True story of Soul Music pioneer, Sam Cooke, the first black artist to own his own copyrights, publishing, two labels and distribution rights, who was murdered just as he was reaching the pinnacle of his career and love life. (Based on my book by the same title and predicated on 18 years of research with family friends and colleagues).

SYNOPSIS:

The genesis for Sam Cooke: the Truth commenced as a conversation in 2007

at UCLA HS Football camp between another parent, a dad who worked in the film

industry, and myself. We were tossing “dream frisbees” back and forth regarding

screenplay projects we’d each love to write. He had a science fiction idea in mind,

while, out of the clear blue, I blurted, “I want to find out exactly how Sam Cooke died

because there’s no way the LAPD report was the truth.” Football dad was intrigued:

“Oh, you know it wasn’t!” I protested that a white woman should not be assigned such a

task; it would create resentment in some quarters. Football dad told me to write it

anyway. “That story needs to be told,” he asserted. “The black community knows it’s a

lie and has waited a helluva long time for the truth to be told.

I had been web surfing the topic of late; the more I read, the more questions I had. I was

12 years old when the man who invented soul music (via marrying gospel to pop) was

shot and killed. My best friend and I were returning home from a Dave Clark 5 concert

and heard Paul Harvey discuss the rushed autopsy inquest hearing in Los Angeles that

day. The story didn't make sense to us;a man that good looking would not need to

“kidnap” any woman. It makes no sense today. LAPD has even admitted that the

murder was never seriously investigated.

I spent that next year continuing to research Sam Cooke's life and death, gathering

evidence from Sam Cooke and Allen Klein files housed in the LA Courthouse Annex. I

obtained the autopsy from the coroner and the death certificate from the Hall of

Records. Most importantly I opened social media accounts and located members of

Sam’s immediate family, his Godson Lou Rawls Jr., colleagues, musicians, producers,

and friends.

Also, I began to notice strange occurrences; first, it seemed that people who

knew or had had interactions with Sam came out of the proverbial woodwork.

I was at a Fatburger in Victorville, 2 hours outside of LA. The woman in front of me in

line was the daughter of the man who operated The Peoples' Funeral Home in SLA; she

had been at Sam’s funeral. I met a caterer who toured with him as a gospel singer. I

became close friends with Sam’s nephew Eugene and his wife Margaret, as well as his

brother David. (At the time his brother Charles lay dying of cancer in a Chicago hospital,

but I later Iearned that he was very gratified that the truth about Sam was now coming out).

Imagine a man being murdered, his publishing having been extorted, and for decades

he was blamed for his own death! The family had been threatened by Allen Klein, the

mothers of his children swindled by lawyers over future residuals that precluded even

most of Sam’s kids from an inheritance. Klein shelved his music, forbid biopics. The

copyright attorney I teamed up with has spent decades discovering the music (and film)

industry’s deep mob ties. I have not ceased investigating and the result is a script and a

book, (formerly One More River to Cross), Sam Cooke: The Truth.

SAM COOKE: THE TRUTH