Song of the Day Nov 7

November 7, 2023

Today our song is: You Send Me by Sam Cooke

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

Cooke wrote "You Send Me" but gave the writing credit to his younger brother L.C. (who used the original family spelling "Cook") because he did not want his own publisher to profit from the song. He had also hoped L.C. would record the song himself. Cooke made a demo recording of the song featuring only his own guitar accompaniment in the winter of 1955. The first recording of the track was made in New Orleans in December 1956 in the same sessions which produced "Lovable", the first release outside the gospel field for Cooke (credited on that single as Dale Cook). The classic version of "You Send Me" was cut in Los Angeles in June 1957 and was issued as a single with another track from the same session: a version of "Summertime", as the debut release on the Keen label founded by brothers John and Alex Siamas; this release marked the first single credited to "Sam Cooke" (whose true surname was Cook). Although "Summertime" was the intended A-side, disc jockeys favored "You Send Me", which broke nationally that October to reach No. 1 for a two-week stay in December 1957, with sales estimated at a 1.5 million units. "Overnight, with a single song, Sam Cooke"—who had spent the summer of 1957 living in his producer's apartment—"became a secular superstar, with audiences consisting of black and white, men and women, young and old."

As was common practice in the 1950s when it was unusual for hits in the black R&B market to crossover to the Pop charts, a cover version of "You Send Me" aimed at the Pop charts was cut by the white singer Teresa Brewer and released in October 1957. Symptomatic of the changing music scene, Cooke's original was able to repeat its No. 1 R&B chart performance in the Pop field, eclipsing Brewer's version. Brewer's version of "You Send Me" reached as high as No. 8 on the Hot 100, her first and only top 10 hit since "Mutual Admiration Society" the year before, and her final Top 20 hit.

  

Enjoy!