Original subtitles

[film reeling]

Downloaded from YTS.MX

[dramatic music]

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[police radio chattering]

- [Narrator] Sam Cooke is the most successful pop star

of the late 1950s and early 60s, along with Elvis Presley.

To this day, everyone knows his classic pop songs,

such as A Change is Gonna Come, Cupid, or Wonderful World.

Yet no one knows the personal story

of this outstanding pop pioneer,

whose life ended all too soon.

- Everybody wanted to be Sam Cooke's producer.

Because you gonna have hit after hit after hit.

- He had a voice that people listened to.

And there's nothing that crosses a color line,

hatred, discrimination quicker than music.

- He and Ray Charles were probably the earliest figures

who understood that there was a business side to music

that they needed to control.

- One thing, he didn't wanna be

was a slave to anybody or anything.

And he wanted to control his music, control his finances.

- He had his own publishing company,

he had his own label, he was kind of an entrepreneur.

- There were so many layers to his music,

he could sing pop, he could sing soul,

he was the future of black America through music.

- His connection with Mohammed Ali was no accident.

Martin Luther King and those two guys, they were kind of

a holy trinity of Black Culture of that time.

- [Narrator] To this day, Sam Cooke's entire story

has yet to be told, for the simple reason

that his story is mainly dictated

by those who control his music rights.

That's why this film will have

to do without Sam Cooke's great music.

Instead it concentrates on his business activities

and the circumstances surrounding his violent death.

[ominous music]

[audience applauding]

- Sam, come sit, make yourself at home.

What year, we're reminiscing today

and using all time old time goodies and all that stuff.

- His last interview with Dick Clark, he told Dick Clark,

I'm gonna be on Bandstand again,

but I won't be performing, I'll be the producer.

I'm gonna be the guy behind all the hits.

I'm not just gonna be the one having the hits.

- What do you hope to do in the future,

you're doing different things now, aren't you?

- Yeah, well now, Dick,

I'm working mostly with other young singers--

- Wait a minute, what would be the greatest thing

in the world, that could happen to you,

if you had the choice?

- The greatest thing to happen to me,

if all the singers I'm connected with had hits.

- I will knock on wood and hope that the whole thing goes.

Sam Cooke, ladies and gentlemen.

- [Narrator] But on December 11th, 1964,

the inconceivable happens;

a tragic fall from the height of stardom.

[ominous music]

Sam Cooke, one of the most talented singers

and music producers of his generation,

is shot in a shabby motel.

[sirens blaring]

[background chattering]

- I got a call at 6:30 in the morning from Larry McCormack

who was on KGFJ, he was the news anchor, to say,

Zelda, I wanted you to know, Sam's been shot.

And I said, What hospital is he in, where is he?

He said, He's not, Zelda, he's dead.

And I lost it for a few days, I just lost it.

[light music]

[phone ringing]

- 5:00 in the morning I got a call, woke me up at 5:00,

and it was a dear friend of mine, Lester Sill.

And Lester said, Al, I don't know,

I just heard on the radio, that Sam had been shot.

And I said, Oh my God, okay, I said,

I'm gonna get dressed, I said, What hospital is he in?

And he said, No Al, he's dead.

And that just broke my heart.

So, since my wife is a reporter,

she got up and drove down to the police station

and was able to view the police report,

and they told in the police report what had happened.

[light music]

- The official story was that Sam met a lady that night

at a bar called Martoni's.

From there, went to another club called PJ's after that.

And then supposedly Sam took her

to a motel against her will.

- Mr. Cooke checking into the motel with the young woman,

went to the room and she goes to the bathroom,

she comes out, and then he goes into the bathroom.

While he is in the bathroom, she quickly rushes out,

grabs her clothes and inadvertently, grabs his clothes.

He comes out, he finds her missing,

he doesn't have any clothes except a coat,

he proceeds the manager's office,

and asks where the woman is that he had checked in with.

And he's told by the manager, Bertha Franklin,

that that woman is not there.

He leaves and he comes back,

and now she has the door closed,

she doesn't want to talk to him anymore,

reportedly he pushes open the door,

kind of breaks the stripping down,

comes in and begins to harass her,

and then physically assault her.

While they are struggling and tumbling she reaches over,

grabs the gun and she shoots him.

After she shoots him and he proclaims, Lady you shot me,

he still comes after her where upon she grabs some kind of

a large stick, which was a large broom handle or something

and she proceeds to beat him until he collapses.

[police radio chattering]

- Certainly, White America saw the clean cut

almost collegiate singer and thought to themselves;

How could he be in a motel in L.A. and died being shot in,

the newspaper said a seedy situation?

- This was really troubling to the Black community.

Did he really make a silly mistake, wrong place,

the wrong time in a seedy motel?

Was he set up?

I don't know.

- There were more things about the way Sam died

that didn't make sense than what did make sense.

- Walter Ward, who was the lead singer of The Olympics,

he said, Yeah Joel, he said, He was murdered,

he was not, nothin' happened that night, you know.

The way they say it happened with the motel,

he said that was all made up.

[light music]

- What really happened, nobody knows,

except the woman that killed him and the girl

that took his pants and was hiding in an alleyway.

- Elisa Boyer supposedly is the cause of my uncle's death.

- She actually, a month after Sam was killed,

was busted in a prostitute sting operation.

- I would like to see an interview with her saying,

Yeah, Sam tried to rape me that night.

[police radio chattering]

[dramatic music]

- Sam Cooke was a star that shone very brightly,

but just for a short period in time.

Some artists are tragic figures,

Sam just had a tragic ending, he wasn't a tragic figure,

he was a very good person.

- The number one black artist in the world

has kidnapped a prostitute and is gonna try to rape her.

I wouldn't buy that story!

Come on, you know, why, why?

- He was not a violent guy.

He never, I never saw him get angry,

I never saw him wanna hit anybody or do anything violent.

So, it's hard for me to believe that that's the story,

that's what happened, I don't know.

- It could have been the police, it could have been the mob,

it could have been, you know, it could have been

the last wife, everybody needs to be a suspect.

- I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of it

and find out what really really happened.

- [Narrator] Sam Cooke's tragic murder,

to this day it is regarded as

one of rock and roll's greatest mysteries.

But without a doubt, Sam Cooke's significance

reaches way beyond the pop charts.

[dramatic music]

[audience applauding]

- I have a dream today.

With this faith, we will be able to work together,

to pray together, to struggle together,

to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together.

[light music]

- [Narrator] Unfortunately, his memorable song,

A Change Is Gonna Come, can't be played in this film.

It is considered a musical heritage of the United States.

50 years after Martin Luther King's murder,

it's more relevant than ever.

- A Change Is Gonna Come is something that will be forever

connected to the Civil Rights Movement.

When Obama was running for president the first time

and the song surfaced at rallies for Obama,

and Obama quoted the lyric, A Change is Gonna Come,

that felt to me like, Wow, Sam Cooke's prophecy

had come true from the time of his life here

and the time of Obama being elected president.

And it really felt like that was the complete arch

of the story of that song.

- When I hear A Change Is Gonna Come, it's so sad

because he bares his soul in that song,

it's so painfully moving to listen to Sam Cooke sing

A Change Is Gonna Come.

- A Change Is Gonna Come, he said,

was the hardest song that he ever had to write.

And the song was never intended to be on an album by Sam,

it was intended to be on an album by other artist,

and the proceeds would go to Martin Luther King's SLC.

- [Narrator] But the song was not released as planned

on the album, The Stars Salute Martin Luther King Jr.

And so far, there is no information indicating

the royalties were ever donated to charity.

At that time, Sam Cooke had already relinquished

total control of his entire body of work to Tracey Limited,

a company with an unclear ownership structure,

founded by Sam Cooke's manager, Allen Klein.

- There are definitely people, who feel very strongly

that Allen Klein had something to do with Sam Cooke's death

and that it had something to do with the publishing rights

and the ownership of the music.

- He would never have agreed to have someone else

own the rights to his music.

This was very important to him to have his own company

and it be belonged to him.

- There's always been a history in rock and roll music

of wealthy people controlling the music publishing

and the music rights of artists who, generally speaking,

come from very poor backgrounds,

say if we can generalize and say that.

So, Allen Klein was a person who got very,

very wealthy, based on the rights

of other people's music, other people's creations.

And Sam Cooke was the very first person

who he did that with, and because he did that

with Sam Cooke, the Beatles and the Stone's

agreed to let him publish their music

and control their music with the promise

of making them a lot of money.

He did make Sam Cooke a lot of money,

but he also made himself even more money,

I think, in that process.

And anyone who comes along, who tries to step into

the middle of that equation, and say,

Oh, I wanna do a documentary film about this,

well, you kind of rocking the boat I guess,

that's my impression.

- [Narrator] The current headquarters of ABKCO Music

and Records in New York, founded by Sam Cooke's

former manager Allen Klein.

All our requests for interviews have remained unanswered.

- I've heard the story actually from Allen Klein

when I first met with him about how he would stand

in the way of people wanting to make films about Sam Cooke.

- They're great, because they're enforcing

the intellectual property and the life rights

of these artists and make it sure they get paid,

but they overdo it, they are in such control of it,

because they wanna control the narrative,

they wanna control the story, and I think part of it is,

what we're hinting at today, what we're looking at today

is I think part of the narrative.

- [Mike] Let's do a little capsule version

of the Sam Cooke story, how does all that--

- A caption version, born, my father was a minister.

I started singing in the church naturally

because I was exposed to Gospel singing first, Mike.

Came out of school, went with a professional Gospel group

called the Soul Stirrers, sang around the country

with them for about five years, decided to go on my own,

made a song called You Send Me, it sold about a million

and a half copies for me, luckily enough.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Back to the beginnings.

Like a lot of African Americans in the 1930s,

Sam Cooke's family heads North in search for a better life.

Their destination, Bronzeville, Chicago.

- My name is Eugene Jamison, my mother,

Agnes Cooke, was Sam's youngest sister.

To us he was just our magical uncle Sam,

who could make things happen.

He stressed was that, I'll do the singing

and I'll make the money doing that.

What I need you guys to do is grow up to be lawyers,

I'm gonna need a lawyer, I'm gonna need an accountants.

I'm gonna need this, that, hence my major, accounting.

- My name is Erik Greene, I am the great nephew

of the legendary Sam Cooke,

my grandmother was Sam's oldest sister.

I renamed the street that Sam Cooke grew up on,

right at 36th and Cottage Grove

in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago,

and when ABKCO found out about it,

they wanted to participate in and speak and,

no, this was my doing and this was my project,

and I chose to keep it to the people

that I wanted to participate in it.

- [Narrator] In Bronzeville, Sam Cooke attends

Wendell Phillips High School.

He discovers his love of music

while he is still in his teens.

- Sam grew up with singing in the church

with his brothers and sisters.

They were just an informal group

called The Singing Children, where all cute little kids

and they would get up four or five of em,

Sam and his brothers and sisters,

and they would all sing before the church.

From the Singing Children, he joined a group

called The Highway QC's, which were young men like himself,

that sang around Chicago churches,

and he was a standout there.

And he was recruited from the Highway QC's

into the Soul Stirrers because

he was such a hit with The Highway QC's.

- The Soul Stirrers were the group back then.

They were the number quartet.

When they invited him to join them,

'cause he was just a teenager, he was only 18,

and SR Crain and RB Robinson promised him

that they would take care of him,

and he went on the road with them.

The rest was history, as far as the Soul Stirrers.

- Gospel programs were set up

essentially as musical competitions,

and when he would go to them, he would be out sung often.

The other groups could do a better job of singing,

but what is the fellow Soul Stirrers kept noticing,

was that the girls, and to some degree

the teenage boys who admired him, would push to the front

of the church, and he had this ability to win them over.

- In the 50s there was a group

of very religious black people,

and if you would listen to any other music,

it was the devil's music, you couldn't play Little Richard,

you couldn't play all this,

Hank Ballard and The Midnighters,

it was just no way that the two musics come together,

so Sam Cooke had to find a way of doing that.

So he recorded under the name

of Dale Cook for his first record.

But he also knew that if he eventually become a star,

he was going to use his own name.

That was just a stepping stone to greatness,

and greatness came immediately to him.

- He liked the pop and the R&B.

He talked my grandfather about it.

He told me that Papa wasn't very pleased at first,

but he did give him his blessing.

He told him, God gave you a gift to sing,

and what you have to do, is use that gift,

it would be a sin not to use the gift that God gave you.

So, if that's what you wanna do, do it, and do it well.

And boy, did he do it well.

So as far as I'm concerned, the transition from Sam Cooke,

from church music to secular music

was smooth, easy, and beautiful.

- Also here at Dolphin's of Hollywood

you can either lose or get those Blues.

- [Narrator] Sam Cooke leaves Chicago,

gospel, and the bigoted world of his childhood behind.

He finds new friends and role models in Los Angeles.

- Sam Cooke, he would actually babysit my father,

my father and my uncles, when they were kids.

He would come by the house and he would babysit em.

My grandfather was actually trying to open a shop

in Hollywood back in the 1940s,

but him being black was not allowed to actually open a shop.

So, what he did, he went to Central Avenue,

which is in South Central Los Angeles,

a very well occupied black community,

it was very popular back then,

and the idea behind it was just that,

if he can't bring South Central sounds to Hollywood,

he'll bring Hollywood to South Central,

and so he named it Dolphin's of Hollywood.

- [Man] Put em all together and what do you have?

The super duper one record store, Dolphins of Hollywood.

Man alive, on with the jive, coming to you from 10-65.

- [Jamelle] His shop was like a party, everyone came here.

So, they came here, they listened to music,

they listened to the radio show with the DJ Huggy Boy.

- I used to go to Dolphin's of Hollywood and enjoy.

They had a vast amount of recordings, it's quite a thing

to go to Dolphin's of Hollywood back in the 50s.

- So, he had a record shop, but then he also had

a recording studio in the back,

in which he would do a lot of recordings,

as well as he had a radio broadcast show in the front,

and he would do it out the front window.

One of the DJ's at the store was a DJ

that got Sam Cooke's record, You send me,

and when the radio show came on that night,

basically they played that song over

and over and over again, that whole night,

and with just tons of requests for it.

Everyone came down to the shop,

they were looking to buy the record.

Everyone wanted to hear the record,

they kept replaying it, and then Sam Cooke

made an appearance there at the shop,

the same day they were first actually breaking the record.

[upbeat music]

- John Dolphin and Sam Cooke were friends,

they became friends in Los Angeles.

He did come to his shop, and John Dolphin,

being the businessman that he was,

taught Sam about publishing rights

and that's how you're gonna make your money, one,

but that's also how you're gonna gain

and keep your control over your music.

And at the end of the day, it is show business.

And artists get so caught up in the art,

we suck at business, and I think that John was able

to get Sam to understand how important the business side is,

because if your business fails, then you fail,

no matter how great you are.

I don't think he recognized it at first, Sam,

but I think as he watched how the music that he brought

to his shop was just not for black people,

but is for all people, and Sam had that voice

that any woman would croon over, so why not?

So, I think it was a smart business friendship

that they had together.

[ominous music]

- Dolphin's Record Store was the only place

that blacks, at that time, could secure black music,

because white record stores wouldn't carry them.

- [Narrator] Interest in black pop music

rose rapidly at the end of the 1950s.

Dolphin's of Hollywood established itself

as a meeting place for black and white alike.

- William Parker was police chief around that time,

basically hated to see the integrated scene.

He wanted all the races to be separate,

and Dolphin's of Hollywood was totally against that,

they was the total opposite of that.

And my grandfather probably became a nuisance to the LAPD,

and they would harass him like constantly at his shop,

they would shut down his shop,

they would scare all white people

from coming to Central Avenue.

I mean, they would scare them from coming to into his shop.

I spoke to this one lady who used to come to the shop,

white lady, back in the time when she was a teenager.

She said she would get stopped every time as a white lady,

she would get stopped by the police and they would tell her

that she was gonna get gang raped

if she was to go down into the Central Avenue area.

And this was, they would do this everyone,

they would just try to scare

all the white teenagers from coming down there.

- Police were basically protecting state law.

So, if segregation was the law,

African Americans often times were charged for crimes

that were against their own civil rights.

- [Narrator] Despite segregation,

John Dolphin's record store was a success.

The danger lurked elsewhere.

- One of these guys that he recorded,

his name was Percy Ivy, he was asking for royalties,

asking for money being paid, but he was just a recording

that didn't work out right.

He was a wannabe singer that,

he really wasn't good enough to put out.

- At the end of the day, it was about money

and just disappointment, and I think that years and years

of being said no to, was one last no that he couldn't take.

[suspenseful music]

- [Narrator] On February 1st, 1958,

John Dolphin was shot and killed.

The killer was quickly apprehended,

presented to the public and convicted.

It was the failing musician, Percy Ivy.

- So, there's my grandfather, there's Sam Cooke.

I mean, it could have been a lot of different things.

I just have theories in my head

like all these incredible entrepreneur people

are dying under suspicious circumstances.

And you can't really say, yeah.

- When Sam was on the road, he dealt with a lot of racism.

He dealt with it in his own way.

He refused to sing to segregated audiences.

If there was a show that was segregated,

Sam would either cancel the show, or in one instance

in Little Rock Arkansas back in 1958,

where they had sectioned off the black audience

from the white audience, Sam said, Okay, alright,

I'll give the show but I am gonna turn

and sing to the black, and you can't tell me

what direction to turn.

So, he was always putting on protest in his own way.

- One time they ran out of gas.

So, my Uncle Charles walked to get some gas,

he left Sam sitting in the car.

Police came up asked him

why he was in the car sitting there, he told them.

They told Sam to get out of the car

and push the car off to the side of the road.

He said, Man, I am a singer I am not a pusher.

You wanna put a ticket on it?

You ticket it and I'll pay for it.

But I'm not pushing nothin'.

My name is Sam Cooke, I'm an entertainer.

If you've never heard of me, I bet your wife have.

So, when you go home, you ask your wife

if she's ever heard of Sam Cooke and I bet they know me.

They went all down the road and let Sam alone.

- Well, it was dangerous for him

as well as any other entertainer.

You have probably read up on the famous police beating

of Miles Davis in the 1950s, in which he simply had parked

his car in the street and the police asked him to move it

and he refused to do so, and he was violently beat.

And so it wasn't uncommon to beat any black

who talked back or who stood up for themselves.

That was the social protocol of the day.

- [Narrator] In the early 1960s,

the black civil rights movement is at its peak,

and even the lives of internationally renowned musicians

and politicians are in jeopardy.

Sam Cooke's family, friends, and fans

doubt the official crime reports.

[ominous music]

- When Sam Cooke was killed in 1964, I was 26 years old

and it was very sad, it was shocking.

We did not want to believe the circumstances

under which he got killed.

- I would suspect, that his death

was under a clouded circumstance.

The fact that it wasn't investigated completely,

I think the fact that it was a contrived theory

that was presented to the coroner is a likely scenario.

- There are definitely people who over the years have said

that Sam didn't die there in the room,

or he was beaten close to death elsewhere and shot,

and dragged there and put there,

and that was all part of the conspiracy to kill him.

And you know, it doesn't take that much

to believe that line of thinking.

- [Narrator] What exactly happened

on the night of December 11, 1964 remains a mystery.

The official version, stating that Sam Cooke got shot

in self defense after attacking the manager

of a seedy Motel, was established very quickly.

But to this day, Sam Cooke's friends,

family, and fans remain suspicious.

One of the few living witnesses concerning that night

is Sam Cooke's good friend and producer Al Schmitt.

- We had dinner at Martoni's, my wife and I and Sam.

Sam and I talked about meeting later at another club

called PJ's, which was kind of a big hangout.

So, my wife and I left, but as we left,

Sam got up and he went to the bar.

At the bar was Jim Bensey and a girl, an oriental girl.

Sam went up there and he started talking to them as we left.

That was the last time I saw Sam.

[ominous music]

- What is suspect is that Sam Cooke had the means

and the recognition to go to any hotel in the city.

He didn't have to come South.

- Sam would have taken a woman to a hotel,

but he would not have taken her to a sleazy

three dollar a night hooker's hotel.

- How is he gonna rape her?

He's in the shower and did he say, Hey bitch get into bed

and when I come I out I'm gonna rape you?

I mean, it makes no sense.

[ominous music]

- Again, here he is tussling with a 55-year old lady

who basically didn't have any marks on.

Sam was shot underneath the armpit.

That was an execution style.

That was a very calculated shot.

[gun firing]

- Some are saying the body was moved,

that it was done someplace else.

Will we ever know the truth?

- [Narrator] The investigation was concluded swiftly.

The trial took place a mere five days after the crime.

[background chattering]

- I would agree that this hearing was not anywhere near

as detailed and probative as it should have been.

- After a while, just for a couple of seconds

he had pinned me down on the bed and he pulled me up

and he pulled my sweater off and he ripped my dress off.

- Neither of these ladies,

Elisa Boyer or Bertha Franklin had an attorney.

- I started shootin'.

- [Attorney] And how far was Mr. Cooke away from you

when you started shooting?

- He wasn't too far, he was at close range.

- [Attorney] And how many times did you fire this pistol?

- Three times.

- I think the shooting was absolutely unnecessary.

And let me say that, I believe that this was not,

legally speaking, justifiable homicide.

He had no weapon, he had no weapon,

and she was not in fear of her life, that's the bottom line.

- [Narrator] Nevertheless, Bertha Franklin,

the shooter, was acquitted on self defense.

- When have you ever witnessed or saw a witness

sit on a witness stand with dark glasses on?

- Sam Cooke was Sam Cooke,

he didn't really need to rape anyone,

as a lot of people have pointed out.

He had money to pay her and she was a prostitute,

so that part we know, I think it's pretty safe

to say that's fictitious.

- Are you gonna put down

your loaded gun and pick up a broom?

- I don't really see that Bertha Franklin

could have done that.

- Both his hands were all broken.

His head was all smashed in

and that wasn't done with a broomstick.

- The bullet that came out of Sam,

all that was in police evidence and it's lost.

- The other people who testified who were at the hotel,

nobody heard a gunshot.

- The fact that Sam was shot with a 22 caliber pistol,

well, Bertha Franklin had a registered gun but it was a 32.

- So, the whole story just really doesn't make sense.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] Within just a few days of the court hearing,

Sam Cooke's first funeral was held in Chicago.

- They flew the body here to Chicago

because this is where he was from,

this is where the majority of the family is.

[dramatic music]

There was so many people,

they had to literally fight to get us through.

My grandmother in seeing him yelled out,

They beat him, look what they did to my beautiful baby.

And they have or few of our family members

standing around the casket including my younger sister.

And in the background, there is me,

baby face Gene standing next to the lamp.

Muhammad Ali, Herbert Mohammed,

different people all came to view the body, Mahalia Jackson,

as well as all the family and everybody, The Staples.

After the viewing, the procession went to Tabernacle Church,

we went down there and Staple Singers sang,

Mavis sang her heart out, it was a beautiful service.

The next day my grandfather and a few others

went back to L.A. and they had the service in Los Angeles.

- My wife and I went to the funeral.

As we were walking from our car to the church,

people were playing Sam Cooke in their apartments

and their windows were open and you could just hear

Sam Cooke all the way to the church.

At the church everybody was there to sing.

Ray Charles sang.

- It was packed when I got there,

you couldn't get in, there were no seats, nothing.

I wanted to get in there.

And the minister was outside.

Even he wasn't gonna let me in.

I said, You don't know, who, are you kidding?

There's no way, I beat him up.

I was pounding him, pounding him, pounding him,

so I got in, I sat in the second row.

- Everybody was crying and goosebumps

and it was just an incredible, incredible show and funeral,

there were so many entertainers.

It was just a wonderful, wonderful tribute

and sent out to a wonderful guy.

[upbeat music]

Recording Sam Cooke was like fishing in a barrel.

It was so easy, everybody wanted to be Sam Cooke's producer

because you gonna have hit after hit after hit.

I was a staff engineer at RCA,

and RCA had just signed Sam.

And I was the engineer on 90% of the records he did for RCA.

I did Twistin' The Night Away, I did Cupid,

which we knew it's gonna be a big hit,

I did Bring It On Home with Lou Rawls, he and Lou Rawls,

we knew that was gonna be a big hit,

I did Another Saturday Night we knew that was gonna,

everything he did was gonna be a hit.

I mean, it was just amazing.

I produced Shake, and that was a pretty big hit for him.

So yeah, everything he did,

it was like money in the bank.

And he was an incredible writer, songwriter.

He wrote most of his own material.

And even though we were the producers

and we would guide some of the things,

he was mainly the producer.

He would tell the musicians how, what feel he wanted,

how he wanted this played, what the tempo should be.

I mean, that's why I say

it was like fishing in a barrel, he was so easy.

- Dick Clark once said about him,

Sam Cooke knew the business

way before he was supposed to know the business.

So, he researched and he learned and he knew,

that that's where the money was.

And he always said that no one

is gonna get rich of my blood and sweat, but me.

- [Dick] How many songs have you written?

- Dick, I don't know,

but I've written just about all I've sang.

- Which is several hundred?

- Well, I can estimate this way.

I've been in the business now, Dick, for about six years

and I haven't had a song that wasn't a hit,

so I was on the charts I think

from the time I started until now.

- This is an amazing record.

Now Sam, most people don't get to do this.

What's the answer?

Now here's a man, who's career so far is about six years old

in this field, not counting on what went on before.

What's the secret?

- I think the secret is really observation, Dick.

- [Dick] What do you mean?

Well, if you observe what's going on

and try to figure out how people are thinking,

and determine the times of your day,

I think you can always write something

that people will understand.

- Now you solidified your own career,

as far as the singing and the records go.

What do you hope to do in the future,

you're doing different things now, aren't you?

- Yeah, well now, Dick,

I'm working mostly with other young singers.

- Wait a minute, wait a minute.

What could be the greatest thing in the world

that could happen to you if you had your choice?

- The greatest thing to happen to me,

if all the singers I'm connected with had hits.

- [Narrator] As performer, writer, and producer,

Sam Cooke soon became a major force in the music industry.

In his friend JW Alexander's apartment,

he laid the foundation for his own business.

- JW Alexander was a gospel singer from Chicago,

a little bit older than Sam,

but they became good friends because they saw each other

in the same circles in Chicago gospel during the 50s.

JW Alexander had the presence of mind

to form his own music company,

and he didn't have any songs in his music company.

So, Sam wanted to piggyback off of with that idea,

to have a company which he could sign his songs to,

so he had eventual ownership and royalty.

[upbeat piano music]

- So I'm Joe Kellum and currently I'm an attorney

and work with Thomson Reuters,

but as a record collector, I also do work with musics

and I've worked with the Society of Singers,

which is a group that helps to get money for artists

of the 50s and 60s, who weren't able to support themselves.

Now Sam was big into setting up something for himself.

He wanted his own record label,

he wanted his own publishing company,

he wanted his own management company.

And so in 1962,'63,'64, he really focused

on signing the best artists in the world.

He had signed Mel Carter, he had signed the Sims Twins,

he signed Johnnie Morisette,

he signed a lot of really good talents,

and he recorded the talent

that he was gonna put out on his own record label.

He had Derby records and SAR records.

He also had KAGS music publishing.

And so, the KAGS music publishing, the same thing.

He was ready, he was really gonna take on the world,

and he would have been a lot bigger than Motown records,

'cause he had really a leg up on Motown.

If you're somebody in the record business at the time,

you would have been really threatened

with that and you would have been

really threatened with his empowerment.

- He wanted success, he wanted to be famous,

he wanted to own a record company.

You know, he wanted to become like a business man as well,

and have money, a lot of money.

He did not have a lot of money.

- The only person in Sam's office and businesses

that wasn't a leech and who cared about him

and didn't think about him as a meal ticket,

and that was Zelda.

Zelda I think you met, a beautiful lady, beautiful lady.

- We had an upright piano and the two desks,

JW and mine and a filing cabinet.

- [Narrator] Zelda Sands had experience in publishing

and became Sam Cooke's most valuable employee.

- There I was, I went through all the files

of the copyrights, and so it progressed

until we started making some money.

I still didn't get any raise or anything,

but I was so happy there.

[upbeat music]

- One of the things that Sam was very adapt at

was recognizing talent early on.

He recognized Bobby Womack when he was just a little boy,

he brought Billy Preston on, he signed Billy Preston

to his record label when he was only 16 years old.

- [Narrator] The pop visionary created studios

throughout Los Angeles, the Soul Stations.

- Soul stations were an idea of Sam's

where he could have local artists come

and they could record music.

So they were actually recording studios set up

around Los Angeles, where musicians could come in

and meet one and other and collaborate

with one and other, could use the instruments,

could use the recording equipment.

- It was essentially let's have a little Motown Records,

two or three places all over L.A,

and we'll find local talent

and we'll have this great band to back em.

And the records that come out

will be owned by a black guy, Sam Cooke.

And it would benefit everybody.

It will give people jobs, it will help him.

So I think that was the idea behind the soul stations.

- [Narrator] Sam Cooke's music business was flourishing.

He bought himself a house in Los Feliz,

an affluent neighborhood dominated by whites.

- Yeah, what a house, oh boy, that was his castle.

It was quite an accomplishment,

for a guy that came from a Chicago fourth floor walkup

to a home in such an exclusive area.

- Success is a relative proposition

and one of the ways that you express success

is in your lifestyle, and I think that he made enough money

to live a certain lifestyle.

[camera shutter clicking]

- Again, if you look at the big picture

of African's history in North America,

he's paralleling the idea that people didn't want

just to vote or to be manager of a store.

They wanted to own the store,

they wanted to be the mayor or the president,

and Sam Cooke was a model for that going on.

Towards the end of his life, I think his switch

to Allen Klein, who was the man

who at the end of his life was his manager,

was because Allen Klein could get him out,

he thought, from under RCA

to where he controlled the music and the publishing.

- [Narrator] The assertive and charismatic accountant

succeeded where many artists of the early pop era failed,

he collected what the artists were due

from the all powerful record companies.

Sam Cooke sees him as the perfect partner.

- Sam met Allen Klein in the spring of 1963,

and Allen Klein supposedly approached Sam and said that,

I'm an accountant and what I specialize in

is finding royalties from the record labels

that artists weren't aware

that they may have been entitled to.

And eventually he found that RCA

had had some money that they owed Sam

and that's where their relationship started.

- [Narrator] In 1963, Allen Klein

plans to renegotiate the contracts

with the record company RCA to Sam Cooke's advantage.

He proposes they establish a new company, Tracey Limited.

A company with an unclear ownership structure.

- Allen Klein set up a tax shelter, Tracey Limited, for Sam.

Tracey was one of Sam's daughters,

and it was Sam's understanding that this was set up

as his record label, but it ended up

that Allen Klein actually owned Tracey, whereas Sam didn't,

and Sam was under the impression that he owned it.

- [Man] Tracey. - [Man] Tracey.

- [Man] Tracey. - [Man] Tracey Limited.

- I heard they mention Tracey all the time,

but I didn't know what was going on.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] Donald Piper, a paralegal,

dedicated his life to Sam Cooke.

In his free time, the president of the Sam Cooke Fan Club

collects and studies all publicly accessible documents

about the singer, including his business activities.

- As a paralegal, I've worked in a law firm

for almost 30 years, I've done a lot of investigative work,

and I was just very curious from my background

about how that came to be that Sam was on RCA

and they obviously had the rights to his music,

but as of this time, ABKCO had the rights.

So, I endeavored to do a copyright search

of the copyright office to discover how that happened.

[dramatic music]

Tracey Limited is a Nevada corporation.

It was created in 1963.

It was presented to Sam as a company

that would own his produced records.

The company would own all of the rights to Sam's music

and there would be a separate agreement

between Tracey and RCA to distribute the music.

What's missing from the articles of incorporation

that were filed was a statement

about the shareholders of the company.

The articles speak to the directors of the company.

The board of directors serves

under the pleasure of the shareholders.

Well, in this particular case,

there was only one shareholder of Tracey Limited

and that person could change the board of directors,

could name a different person as president at any time.

And that person was Allen Klein.

- [Narrator] The shareholders of Tracey Limited

have never been disclosed and,

under American law, are not required to be.

Nevertheless, from his study of the documents

and changes to the Board of Directors, Donald Piper believes

that Allen Klein was the main shareholder.

[dramatic music]

- Sam believed everything Allen Klein told him.

He would stand at my desk and say, Oh, you know,

we're doin' this now and Klein is gonna doing this now.

He was so impressed with Klein.

I had no respect for him, I thought he was a thief,

I heard nothing but bad things about him.

My friend Florence Greenberg owned Scepter Records.

And Florence couldn't stand Allen Klein.

He had been her accountant and she begged Sam

not to go with him, not to go with Klein, to sign with him.

- He wound up all the publishing,

all the publishing he has now,

so I don't know how that worked and how that came about,

but I know that that was not a very good thing.

And I think he got Sam to sign papers

that Sam shouldn't have signed.

[ominous music]

The first time Klein walked into the office

is when they were signing, he sets down and he said,

Where are the copyrights?

I said, They're in the file.

He said, Well will you get them out for me please?

I said, Why?

He said, Well I want to take them back to New York with me.

I said, I will not!

And that was the one disagreement I ever, ever had with Sam.

Afterwards he said, Why didn't you?

I said, He would take them away and put them into his name.

- Allen Klein was basically an accountant.

But he did work with The Stones and even people say

he's responsible for breaking up The Beatles.

Paul McCartney, who I worked with

and spent a lot of time with said that,

yeah, Allen Klein was one of the reasons that they broke up.

He wanted to manage them and a couple of the guys

said we're going that way and a couple didn't want to.

And I know that had Sam not have been killed,

he would not have been happy with him.

He took advantage of the artists that he dealt with.

- [Narrator] The Rolling Stones would also succumb

to Allen Klein's contracts.

In doing so, they lose the exclusive control

of their early work.

In spite of numerous court cases,

the recordings of the early classics

of the Rolling Stones still belong to ABKCO.

- Mick Jagger, I don't think

he has a nice word to say about this guy.

And he fought for years to get

this guy off of his money, couldn't do it.

Couldn't get no satisfaction.

Doesn't wanna sing any songs from that early period,

because that puts money in somebody's hands.

- [Narrator] Back to Tracey Limited.

The changes to the board of directors

are as striking as the signatures on the documents.

- There's a change over time in the annual statements

that are filed in the Nevada Secretary of State.

This one was filed October 21st, 1963.

Sam Cooke is listed as President, Allen Klein Secretary.

On May 5th, 1964 Allen Klein is the Secretary

and you have to go all the way down here,

Sam Cooke is chairman of the board.

Officer who is not a director.

So, in other words, he's been removed

from the board of directors.

Well look here, who signed this document?

This is Allen Klein's signature.

- They also had my grandfather on the board.

After they have finished with their finagling,

Papa was no longer on the board,

Sam was not President, Sam was an employee.

[ominous music]

- Now Sam was the kind of person

if you totally disappointed him,

you didn't get a second chance.

He would tell you off, tell you why and just that's it.

And that's obviously what he did with Allen

a few days before he was killed.

- And if you believe the people around him,

before he died, he was getting ready

to get out from under Allen Klein because ultimately,

he essentially wanted to be his own manager.

It's why he started a record label.

'Cause that way he was the guy, and he had some control.

[phone ringing]

- Klein said to me when he was talking to me on the phone,

I know you think I murdered Sam Cooke.

That shocked me, hearing those words coming from his mouth.

Not I think that I was responsible for,

but I murdered Sam Cooke.

- So, a lot of people think there was a conspiracy,

that maybe Sam was targeted to be killed

because he wanted to break up with Allen Klein.

Wow, that's pretty sensational.

I don't know if that is true or not,

and Allen Klein is dead, gone, so we can't ask him.

And I don't know, I just don't know.

That's hard for me to believe.

But who knows, anything can happen.

- [Narrator] We travel to Pittsburg.

Dr. Cyril Wecht will review the forensic documents

of Sam Cooke's tragic murder.

Is there any evidence that has been overlooked?

- I am a forensic pathologist,

I'm also an attorney and I work as a forensic pathologist

and medical legal consultant.

I've done about 20,000 autopsies myself.

I have reviewed, supervised, or signed off

on about 40, 000 other autopsies.

[ominous music]

Well, nobody ever contacted me about Sam Cooke.

The autopsy was done by the deputy medical examiner

at the Office of Coroner in Los Angeles.

An office with which I am quite familiar.

The pathologist who did this autopsy,

we weren't personal friends but I remember him, Dr. Kade.

The autopsy showed the gunshot wound of entrance.

The bullet entered on the left side

and traversed across the chest,

perforating first the left lung,

then the heart and then right lung.

Bleeding, massive bleeding into both chest cavities

as result of the damage to the lungs and to the heart.

You've got people claiming

that Sam Cooke had all kinds of other injuries.

They talk about significant injuries to his knee,

I think somebody talks about fractured knee.

And they talk about fractured hands and so on.

And I would say as you look at this picture,

they do appear to be what I would call

abrasions, contusions on the knee.

However, they are not mentioned

at all in the autopsy report, zero, zero!

[ominous music]

Then the persons who have made these observations

and allegations claim that the pictures of Sam Cooke

in the coffin at the funeral home

show deformities of his hands.

I don't believe that a funeral director in America

is going to have somebody's bloodied hands open.

It's not gonna happen, I can't tell you

about other countries in the world.

We're big for open casket funerals in America,

that I do know.

[camera clicking]

Somebody has suggested that he was

shot elsewhere and brought there.

You don't get rid of blood that easily.

If he had bled out elsewhere and so on,

you're gonna have blood patterns

going in there on the floor and so on.

We don't have any of that to my knowledge.

You don't just lift up a body and shoot it somewhere

and then transport it and dump it somewhere,

it's not so easy.

It is these kinds of negligent acts,

these kinds of incomplete action

that provide the nidus for conspiratorial minded people.

It's not for me to disparage or criticize other people

who have that belief and so on,

but to make that quantum leap

from some kind of a business commercial controversy

between Sam Cooke and one or more of the people

who were involved in his professional career

with all of the things that played out

that we won't repeat now,

ultimately ending in his death

and continuing on into the autopsy

and the inquest and all the people involved.

No, I'm sorry, I can't join that parade.

- [Narrator] There is no forensic evidence

that would warrant a reevaluation of Sam Cooke's death.

But, can the witness Elisa Boyer perhaps cast new light

on the case, as has often been suspected?

Since the court trial, over 50 years ago no one has been

able to question her about what transpired that night.

- I would like to see an interview with her

saying his is what happened,

He ran out the room naked without the clothes.

I took the clothes, I left.

If she can substantiate that story,

I think that we are going up the wrong tree.

- That's why, if you could get Elisa.

She is the only one, who can tell you the truth.

- My name is Mike McCormack, I'm a private investigator.

I was working with the LAPD until 1994, when I retired.

Well, Lisa Boyer was the young lady

that was with Sam Cooke the night that he died.

It took me quite a bit of time to do it,

but by doing some research on the computer,

based upon her age and name and other names that she used,

I was able to locate her, I believe she is still alive.

- [Narrator] We found the now 76-year-old woman,

but her faculties have diminished.

When asked about the crime, she repeated her testimony

from back then almost verbatim.

Elisa Boyer ultimately leads nowhere.

[ominous music]

Nevertheless, there are people who believe in a connection

between Sam's demise and his publishing affairs.

- I definitely think it was a conspiracy.

I don't know who all the players were in the conspiracy.

If you really trace the money, the key thing to do

is to go back and look at Sam Cooke's money.

Look where his money went immediately upon his death.

- Our next change is the following year.

This is June 17th, 1965, which is after Sam's,

six months after Sam has passed away.

And now look who is the president of Tracey Records Limited.

Allen Klein is the president and Betty Klein,

Allen's wife is the Secretary.

The final link in the chain filed in March of 1970,

among other music companies Tracey Records Limited

is being merged into ABKCO-KLEIN Corporation.

This now explains to you how Sam's music

was transferred and ended up with ABKCO.

- [Narrator] Donald Piper not only believes

that Allen Klein cleverly disguised his ownership,

but he also doubts the legality

of the notarial authentication

of the certificate of incorporation.

Contrary to the legal requirement,

the signatories were apparently

not even present at the time of signing.

- According to the articles of incorporation

of Tracey Limited, this document was signed by Sam Cooke,

JW Alexander, SR Crain on September 27th, 1963 in New York.

According to this advertisement in a New Orleans newspaper,

Sam Cooke was a headliner at a show in New Orleans

on Thursday night on September 26th, 1963.

So, it's highly unlikely that all three gentlemen

went from New Orleans on Thursday night

and flew up to New York to sign this document.

It made no sense to do that

since Allen Klein and his lawyer

were in New Orleans the night of the 26th.

But this notarial certificate on this document

states that these three gentlemen personally appeared

in New York City on September 27th.

It brings up a question of when and where and how

was this document really signed.

It's totally possible that the notary wrote in this date

here and these three gentlemen signed

the document undated and it was notarized later.

So, there is a question about this document.

About its authenticity as to signature, when and how.

- [Narrator] It is also notable that the notary

who certified these and other ABKCO contracts,

was also Allen Klein's long time secretary,

Adrienne Theresa Zanghi-Goldfarb.

Although it's not conclusively proven

that Allen Klein was the sole shareholder of Tracey Limited,

the facts speak for themselves.

Even before Sam Cooke's death,

Allen Klein gradually expanded

his control of Tracey Limited.

He then quickly took complete control

and Tracey Limited eventually merged

with other companies to form ABKCO.

Based on the Tracey Limited contract,

the music label ABKCO collects

highly lucrative royalties to this day.

Our interview requests for this film were not answered.

- Nobody ever studies entertainers

in American society from the business side.

The aspect that is probably most unpublicized

about Sam Cooke is the ownership of his music.

He understood that that was how those in the record industry

were beating other artists

and he refused to allow himself to be beat that way.

- It became more encouraging

for another black artist to start his own company.

They never thought about it in those days.

That's how we changed it.

He left us with his music, his sound.

Lot of people try to imitate.

Rod Stewart's favorite singer is Sam.

He tries to sound like him.

- If you go down a list of singers that are around today,

how many of them imitate Sam,

and Sam's way of phrasing, and Sam's style.

I miss him, still, I miss that smile.

He had an incredible smile, yeah, he was a great guy.

- Sam Cooke meant more to us, he was a symbol of direction.

If we worked hard and we went to school

and did the right thing, we could prevail,

whether there was segregation or anything,

that nothing could really hold us back if we really tried.

[upbeat piano music]