A Change Is Gonna Come

On October 8, 1963, en route to Shreveport, Louisiana, Cooke called ahead to the Holiday Inn North to make reservations for his wife, Barbara, and himself, but when he and his group arrived, the desk clerk glanced nervously and explained there were no vacancies.[4] While his brother Charles protested, Sam was furious, yelling to see the manager and refusing to leave until he received an answer. His wife nudged him, attempting to calm him down, telling him, "They'll kill you," to which he responded, "They ain't gonna kill me, because I'm Sam Cooke."[4] When they eventually persuaded Cooke to leave, the group drove away calling out insults and blaring their horns. When they arrived at the Castle Motel on Sprague Street downtown, the police were waiting for them, arresting them for disturbing the peace.[4] The New York Times ran a UPI report the next day, headlined "Negro Band Leader Held in Shreveport,"[5] but African-Americans were outraged. In 2019, then-Shreveport mayor Adrian Perkins apologized to Cooke's family for the event, and posthumously awarded Cooke the key to the city.[6]

In addition, upon hearing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" in 1963, Cooke was greatly moved that such a poignant song about racism in America could come from someone who was not black, and was also ashamed he had not yet written something like that himself.[7] However, his image and fears of losing his large white fan base had prevented him from doing so.[8] Cooke loved Dylan's song so much it was immediately incorporated into his repertoire.[9] He was further influenced by the message of the dream in Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech at the civil rights march on Washington that year. Toward the end of 1963, according to Cooke, the Change composition came to him in a dream.[10]

Following Christmas 1963, Cooke invited J.W. Alexander to his home to preview a new song he had just written, one Cooke was very excited about. When he arrived, Cooke ran through the number on his guitar twice, the second time going over it line by line.[11] Both were very excited to record the song, with Alexander viewing it as more personal and political than anything he had yet attempted. He warned Cooke that he might not profit off the song as he had with lighter, poppier songs, but Cooke did not care.[12] He explained to Alexander that he hoped the song would make his father proud.[12] "It was less work than any song he'd ever written," biographer Peter Guralnick says.[9] "It almost scared him that the song—it was almost as if the song were intended for somebody else. He grabbed it out of the air and it came to him whole, despite the fact that in many ways it's probably the most complex song that he wrote. It was both singular—in the sense that you started out, 'I was born by the river'—but it also told the story both of a generation and of a people."[9]

Cooke handed the song to his arranger René Hall, with no specific instructions as to what he personally wanted, but to give it “the kind of instrumentation and orchestration that it demanded.”[13] Previously, the duo had collaborated on arrangement, but this was the first occasion in which Hall was granted complete control of the eventual arrangement, and he composed it as he would a movie score, with lush, symphonic strings.[13] "I wanted it to be the greatest thing in my [life]—I spent a lot of time, put out a lot of ideas, and then changed them and rearranged them," said Hall.[13] Cooke was well known as a perfectionist and "control freak" in the recording studio, so giving Hall total latitude was unprecedented.[9]

AFO drummer John Boudreaux was intimidated by the orchestral arrangement and refused to leave the control room; session player and close collaborator Earl Palmer was working next door and filled in for the song. Luigi Creatore asked Cooke to provide one more take, and the eighth take was "nearly perfect."[14] Luigi was very pleased with the song, considering it among his best, both very serious and still uniquely his own. Cooke had initially imagined that Luigi, first and foremost a pop hitmaker, would not respect the socially conscious song.[14]

Each verse is a different movement, with the strings carrying the first, the horns the second, and the timpani carrying the bridge.[9] The French horn present in the recording was intended to convey a sense of melancholy.[13]

Cooke incorporated his own personal experiences as well into the song, such as encounters in Memphis, Shreveport and Birmingham, to reflect the lives and struggles of all African-Americans of the time.[12] The lines "I don't know what's up there / Beyond the sky" could refer to Cooke's doubt for absolute true justice on earth.[12] The final verse, in which Cooke pleads for his "brother" to help him, is a metaphor for what Alexander described as "the establishment". The verse continues, 'But he winds up knocking me / back down on my knees.'"[12]

"A Change Is Gonna Come" was recorded on January 30, 1964, at RCA Studios in Hollywood, California.[15] The engineer present was Wally Heider, and the session was conducted and arranged by René Hall. The musicians also recorded "Falling in Love" the same day. Credits adapted from the liner notes to the 2003 compilation Portrait of a Legend: 1951–1964.[15]

Cooke first performed "A Change Is Gonna Come" on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on February 7, 1964. Cooke's new manager, Allen Klein, was infatuated with the song and persuaded Cooke to do away with promoting his most recent single, "Ain't That Good News", and perform "Change" instead, feeling that that was the statement he needed to make before a national audience.[16] Cooke objected, noting that the album's release was a month away and that he had no time to pull together an arrangement within such a short time frame.[16] Klein arranged for RCA to pay for a full string section and Cooke performed the song that Friday on The Tonight Show after performing "Basin Street".[17] An NBC timekeeper logged down the number as "It's a Long Time Coming," but the network did not save the tape of the performance.[16][17] Klein and Alexander both felt it would become a milestone moment in Cooke's career, but it was overshadowed by the Beatles' performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS just two days later.[17]

The song was issued on March 1 as a track on Cooke's album Ain't That Good News. It would not be issued as a single for another nine months.

Cooke elected not to perform "A Change Is Gonna Come" again in his lifetime, both because of the complexity of the arrangement and because of the ominous nature of the song.[9] When shown to his protégé Bobby Womack, his response was that it sounds "like death." Cooke responded, "Man, that's kind of how it sounds like to me. That's why I'm never going to play it in public." Womack clarified his thoughts, that it wasn't deathly, but rather "spooky," but Cooke never performed the song again.[9]

In December, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was prepared for single release, with the verse and chorus preceding the bridge ("I go to the movies…") deleted for radio airplay.[18] The civil rights movement picked up on "A Change Is Gonna Come" with near immediacy.[9] On December 11, 1964, two weeks before the song was released, Sam Cooke was fatally shot at a Los Angeles motel.[19] Cash Box described the single as "a moving, string-filled ‘message’ tune."[20]

"A Change Is Gonna Come" became an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement, and is widely considered one of Cooke's greatest compositions. Over the years, the song has garnered significant praise. In 2004, it was voted number 12 by representatives of the music industry and press in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[21] It was then voted number 3 in Rolling Stone's 2021 edition of the list.[22] The song was ranked number 3 in the webzine Pitchfork Media's The 200 Greatest Songs of the 60s.[23] The song is also among 300 songs deemed the most important ever recorded by National Public Radio (NPR).[24] Acclaimed Music ranked it as the 46th greatest song of all time, as well as the third best song of 1964.[25] NPR called the song "one of the most important songs of the civil rights era."[9]

In 2007, the song was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, with the National Recording Registry deeming the song "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important."[2]

The words “A change is gonna come” are on a wall of the Contemplative Court, a space for reflection in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture; the museum opened in 2016.[26]

• Civil rights movement in popular culture

• Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964. Abkco Records, 2003. Los Angeles, California.
• Werner, Craig (1999). A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America. Plume. ISBN 0-452-28065-6.
• Wolff, Daniel J.; S.R. Crain; Clifton White & G. David Tenenbaum (1995). You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke. William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-688-12403-8.
• Guralnick, Peter (2005). Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. Back Bay Books. ISBN 978-0316013291.

• Lyrics of this song
• Sam Cooke at Todomusica.org
• Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come on YouTube
• Seal - A Change Is Gonna Come (Video) on YouTube