Sam Cooke was constantly writing. On napkins. In the car. In hotel rooms and, later, in a notebook he kept, filled with his sketches as well as his lyrics. When he was still with the Soul Stirrers, his friend and fellow gospel singer, J.W Alexander, manager of the Pilgrim Travellers, bought him a book on songwriting, and he absorbed its lessons: the function of verse and chorus, how to construct a bridge, above all the importance of simplicity -the key to a good song, he always insisted, was to write a melody that even little children could hum. At first Read more on Last.fm.
