hollywood was dark, intimate, and cozy. A place where dudes like Sam Cooke–—super-charismatic and famous pop singers—could hang unnoticed and largely be left alone. Al Schmitt was his trusted engineer, who had helmed such Sam Cooke hits as “Another Saturday Night,” “Cupid,” and the aforementioned “Bring It on Home to Me.” And Sam wanted to meet with the KAPP DJs at the local R&B station to ensure they were on board for his ambitious next release.

Sam’s current album for RCA, Ain’t That Good News, was ending its cycle, and he had plans for his greatest creative achievement yet: a blues album that perfectly melded his patented sophisticated soul with the down-home gut punch of blues artists he loved, like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It was unclear how Sam was going to pull this off but he was obsessed.

As he always did, he asked Lou what he thought. Lou knew that Sam didn’t really need his input, but he dug that his famous friend still solicited his advice. Sam, however, needed Lou more than the man knew. Finding the space to think and be creative was not easy for Sam. There was always something. The investment in himself? It was paying off but, man, it was stressful sometimes. He hoped Lou would come with him for a few drinks, but Lou was worried that Lou Jr. was sick, and leaving a sick six-month-old with the missus would not bode well in the long run.

Sam could understand Lou wanting to be cautious with his wife. Sam hadn’t been very cautious with his own. He’d married Barbara Campbell, the mother of one of his six children, thinking marriage would add a sense of order to his life, but all it did was add more chaos. The home, despite the wall-to-wall carpet, the brand-new hi-fi, and the pool out back, was a straight-up battlefield when Barbara was around. That woman was almost as restless as he was. The tension was thick and ever present.

And the goddamn phone? It never stopped ringing.

The Valentinos’ bus had broken down out on tour.

Little Billy Preston needed money for a new organ.

Johnnie Taylor was pissed off again about something or another.

And Martin was calling. He wanted to talk to Sam about performing at a benefit for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference early next year.

Sam would do anything for Martin Luther King Jr., but right now the civil rights movement would have to wait. Sam needed to blow off some steam and get his head right.

Lou could stay home with his sick baby. Sam needed some action.

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Sam Cooke’s Ferrari hit the valet at Martoni’s in Hollywood sometime on the evening of December 10, 1964. He’d meant to get dinner at P.J.’s with Al and his wife, but when he saw the babe at the Martoni’s bar, he got up, bailed on going to dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Al, and casually approached the woman who had caught his eye. She was no astronaut’s wife, but she’d do.

At the bar, though, Sam was swarmed by friends and hangers-on. The drinks were flowing, and Sam was leading the bar in sing-along after sing-along until the woman he had his eye on started making eyes at him, demanding his attention. Sam was at her side in no time with a drink. She was just his type. And of course, he was hers. With Sam’s energy now focused on the task at hand, the vibe at the bar died down. A change of scenery was needed, so they decided to hit P.J.’s over on Santa Monica.

Now after midnight, Sam was at least four or five martinis deep. Little Miss Thing had a name: Elisa Boyer. As closing time approached, she was approaching something near stunning to Sam, and she was garnering attention from other men at P.J.’s besides himself. Mr. Wonderful grew angry. A fight nearly ensued.

Fuck the bars, he thought. Let’s get some privacy.

The two jumped in Sam’s Ferrari and were out on the 405 in no time.

He was driving fast. Heading out of town. Where were they going? Elisa was staying downtown. Don’t worry about none of that, Sam remarked.

Relax.

Enjoy the ride.

He turned on the radio, KAPP. Shit! Sam realized he had forgotten to meet up with those DJs earlier in the night. Frustrated, he twirled the dial from KAPP and landed on the sounds of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas.” He left it and let Elvis’s baritone ring out. He was too distracted by Elisa sitting to his right.

And Elisa was worried. She told Sam she wanted to get out of the car. He was clearly drunk. Driving like a lunatic. Pulling off a bottle of scotch. And apparently headed somewhere out by the airport. She had no idea where.

But Sam had an idea. The Hacienda Motel. It was perfect. Remote. Quiet. Cheap. And indiscriminate of color or marital status. No last-call lotharios to loosen the vibe while trying to get Little Miss Strange to help him blow off his steam.

But Elisa seriously wasn’t having it.

It didn’t matter. She’d come around. They always did. He was Sam Cooke. Mr. Fucking Wonderful.

The Ferrari sloppily roared into the Hacienda parking lot at 2:35 a.m. Sam hit the motel manager’s office looking like a damn fool. Wild-eyed. Anxious. Drunk. To the motel manager, he looked exactly like every other man who checked in at two in the morning. She gave him a room key and noticed the girl in the Ferrari with the Jacqueline Kennedy scarf and glasses. She made Sam sign in as part of a married couple. He couldn’t remember Elisa’s name, so he just wrote “Mr. and Mrs. Sam Cooke.”

In the motel room, things were not going as Sam planned. Elisa, despite her googly-eyed bullshit back at the bar, wasn’t picking up what Sam was putting down.

Sam had had enough. He was impatient. Horny. He grabbed her. Groping. Kissing.

All hands.

No heart.

Gone was the subtlety he was known for onstage and in records. It was replaced by a base, carnal desire that was obvious and boring. The same as all of the other ordinary men she’d known.

Elisa was disgusted. Wanted no part of it. What she wanted was for Sam to take her home. Now.

But Sam had never been denied before, and he couldn’t imagine a world where a woman wouldn’t want to be with him. What a nonwonderful world that would be. He was gonna have it his way or nothing at all.

She’d come around. They always did. He was the Sam Cooke. Executive Seducer. It was only a matter of time. Besides…he had to piss. He’d hit the bathroom to give Little Miss Strange a minute to collect herself.

Instead, she collected her clothes and got the fuck out of there. In a hurry.

She split. Ran out of the room half-naked, in just her bra and slip, and through the parking lot, past the motel manager’s office, and out onto the street. And just like that? Gone. In the wind.

Sam came out of the bathroom to an empty room. No strange. The door was open. Sam was naked. And his clothes were gone…And his wallet? What the fuck.

He grabbed all he could find: his blazer and one shoe. Scooped up his car keys, jumped in the Ferrari, and squealed over to the manager’s office where he imagined Elisa to be hiding out. Again, he parked like an asshole, jumped out of the car. Left the driver’s side door open and with one shoe on and with little Sam Cooke hanging out beneath his blazer, he began pounding on the door.

“Let me in! Where is she?

“Where are my clothes? She took my wallet!”

On the other side of the door was fifty-five-year-old Bertha Lee Franklin. She’d checked Sam in earlier and knew exactly how fucked-up the fool on the other side of the door was. She was nonplussed. And was on the phone with her boss at the moment as she always was at this time of night.

So she ignored Sam.

Sam grew more upset and started shouting again.

“She ain’t in here.”

“Yes she is! I know she is. Let me in!”

“Mister, there ain’t no one in here but me.”

That was when Sam started ramming the door with his shoulder. Three tries and he came pouring into the joint like a bag of banged-up bricks.

Bertha Lee was stunned. Still on the phone, she told this naked fool to get out. That the woman he was looking for wasn’t there. But Sam, cockblocked and blueballed, was not hearing it. He was leering over her shoulder into the apartment adjacent to the motel manager’s office—he knew she was in there, and he now thought that this woman was in on whatever scam was being run on him. After all, why the hell else wouldn’t that woman want to sleep with him?

“Where the fuck is she? And where are my clothes?”

“Mister, she ain’t here. You gotta go.”

Sam snapped. He grabbed Bertha Lee by the shoulders and started shaking her. The struggle intensified. The phone fell to the floor. Bertha Lee tried biting, scratching…Sam threw her to the ground and pounced…still naked and even more enraged but Bertha Lee was able to get out from under him and wobble to her feet.

She knew where the gun was. It was there for a reason. This reason. To fend off some wild-eyed, horny, drunk fool in the middle of the night. She grabbed the .22 resting on the television, and as Sam started to come at her again she aimed and pulled the trigger.

The first shot whistled over his head.

The second, past his shoulder.

And the third?

Straight into the heart of Cupid.

Stunned, Sam Cooke looked up at Bertha Lee Franklin and said, “Lady, you shot me?”

Sam fell to his knees and for a moment seemed subdued but then, in a last burst of adrenaline, attacked Bertha Lee again. This time would be his last. She could sense that life was a fleeting proposition for this naked fool and showed mercy. She dropped the gun. Grabbed a broom and gave Sam a simple oops upside the head to keep him at bay. It was all that was needed. He fell over and died.

Bertha Lee Franklin shot and killed Sam Cooke. The court cleared her of any charges. The homicide was ruled justifiable. But the court of public opinion thought otherwise. She received numerous death threats, was forced to quit her job and go into hiding. She was sued by Sam Cooke’s widow for her husband’s funeral expenses. A husband who was one of the most successful pop stars in the world. A husband she grieved over for exactly three months before marrying his good friend, Bobby Womack.

Still, to this day, the world does not want to accept that Bertha Lee Franklin shot and killed Sam Cooke. Though the circumstances of his death are not shrouded in mystery.

There is no shortage of rock ’n’ roll conspiracy theories. They exist in part because fans don’t want to let go. There are legions who believe Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper never crashed and burned in an Iowa cornfield back on February 3, 1959, the supposed “day the music died,” and are somehow still alive, making music and living happily ever after. Some even believe that the crash was caused by something nefarious like Buddy Holly firing a pistol inside the plane at the pilot as a means to affect his own suicide. This is a real theory. And people believe it. Just like the people who choose to believe that Rolling Stones guitar player Brian Jones was murdered by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as a way to get the increasingly strung-out and useless band member out of their lives forever. Which is almost as ridiculous as those who believe that Courtney Love murdered Kurt Cobain because they didn’t have a prenup. A small cottage industry has built up around Elvis Presley conspiracy theories. Most fascinating is the theory that Elvis’s twin brother, Jesse, did not die at birth; that he lived on and still lives to this day, and that’s the reason why there have been so many Elvis sightings since the King’s reported death back in 1977. And of course, the granddaddy music conspiracy theory of all time is that Elvis faked his own death and does indeed still live on. Why else would he have misspelled his own name on his headstone? This is true. Look it up.

But regardless, Elvis is not alive. Neither is his brother. And Kurt wasn’t murdered and the Stones aren’t assassins. Buddy didn’t pop one off in the back of the pilot’s head to crash his plane and Sam Cooke wasn’t killed by anyone other than Bertha Lee Franklin.

It wasn’t a jilted lover.

It wasn’t a jealous husband.

It wasn’t a robbery gone wrong.

And it wasn’t the mafia.

It was a justifiable homicide. So said the jury.

Sam Cooke, despite the conspiracy theories that sprung up immediately, was not the victim. Bertha Lee Franklin was.

The jury knew this because Bertha Lee voluntarily took and passed a lie detector test. As did her boss, the owner of the hotel, Evelyn Carr, who was on the phone with her at the time the incident went down.

The jury also knew from phone records stating that at 3:15 a.m., as soon as the phone line disconnected and while Sam was attacking Bertha Lee, Evelyn Carr called the police to report what she’d heard on the other end of the motel phone. Of course, the police had a record of that call.

And the call came minutes after Elisa Boyer had called the police herself—from a pay phone out on the street from the hotel—to report that she had been kidnapped.

Furthermore, as soon as the police arrived on the scene, Elisa emerged from the shadows to voluntarily speak to them about everything that just happened.

There is no mystery surrounding Sam Cooke’s death. There is no conspiracy. Mr. Wonderful was denied that night in the Hacienda Hotel, and there was nothing Cupid could do about it.

Sam Cooke, shot dead by the female hotel manager he attacked, half-naked.