The voice of hope - singer Sam Cooke - excerpt from 'You Send Me: From Gospel to Pop, The Life and Times of Sam Cooke'

American Visions, Dec-Jan, 1994 by Daniel Wolff

It all turned on Sister Flute. That's what the Soul Stirrers called her, a name they'd first heard around New York City. There was a Sister Flute in every congregation: the archetypal Church Mother, the one who started the shouting. When she fell out - when she danced the holy dance and locked rigid with the Spirit, so caught in the throes of possession that the deacons had to come and wrestle her back into the pew so she wouldn't hurt herself, her eyes rolled up, her heels pounding the hard wood floor, her best Sunday hat crushed and forgotten beside her - once Sister Flute got to moaning and amening, the rest would follow. And then the Stirrers triumphed. Because when you got Sister Flute, you got the house, and when you got the house, the offerings were larger and the crowds in the next town bigger. ...

With his song Jesus Gave Me Water," Sam had a calling card, but he still had to learn how to turn the crowd, and the only school was one-nighter after one-nighter. The Stirrers might only do 20 to 30 minutes a program - a couple of songs during the first half, a few more at the end - but they booked programs six days a week, ten months out of the year. "It's a wonder we lasted so long as we did," S.R. Crain reflects. "Run ourselves to death!" Every successful gospel group had to do it. ... And you were supposed to get Sister Flute every night in every town.

For Sam, there was the added burden that she came expecting to hear R.H. Harris. Because the gospel circuit was fairly set, Sam kept having to sing in the same churches and before the same crowds that Harris had. In April, for example, the Soul Stirrers hosted their annual Mother's Day program at DuSable High School. The program included the gospel group Pilgrim Travelers [the Stirrers' principal rivals! and Sam's old radio mates, the Spirit of Memphis. The crowd was fine, but Harris' new group - the Christland Singers - had appeared in the same place just a week before, and most people in the gospel world couldn't help but hold the younger man up against the older.

That first year, as Sam did the circuit, Sister Flute listened; she even nodded her approval; but it wasn't Robert Harris - and she didn't budge.

Looking back, Crain believes the difference between Harris, "the gentleman," and Sam Cooke was the difference between the 1940s and the 50s. "Harris was a fanatical Christian," Crain recalls. "Sam was not." You could joke with Cooke about the church ladies getting off on their harmonies, about the shady ministers and promoters, about the sexual shenanigans going on in the various churches. Harris would hear none of it. It wasn't, according to Crain, that Harris didn't have gospel groupies himself, but he "had to try and get the do, where Sam was running away from it."

Quartet singers, arriving in their long cars and dressed in their slick, city-tailored suits, bad always attracted women. But the war years, with their dramatic increase in working women, marked a real change. The way Harris put it to author Anthony Heilbut, "Women became more far-ward, they came to the front faster, they were more open in their push."

Harris didn't like it. The old man believed deeply in not just the gospel highway, but the Gospel Path. For him, the Soul Stirrers were messengers, traveling from town to town, setting an example, and his rectitude (he avoided even being around anyone who enjoyed a social drink) spoke well to his generation.

Harris' attitude translated directly into the way he sang. Starting in the late 40s, leads like the Dixie Hummingbirds' Ira Tucker had begun charging the aisles, running down through the center of the church to confront Sister Flute face to face, urging her on, daring her not to respond to the divine presence in the room. The Soul Stirrers didn't play that. "R.H. Harris used to stand right there, flat-footed," says Crain, "and he'd kill the world!"

Though Sam had grown up in the Holiness church and had seen the outrageously great Brownlee and Tucker in action, he'd been trained to stand just as still. In fact, thanks to R.B. and the years with the QCs, Cooke could do a creditable enough impression of Harris to please Sister Flute. But an impression was all it was. "Sam had the best tone," Crain states, "but he couldn't outcry Robert Harris. Harris' daddy was the best tenor in Texas. Sam wouldn't tackle any song the least bit too high. Sam used his head; Harris would tackle any note." Even after the Stirrers lowered their pitch, Sam hit anything over high C with what they called a false tone.

In Crain's estimation (and the recordings bear this out) Harris was flat-out a better singer than Cooke: He had a larger range, a sweeter tone, and, a pioneering way of phrasing that Cooke could only study. It tore right into Sister Flute. His style was perfect for the 30- to 60-year-olds who came to church after a long week's work and wanted a reminder of the old-time, countrified religion. Harris' aching tenor - learned, he said, by listening to the songbirds out on the Texas plains - spoke directly to the congregation's recent past.