Sam Cooke - Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 (2003)

Because CDs possess a greater amount of space for music than other physical formats the people marketing them - be it the artist, the record company, or both - too often load their releases with unnecessary filler. I guess their thinking is, "Hey, we've got a lot of extra space available so there's no longer a need to keep the lesser tracks in a vault somewhere for possible use later. Let's just put it all out there." Because of this, CDs often play too long. Mostly, I don't need to hear an artist's unfinished demos or alternate takes they don't like but hope that we do. Most of the time there's a reason they landed on the cutting room floor.

On the other hand, Portrait of a Legend 1951 - 1964 is an astounding thirty song compilation spanning Sam Cooke's entire career. The CD is over seventy-nine minutes long - meaning almost every available byte is used - and because all of the songs are worthy and wonderfully remastered this disc is a gem. It's how the format was meant to be used.

Peter Guralnick authored the disc's extensive liner notes. He provided listeners with his thoughts on every track and a list of all the musicians who played on them. In a biography he wrote on the singer, Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, he opined, "For an overview of Sam's career, from his gospel beginnings through 'A Change Is Gonna Come,' nothing can compare to Portrait of a Legend which serves as a guide to Sam at his very best."

Alwyn Turner of the BBC wrote, "This is the best single-volume introduction to his work available."

"You Send Me", "Shake," "Only Sixteen," "Wonderful World," "Chain Gang'" "Bring It On Home to Me," "Another Saturday Night." and "Twistin' The Night Away" are among the many hits you'll find in this collection.

The songs aren't presented in precise chronological order, and the package opens and closes with early gospel tracks from Cooke's first recording session. While the star later abandoned his roots for a hitmaking career almost all of his work on this lengthy set proves his fondness for the genre.

I once wrote that the singing of Arthur Alexander was so smooth that it's easy to think Cooke was to soul music what James Taylor is to rock. You can say the same thing about this long-gone, even greater R&B legend.