Sam Cooke - One Night Stand: Live at Harlem Square Club (Music On Vinyl)

Even though One Night Stand: Live at Harlem Square Club was recorded on January 12th, 1963 while Sam Cooke was on tour, his record company at the time RCA Victor, viewed the record as too gritty and raw and feared it might damage Sam’s pop image. So it was kept in their archives till 1985.

The Harlem Square was a small downtown nightspot in Miami’s historically African-American neighborhood of Overtown and it was packed with his most devoted fans from his days singing gospel. RCA found the record to be “too black” for a lack of better words - describing the album as too loud, raw and raucous. This is covered in the documentary.

In 1985, label executive Gregg Geller discovered the tapes and took action to get the album released that year. In 2013 he said “Sam was what we’ve come to call a crossover artist. He crossed over from gospel to pop, which was controversial enough in its day. But once he became a pop artist, he had a certain mainstream image to protect. The fact is, when he was out on the road, he was playing to a predominantly, almost exclusively black audience. And he was doing a different kind of show - much more down home, down-to-earth, gut-bucket kind of show than what he would do for his pop audience.”

Thankfully this album has gained major adoration since 1985, often ranked as one of the best live albums of all time. Sam plays with King Curtis, Clifton White and Cornell Dupree to name a few.

Heavyweight audiophile vinyl pressed by Music On Vinyl for RCA Records in 2024. UK Import.