Sam Cooke: life, music, and cultural impact

¶ … Cooke's "Only Sixteen" is a timeless song with a strong message for both the youth who listen to it as well as an older audience. Though this song only reached #28 on the U.S. pop singles charts, it still deserves to be listed among the great songs like Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes." Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame," Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line," and the others in the list of hits.

One thing this song has in common with the other songs on this list is that it sings of the trouble that can happen in love. They almost all sing of love, but not in the usual "bubblegum" way that simply informs the audience that love is there. Instead they speak of the reality that love can be difficult, and sometimes painful. Perry Como's "Catch a Falling Star" says "For when your troubles startn' multiplyin' / An' they just might!" But it reminds you to keep a little speck of light in your life. This light will help you get over your troubles, and it might even help you find love. Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," Howlin' Wolf's "How Many Years," and Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" all speak of the end of a love affair or the things that can go wrong within one. Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" shows us that it's far too easy to make a mess of a relationship, and so a fine line must be walked if you wish to remain with the one you love. Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" and Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" both illustrate that there are some people that are best simply avoided when it comes to love. Of course The Soul Stirrers' "Touch the Hem of His Garment" was about a different kind of love completely, but considering Sam Cooke was the front man for this band as well, it just serves to prove that Sam Cooke would be at home on this list.

Another thing that these songs have in common is the fact that the majority of them are lyrically driven with deceptively simple arrangements. The time period of many of these pieces, however, serves as a background to understand that much of the music in these pieces are extremely innovative even if they aren't necessary meant to be the focal point of the piece. In "Only Sixteen" it seems only logical to have Cooke's bright, flawless voice as the focal point of the song. This isn't to say that the arrangements are not noteworthy. Clearly the music is quite innovative for its time.

Of course it isn't simply the subject matter and lyrical drive that places these songs together. The crossover appeal of most of these songs cannot be denied. Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" is often considered one of the very first recorded Rock and Roll songs. The song incorporates elements from several different genres including country and blues, and it topped the country, R&B and pop charts at the time. Sam Cooke is famous for his crossover from Gospel to Soul, and "Only Sixteen" was an R&B to pop crossover hit as well.

Only Sixteen" benefits society by communicating valuable lessons not only to young teenagers, but to their parents as well. The narrator in this song is a teenager himself, though, as he points out (no doubt a little tongue-in-cheek), he is a much wiser 17 now. This line can be taken at face value, or perceived as slightly satirical depending on the audience.

If the listener is a teenager, then the message seems to be that even if a love goes sour, there are lessons to be learned from mistakes you make in life. Not only this, but it encourages them to continue on trying for love even if you are disappointed the first time as long as the lessons learned are heeded in the future. The lesson of this love is not that the girl in question was too young by being only sixteen -- how could she be when the narrator was sixteen himself and clearly in love? The message is that you shouldn't give your heart away too quickly, instead you should wait and see if the person you are opening your heart to is capable of accepting it. Of course this message is important for teenagers just starting out in the world of romance, but this song has a much wider appeal.

The more interesting message from this song is directed at the parents of these budding lovers. The song is to remind them of the intensity of emotion, the slow drag of time, and the naivete of choices that we make in our youth. Parents often lose sight of what the world was like at sixteen, and how devastating something may seem while you're experiencing it even if it turns out to be a minor event in retrospect. The satire of the lines "(But you were a mere lad of sixteen) / Oh, I've aged a year since then" is aimed not at being facetious, but at reminding parents how one year in the life of a teenage can truly add up to some major changes. Time moves so much slower when we're young, and parents need to remember that when faced with a sixteen-year-old with a broken heart.