Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Bring It On Home to Me

One Night Stand: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963

One of Cavell’s bewilderments about modern cinema was how it casts romance as what happens only when you think someone's cute and they think you're cute and you laugh at each other's jokes, a flawless crafted thing that would be lost if there were conflict or hurt, where tension is bad.

What the old movies, on the other hand, took for granted is that we're far from noble, but often just that unholy mess of a girl or boy. Old movies made the fallibilities the endearing part and knew that romance had to do with the grace someone gives you in light of our gauche and weak selves.

The album opens with some suave enough dance numbers, but its culmination is the pair of the above song and the following one, both to this one woman. Cooke’s well into the concert and has already sung (a medley, even) to her, someone about whom he's said there are plenty of rumors he doesn't need to hear, when he sings this one "just to tell you how I feel." He throws out an actual “haha” early on, tells her what she means to him, then pleads, boldly – and at 1:07 and 2:43 he even smacks his chest – and you know he’s smiling while he’s crying.

In between verses, he throws out a, “Listen, I gotta be a man to tell you this. Honey, look ..." and then he offers her redemption.

That is romance.

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