Consumer Guide Album

Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 [RCA Victor, 1985]
Some people think live albums capture the essence of rock and roll; I don't even think live shows do. That may be why this record, which yea verily doth document a little-noted aspect of Cooke's amazing career, leaves me mostly tepid. But I blame it on headlong show-band arrangements so single-minded they soon undermine what conceptual interest inheres in the transformation of this seminal crossover teen dream into fit fare for the over-twenty-ones in a Miami r&b club. I like grit as much as the next postprimitivist, but good grit admits interpretive flair just like any other mode--more than Cooke puts into these hits, originally designed to downplay his gritty side. B