My introduction to this week's tune was actually a cover version of it by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes (they were featured in Jukebox Vol. CCCLXIV), and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that it took me a while to warm to the original version. Eventually it registered that the original was the gold standard and Southside Johnny's version was a loving cover....
I wrote about Sam Cooke a thousand years ago in Jukebox Vol. XXXVII (for those not good at Roman Numerals or arithmetic, that was 395 posts ago), and since Mr. Cooke has sadly been dead for almost sixty years, there really isn't much I can add to his bio, though I did see a great documentary on Netflix called Remastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke which called into question the police's designation of his murder as a justifiable homicide. Highly recommended to anyone who is a fan of one of the greatest soul singers this planet has ever known.
"Having a Party" was released as a single in 1962, and later that year was part of his ingeniously entitled compilation The Best of Sam Cooke. The single reached #17 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.
Fun Fact: My introduction to Lou Rawls, who sang backing vocals on "Having a Party" and would go on to quite a successful music career himself, was a bit different--when I was a kid growing up in the Bay Area Rawls sang the National Anthem at my beloved 49ers home games.
Every now and again, we ("we" meaning me) here at Friday Night Jukebox do a post on a song that's just plain fun. Cooke's silky-smooth vocals capture all the joy of being young, in love, and having a good time dancing with your baby. It also has one of those special moments that make a song larger than life, and that's when towards the end Cooke sings "...tell 'em one more time." After its recording "Having a Party" would aptly be the final song of Cooke's concerts, and it dawned on me while doing my weekly half-assed research that the tune would be a hell of a song to play at one's funeral--a nice and fine way to celebrate the party that is someone's life...and to tell the great DJ in the sky to keep those records playing....
Lyric Sheet: "Having a party (Man)/"Everybody's swinging (Yeah)/We're dancing to the music (Yeah)/On the radio (Tell 'em one more time)..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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