Cover Of The Day-A Change Is Gonna Come

Some of the best music in history, is music backed with raw emotion; music with enough energy and life flowing through it's notes that you can honestly feel what the song is conveying. It's the ultimate quest of the singer-songwriter, and it is one of the hardest feats on this earth. Ray Lamontagne has done it for me. The Who has done it for me. Heck, even Dave Barnes has done it for me. Now, i can add a new one to that list.

"I was born by the river, in a little tent. Oh, and just like the river, I've been running ever since. It's been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come."

I was reading Pitchfork's top 200 songs of the 1960's and sitting high at the number three spot was Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come". Immediately after its's tremendous string swell, I felt sadness. I felt anguish and pain, but with a tinge of optimism. Maybe not for the present to ever see, but somewhere in the future, "a change is gonna come". Sam Cooke sang a song so powerful that I felt what he felt. The recording, in some ways, was the result of the death of his 18 month old son Vincent, and while i've never had a child that I know of, I could feel that pain in his voice. It's terribly amazing.

"It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die, cause I don't know whats up there beyond the sky. It's been a long time coming, but I know a change gon' come."

While Ben Sollee doesn't come close to the intensity of the moment in his version of the song, he gives it a very fitting modern twist. Instead of a slow ballad, the song is a driving jive, backed almost solely on the low barreling cello Ben is known for. Ben scoots the song along, spending less time on looking to the past, and act's like the all-knowing mother, warning her children into the right thing. The folk is very fitting, and Ben plays one of the best versions of the impossible to live up to Same Cooke classic.

Sam Cooke

Ben Sollee