TS: Sam Cooke v. Marvin Gaye

Inspired by this post:
http://www.postbourgie.com/2010/01/12/sam-cooke-marvin-gaye/

The quote is true.

Gaye could be annoyingly mannered sometimes, but aside from some his very early recordings where he tried to be a standards singer, he was always interesting. Cooke's Live at the Copa is annoying slick, and his Billie Holiday tribute album is just tedious.
On the other hand, Gaye probably never quite achieved anything so sublime as the vocals on "A Change is Gonna Come," or as pure and perfectly joyous as "Wonderful World." On the other other hand, could (would?) Cooke have ever transformed the National Anthem into an astoundingly sensual erotic ode?
I think I'll flip a coin on this one.

Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club is the best live album of all time.

And Marvin Gaye's Live at the Palladium , has "Got to Give It Up," which some days gets my vote as the greatest song ever recorded, which helps make up for the fact it's otherwise a merely "pretty good" live album.

I'm an album guy, and I'd take Night Beat and the aforementioned Harlem Square over any of Gaye's albums. I love Marvin Gaye, but nobody is even in spitting distance of Sam.

Sam Cooke

Night Beat is better than any Marvin Gaye album, but Live at the Copa and Tribute to the Lady are worse than any Gaye album I've heard. Harlem Square is pretty much just on the same level of greatness as Moods of Marvin Gaye and Let's Get It On. The thing that might tip the argument decisively in Cooke's favor for me might be his recordings with the Soul Stirrers.

The thing that might tip the argument decisively in Cooke's favor for me might be his recordings with the Soul Stirrers.

big ol' truth bomb here but really this "nobody even close to Cooke" is silly hyperbole. Jackie Wilson is for sure very nearly his equal (and has it all over him for range), Gaye is on similar footing, Stevie Wonder - can't be any question that to say Stevie's not "within spitting distance" of Sam Cooke is just new levels of rongness

Sorry J0hn - not a fan of Stevie. I'll give ya Jackie Wilson though. Love him more the more I hear.

Clarify - not a fan of Stevie as a vocalist. As a songwriter, musician and performer, yes.

Sam Cooke's career was too damn short for him to have the range of great songs and vocal styles that Marvin Gaye had.

Is this thread inspired by the fact that both had specials on PBS Monday night? I couldn't watch the Gaye one after the depression from Cooke.

Marvin has the advantage and disadvantage of lasting through the 70s and 80s. Sam Cooke's output was more consistent, but I don't think the highs of his body of work can compete with Marvin's.

and I have been listening to Got to Give It Up a lot in the past few days and have come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, the perfect song.

sam is the only US soul singer i'd pick over marvin

I love Marvin but Sam moves that much more.

Sam Cooke

Much love for Sam Cooke, but for a romantic evening at home, I'm going to put on Marvin every time.

Sam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFnF1yn6jfI

Sam basically wrote the book that every subsequent soul singer has cribbed from, so he wins

Unfair competition to Marvin Gaye, as Sam Cooke has the most beautiful male voice in recorded history.

Gaye

Sam basically wrote the book that every subsequent soul singer has cribbed from, so he wins

this overstatement begins from a false premise - it's not like Cooke is a Louis Armstrong basically inventing new shit from whole cloth all day - he's turning up the levels of the gospel vocal approach in a pop/rhythm & blues context. it's innovative, no doubt, but it's not this fearsome force of originality; it's syncretic. I mean, is Sam Cooke lesser than the models he based his style on? obviously not, so the idea that he's the best because he got there first, this is some Hongroism

Also, it's not as if there weren't other prominent, innovative contemporaries working at the same time as Cooke. Ray Charles, anyone?

Ray Charles, anyone?

Yeah, the claim Cooke invented soul kind of ignores Ray Charles, who recorded "I Got a Woman" two years before Cooke went pop.

Another argument in Gaye's favor is that it often sounds to me like his style was much jazzier than Cooke's. One of the problems I have with Cooke's Billie Holiday tribute album is that he clearly didn't get jazz phrasing - he's just too pitch perfect, that tone too pure liquid gold when some of those songs need a little iron & rust in them. Gaye's early, Nat King Cole influenced recordings don't really work, but I think he learned enough from obsessing over Cole and the jazz traditions Cole emerged from to understand something about how to flirt around a lyric, and thought about ways of using his vocals as pure sound in ways that didn't merely chase after beauty, but sought and produced something that was compellingly unkempt and strange.

marvin

I agree with the guy that said it isn't fair to Marvin. Marvin is an albums guy, you should vote for him. I really like Sam Cooke's folk influences.

I agree that Harlem Square Club is the greatest live album of all time

but What's Going on is the greatest... album of all time

so Marvin wins

Did Marvin Gaye sing lost & lookin'? no? Sam Cooke then.

just found Live At The Harlem Square Club on vinyl yesterday, one week before my birthday. best birthday present i ever gave myself. oh yeah, Sam Cooke was born on my birthday. NO CONTEST.

Sam Cooke vs Curtis Mayfield could've been a contest.

Sam Cooke and Ray Charles are my favorites of the artists mentioned here. Sort of like the Beatles and the Stones of soul.

Agree with Moka. For what he did with the Impressions and then solo- I think he is way underrated. Did Sam Cooke write the music and lyrics?

Yes. Sam Cooke wrote the music and lyrics and started a label and produced.

Sam Cooke's career was too damn short for him to have the range of great songs and vocal styles that Marvin Gaye had.

this

so grudgingly I vote Marvin Gaye...now take that godamn gun away from my head

A vote for Marvin is not a vote against Sam.

Haha, m coleman otm.

Sam. Better songs, better voice, IMO.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that's right

It's weird to vote against an artist whose brief career never stepped wrongly versus someone who outlived him and wasn't afraid to fail. Not a slight against Cooke, just sayin.

against = for

Cooke made some false steps, I don't think there's any denying that (his supper-club/Nat King Cole-wannabe routine never really worked, for example). And J0hn's correct to point out that I'm unfairly priveleging Cooke as an "originator" (always a debatable term) but I dunno there's just SOMETHING about Sam as an innovator and as a template that is so striking and runs so deep... for ex. you can still hear his phrasing being copied/quoted decades later, and in the weirdest places (whether its Steve Perry/Journey or R. Kelly)

x-posts

Does innovation matter?

I should quote the late film critic Robin Wood on the perils of innovation.

I'm of two minds about innovation mattering... on the other hand, when I hear Cooke I can instinctively grasp WHY he influenced so many, it's like a train I want to get on cuz it looks like its headed somewhere great and everyone on it is having a wonderful time and its shiny and new and fun to ride. when innovation's like that, yeah, it matters.

I'm gonna have to go with Marvin on this on, only because Sam never really reach into the depths that Marvin did. Songs like "your the man" "mercy me" and Flyin' High there's no comparison to Marvin's body of work! So for me Marvin wins, vocally though thats another question... But as far as artist stand point NO ONE compares to The Great Marvin

The drumming is sick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCkY31unmY

man that record is so good

Yes to In Our Lifetime. Details on it from Wiki (some from the Ritz book on Gaye) I did not know :

one of Marvin's touring and recording musicians, bassist Frank Blair, decided to take the contents of the album's master tapes to Motown's Hollywood offices, which was done unbeknownst to Gaye, who was remixing and editing the album in Odyssey Studios in London. Motown, still angered over Gaye's backing away from the Love Man project, revised the album for several weeks.

When In Our Lifetime was finally issued in recording stores on January 15, 1981, Marvin was angry over its rush release.[16] Gaye later said, "How could they embarrass me like that? I was humiliated. They also added guitar licks and bass lines.(The former actually happened with Heavy Love Affair.) How dare they second guess my artistic decisions? Can you imagine saying to an artist, say Picasso, 'Okay Pablo, you've been fooling with this picture long enough. We'll take this unfinished canvas and add a leg here, an arm there. You might be the artist, but you're behind schedule, so we'll finish this painting for you. If you don't like the results, Pablo, baby, that's tough!' I was heartbroken. I was deeply hurt. Motown went behind my back. That's something I'll never forgive or forget."[17][18] Upon hearing it, he said the label had re-edited the album without his rightful permission in which Motown admitted to trying to make the album commercially viable.[17] However, sales for the album were low, despite its critical success, producing a sole R&B hit with "Praise" and peaking at number thirty-two on the Billboard Top 200 album charts, but hitting number six on the Billboard R&B album charts. After its release, Marvin asked to be let go from his contract.

It's probably been shared before but here's Gaye performing the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, famously, in 4/4 time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2KYZ1BritY

There was a controversy at the time over whether Houston had lip-synched. She had. The difficult chord changes, the cumbersome phrasing, and the unpredictability of the weather made it standard practice for singers performing the anthem at the Super Bowl to sing to a prerecorded track. (Houston sang the song live not long after, in a hastily arranged TV special, which quieted any doubters.) When Houston was initially asked to sing the anthem, weeks before, she told her longtime bandleader and arranger Rickey Minor that the only version of the song she liked was Marvin Gaye’s performance at the 1983 N.B.A. All-Star Game, with him accompanied by a simple drum machine, a performance now mostly known only to hardcore soul enthusiasts. “It wasn’t rushed,” she said. “He was able to take his time.”

That was enough for Minor, who, in the days before YouTube, tracked down a VHS copy of Gaye’s performance and, together with the composer John Clayton, Jr., made the radical choice to move the song from a 3/4 time signature to 4/4, giving Houston more room inside each measure to nurture the notes.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/anthem-of-freedom-how-whitney-houston-remade-the-star-spangled-banner