ReMastered.The.Two.Killings.Of.Sam.Cooke.2019.WEB.x264-CRiMSON Subtitles

00:00:19,894 --> 00:00:20,People.

00:00:54,137 --> 00:00:56,Sam had that magic voice.

00:01:07,817 --> 00:01:12,Sam is the father of
modern soul music. Absolutely.

00:01:14,491 --> 00:01:16,This is Sam singing to a black audience.

00:01:16,659 --> 00:01:20,It's a vastly different kind of Sam Cooke
than the mainstream,

00:01:20,121 --> 00:01:22,meaning white people,
have become accustomed to.

00:01:31,174 --> 00:01:36,People remember Sam Cooke
as a pristine Frank Sinatra wannabe.

00:01:36,179 --> 00:01:39,But in reality,
he was a complicated black man

00:01:39,599 --> 00:01:41,in a complicated world.

00:01:41,976 --> 00:01:45,Record companies
really did not want a black man

00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:48,talking about issues
that were going on in the country.

00:01:48,650 --> 00:01:51,They wanted him to be an entertainer
and nothing more,

00:01:51,111 --> 00:01:53,and that was never gonna be enough
for Sam Cooke.

00:02:01,830 --> 00:02:04,In the times where everything
was so oppressive,

00:02:04,374 --> 00:02:08,he broke through a lot of color barriers
and wasn't afraid to be the first.

00:02:09,336 --> 00:02:14,Empowerment... this is what drove him
to talk with Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

00:02:14,968 --> 00:02:16,He was so unafraid.

00:02:16,761 --> 00:02:19,If you afraid, you couldn't be
hangin' out with Malcolm, but...

00:02:20,056 --> 00:02:22,the FBI might find a way
to get rid of you.

00:02:22,642 --> 00:02:24,These were the early stages
of black power.

00:02:25,019 --> 00:02:27,That black male energy
that Sam Cooke possessed,

00:02:27,772 --> 00:02:30,unfortunately, for some people in power
in this country,

00:02:30,150 --> 00:02:32,represented a threat
that had to be stopped.

00:02:33,653 --> 00:02:38,This very mysterious death was just
the most improbable death for Sam Cooke.

00:02:38,324 --> 00:02:41,What happened? Why was he there?
And who was this woman he was with?

00:02:41,327 --> 00:02:44,And why'd he get shot?
All those become bigger questions

00:02:44,455 --> 00:02:47,than "What was he on the edge
of achieving?"

00:02:48,042 --> 00:02:49,It's a double murder.

00:02:49,544 --> 00:02:52,It's the murder of the physical being
who was Sam Cooke,

00:02:52,672 --> 00:02:55,but there's also the murder of his legacy.

00:03:24,329 --> 00:03:26,One of the biggest shocks
I ever had in my life.

00:03:28,249 --> 00:03:32,I was on the expressway in Detroit,
and the radio was on.

00:03:33,755 --> 00:03:36,Soul singer Sam Cooke
shot to death last night...

00:03:38,218 --> 00:03:40,in Compton or wherever he was.

00:03:42,472 --> 00:03:43,I was devastated.

00:03:44,724 --> 00:03:47,I don't think I functioned for a week.

00:03:47,727 --> 00:03:48,It was horrible.

00:03:50,605 --> 00:03:51,I asked my father

00:03:52,023 --> 00:03:55,when he told me he was dead,
I said, "What, a car accident?

00:03:55,735 --> 00:03:57,A plane crash?"

00:03:57,946 --> 00:04:00,I couldn't... Even when he told me
he g***t shot, I...

00:04:02,742 --> 00:04:04,I could've just passed out.

00:04:04,285 --> 00:04:08,Who would want to shoot Sam Cooke?
That's what I asked myself.

00:04:08,414 --> 00:04:10,I was sad and confused back then,

00:04:10,667 --> 00:04:13,and most... other people, especially
in the black community, but not only,

00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:16,were sad and confused.
You know, "What happened?"

00:04:25,723 --> 00:04:29,Everybody was cold but anxiously waiting.

00:04:29,769 --> 00:04:31,They wanted to see Sam Cooke.

00:04:31,813 --> 00:04:35,They wanted to know
if this really happened.

00:04:36,317 --> 00:04:40,There was just disbelief
and sorrow all mixed up.

00:04:40,947 --> 00:04:45,Two hundred thousand people-plus
showed up at his funeral in Chicago,

00:04:45,451 --> 00:04:47,and this is how this man died,

00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:51,you know, n***d
at a seedy hotel in Los Angeles.

00:04:52,333 --> 00:04:55,He's one of the biggest pop stars
in America,

00:04:55,128 --> 00:04:58,and he's just mysteriously dead now.
Didn't make any sense.

00:05:00,216 --> 00:05:04,Muhammad Ali, in his grief and rage,
essentially said,

00:05:04,220 --> 00:05:09,"If this had happened to Frank Sinatra
or The Beatles or Ricky Nelson,

00:05:09,392 --> 00:05:11,the FBI would be investigating this."

00:05:11,519 --> 00:05:14,'Cause, of course, it felt
this all went way too quickly.

00:05:14,397 --> 00:05:17,And Muhammad Ali, I think,
spoke for the entire community

00:05:17,608 --> 00:05:21,who believed that this was being treated
as just another dead black person.

00:05:22,071 --> 00:05:24,Sam Cooke, at the time of his death,

00:05:24,198 --> 00:05:28,is someone who has significant meaning
to the black community.

00:05:28,911 --> 00:05:30,Black community loves him.

00:05:30,913 --> 00:05:34,Sam Cooke didn't mean the same
to white America.

00:05:34,125 --> 00:05:37,They didn't recognize
how important Sam Cooke was.

00:05:37,879 --> 00:05:42,Sam Cooke's death, or at least the way
that it's been treated in the media,

00:05:42,258 --> 00:05:44,it's been allowed to sort of hijack
the rest of his career.

00:05:46,054 --> 00:05:48,People didn't think of Sam Cooke
in that way,

00:05:48,264 --> 00:05:51,but he's a racial hero
as much as he was a musical hero.

00:05:52,477 --> 00:05:56,Between the way he died
and this representation of him

00:05:57,023 --> 00:05:59,as a sort of almost
one-dimensional character

00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:01,kind of loses the essence of who he was.

00:06:01,986 --> 00:06:03,You have to question

00:06:03,196 --> 00:06:06,why did the record companies
suppress his politics?

00:06:30,306 --> 00:06:31,Yeah.

00:06:37,313 --> 00:06:39,- Miss Elinor Harris.
- Hello, Miss Harris.

00:06:39,190 --> 00:06:40,- Sam, sit here.
- Terrific.

00:06:41,651 --> 00:06:44,- It's good news.
- Good news, yeah.

00:06:44,153 --> 00:06:46,Let's do a little capsule version
of the Sam Cooke story.

00:06:46,697 --> 00:06:49,- How'd it all happen...
- The captions version. Uh...

00:06:49,409 --> 00:06:51,Born. My father was a minister.

00:06:51,494 --> 00:06:53,Uh, I started singing in the church,
naturally,

00:06:54,080 --> 00:06:56,because I'm exposed
to, uh, gospel singing first, Mike.

00:07:12,432 --> 00:07:15,Sam Cooke
is born in 1931 in Mississippi.

00:07:16,477 --> 00:07:18,As Sam Cooke was coming of age
during the Great Depression,

00:07:18,855 --> 00:07:20,late '30s into the '40s,

00:07:20,606 --> 00:07:23,slavery was something that was still
a residual memory for many people.

00:07:28,030 --> 00:07:31,You're talking about a time
where black people,

00:07:31,117 --> 00:07:33,especially black men,
were being lynched all over the place.

00:07:33,995 --> 00:07:36,I'm certain that people
like Sam Cooke's family,

00:07:36,747 --> 00:07:40,including his father, who was a preacher,
said, "We've g***t to get somewhere

00:07:40,168 --> 00:07:43,where we can have a life for ourselves,
where we can actually not just survive,

00:07:43,254 --> 00:07:44,but hopefully, we can win."

00:07:50,928 --> 00:07:53,My great-grandmother
was a slave in Mississippi.

00:07:53,431 --> 00:07:56,She had no education.
Neither did my father.

00:07:56,100 --> 00:07:58,He was a self-made man,

00:07:58,436 --> 00:08:01,but he saw the disadvantages
to the negro child in the South,

00:08:01,898 --> 00:08:04,so he went north to Chicago.

00:08:04,442 --> 00:08:06,In many ways, I'm very like my father.

00:08:06,986 --> 00:08:09,He has this intense drive that I've g***t.

00:08:11,115 --> 00:08:14,Papa Cook g***t a church in Chicago,

00:08:14,285 --> 00:08:16,so everybody went to church in his family.

00:08:19,123 --> 00:08:20,Bronzeville was a beautiful place.

00:08:21,584 --> 00:08:25,In that corridor,
from 43rd and State Street

00:08:25,087 --> 00:08:27,to 51st Street,

00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:32,there must've been 200 to black businesses that were vibrant.

00:08:32,803 --> 00:08:35,Segregated, of course. All black.

00:08:35,890 --> 00:08:38,It was like a black Wall Street.

00:08:41,020 --> 00:08:44,Churches everywhere on every block.

00:08:47,693 --> 00:08:51,There is no black politics at this
moment in time without the black church.

00:08:51,531 --> 00:08:55,If you were a popular gospel singer,
as Sam Cooke eventually would become,

00:08:55,493 --> 00:08:58,you would rub elbows
with a young Martin Luther King, right?

00:08:58,621 --> 00:09:00,You would know
who Reverend C.L. Franklin was,

00:09:01,082 --> 00:09:02,who, of course,
is Aretha Franklin's father

00:09:02,833 --> 00:09:05,and generally regarded as
one of the...