The Killing Of Sam Cooke: Who Murdered Soul? (Murder Mystery Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] okay [Music] sam cook is the most successful pop star of the late 1950s and early 60s along with elvis presley to this day everyone knows his classic pop songs such as a change is going to come cupid or wonderful world yet no one knows the personal story of this outstanding pop pioneer whose life ended all too soon everybody wanted to be sam cook's producer because you were going to have hit after hit after hit he had a voice that people listen to and there's nothing that crosses a color line hatred discrimination quicker than music he and ray charles were probably the earliest figures who understood that there was a business side to music that they needed to control one thing he didn't want to be was a slave to anybody or anything and he wanted to control his music control his finances he had his own publishing company he had his own label he was kind of an entrepreneur there were so many layers to his music he could sing pop he could sing soul he was the future of black america through music his connection with muhammad ali was no accident martin luther king and those two guys they were kind of a holy trinity of black culture at that time to this day sam cook's entire story has yet to be told for the simple reason that his story is mainly dictated by those who control his music rights that's why this film will have to do without sam cook's great music instead it concentrates on his business activities and the circumstances surrounding his violent death sam come sit make something home what year we're reminiscing today and using the all-time old-time goodies and all that stuff his last interview with dick clark he told dick clark i'm going to be on vanstand again but i won't be performing i'll be the producer i'm going to be the guy behind all the hits i'm not just going to be the guy having the hits what do you hope to do in the future you're doing different things now aren't you well now dick i'm working mostly with other young singers you know wait a minute it could be the greatest thing in the world that would happen to you if you had your choice the greatest thing to happen to me if all the singers i'm connected with had hits i will knock on wood and hope the whole thing goes sam cook ladies and gentlemen but on december 11 1964 the inconceivable happens a tragic fall from the height of stardom sam cook one of the most talented singers and music producers of his generation is shot in a shabby motel [Music] i got a call at 6 30 in the morning from larry mccormick who was on kgfj he was the news anchor to say zelda i wanted you to know sam's been shot and i said well what hospital is he in where is he he said he's not zelda he's dead and i you know i lost it for a few days i just lost it [Music] five o'clock in the morning i got a call woke me up at five and it was a dear friend of mine lester sill and lester said al um i don't know i just heard on the radio that sam had been shot and i said oh my god okay i said i'm going to get dressed what hospital is he in and he said no al he's dead and that just broke my heart so since my wife was a reporter she got up and drove down to the police station and was able to view the police report and they told in the police report what had happened [Music] the official story was that sam met a lady that night at a bar called martoni's from there went to another club called pjs after that and then supposedly sam took her to a motel against her will [Music] mr cook checking into the motel with the young woman into the room and she goes to the bathroom she comes out and then he goes into the bathroom while he is in the bathroom she quickly rushes out grabs her clothes and inadvertently grabs his clothes he comes out he finds her missing he doesn't have any clothes except a uh a a coat he proceeds to the manager's office and asked where the woman is that he had checked in with and he's told by the manager of bertha franklin that that woman is not there he leaves then he comes back and now she has the door closed she doesn't want to talk to him anymore reportedly he pushes open the door kind of breaks the stripping down comes in and begins to harass her and then physically assault her while they are struggling and tumbling she reaches over grabs the gun and she shoots him after she shoots him and he proclaims a lady who shot me he still comes after her whereupon she grabs some kind of a large tick and it was a large broom handle or something and she proceeds to beat him until he [Music] collapses certainly white america saw the clean-cut almost collegiate singer and thought to themselves how could he be in a motel in l.a and died being shot in the newspaper said a seedy situation this was really troubling to the black community did he really make us a silly mistake wrong place the wrong time in a cd motel was he set up i don't know there were more things about this the way sam died that didn't make sense then then uh than than what did make sense walter ward who was the lead singer of the olympics he said yeah joel he said he was murdered he was not nothing happened that night you know the way they say it happened with the motel he said that was all made up what really happened nobody knows except the woman that killed him [Music] and the girl that took his pants and was hiding in an alleyway lisa boyer supposedly is the cause of my uncle's death she actually a month after sam was killed was busted into prostitute sting operation i would like to see an interview with her saying yeah sam tried to rape me that night stam cook was a star that's shown very brightly but just for a short period of time you know some some artists are tragic figures sam just had a tragic ending he wasn't a tragic figure he was a very good person [Music] the number one black artist in the world has kidnapped a prostitute and is going to try to rape her went by that story come on you know why why he was not a violent guy he never i never saw him get angry i never saw him want to hit anybody or do anything violent so it's hard for me to believe that that's the story that's what happened i don't know it could have been the police it could have been the mob it could have been you know it could have been the last wife everybody needs to be a suspect i don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of it and find out what really really happened sam cook's tragic murder to this day it is regarded as one of rock and roll's greatest mysteries but without a doubt sam cook's significance reaches way beyond the pop charts i have a dream today with this thing we will be able to work together to pray together to struggle together to go to jail together to stand up for freedom together [Music] unfortunately his memorable song a change is gonna come can't be played in this film it is considered a musical heritage of the united states 50 years after martin luther king's murder it's more relevant than ever you know a change is going to come is something that will be forever connected to the civil rights movement when obama was running for president the first time and the song surfaced at rallies for obama and obama quoted the lyric the change is going to come that felt to me like wow sam cook's prophecy had come true from the time of his life here and the time of obama being elected president it really felt like that was the complete arc of that the story of that song when i hear a change is going to come it's it's so sad because he bears his soul in in that song it's it's so painfully moving to listen to sam cook saying a change is going to come a change is going to come he said was the hardest song that he ever had to write and the song was never intended to be on an album by sam it was intended to be on an album by other artists and the proceeds would go to martin luther king's slc but the song was not released as planned on the album the star salute martin luther king jr and so far there is no information indicating the royalties were ever donated to charity at that time sam cook had already relinquished total control of his entire body of work to tracy limited a company with an unclear ownership structure founded by sam cook's manager alan klein there are definitely people who feel very strongly that alan klein had something to do with sam cook's death and that it had something to do with the publishing rights and the ownership of the music he would never have agreed to have someone else own the rights to his music this was very important to him to have his own company and it be belong to him there's always been a history in rock and roll music of wealthy people uh controlling the music publishing and music rights of our artists who generally speaking come from very poor background say if we can generalize and say that so alan klein was a person who got very very wealthy based on the rights of other people's music other people's creations and sam cook was the very first person who he did that with and it because he did that with sam cook the beatles and the stones agreed to let him publish their music and control their music with the promise of making them a lot of money he did make sam cook a lot of money but he also made himself even more money i think in that process and anyone who comes along who tries to step into the middle of that equation and say oh i want to do a documentary film about this while you're kind of rocking the boat i guess that's my impression [Music] the current headquarters of abco music and records in new york founded by sam cook's former manager alan klein all our requests for interviews have remained unanswered i had heard the story actually from alan klein when i first met with him about how he would stand in the way of people wanting to make films about sam cook they're great because they're enforcing the intellectual property and the life rights of these artists and making sure they get paid but they overdo it they are in such control of it because they want to control the narrative they want to control the story and i think part of it is what we're hinting at today um what we're looking at today is i think part of the narrative let's do a little capsule version of the sam cook story how'd it go i'm a captioned version um born my father was a minister uh i started singing in the church naturally because i was exposed to a gospel singing first life um i came out of school with a professional gospel group called the solsters sang around the country with them for about five years decided to go on my own made a song called you send me it's all about a million and a half copies for me luckily enough back to the beginnings like a lot of african americans in the 1930s sam cook's family heads north in search of a better life their destination bronzeville chicago [Music] my name is eugene jameson my mother agnes cook was sam's youngest sister to us he was just our magical uncle sam who could make things happen he uh stressed was that i'll do the singing and i'll make the money doing that what i need you guys to do is grow up to be lawyers i'm gonna need a lawyer i'm gonna need accountants i'm gonna need this that hence my major accounting my name is eric green i am the great nephew of the legendary sam cook my grandmother was sam's oldest sister i renamed the street that sam cook grew up on right right at 36th and cottage grove in the in the bronzeville neighborhood of chicago and when uh when avco found out about it they wanted to participate in it and you know and speak and no this was my doing and it was my my project and uh i chose to keep it you know to the people that i wanted to to participate in [Music] in bronzeville sam cooke attends wendell phillips high school he discovers his love of music while he is still in his teens sam grew up with singing in the church with his brothers and sisters they were just an informal group called the singing children where they were all cute little kids and they would get up four or five of them sam with his brothers and sisters and they'd would all sing before the church from the singing children he joined a group called the highway qcs which were young men like himself that uh that sang around chicago churches and he was a standout there and he was recruited from the highway qc's and to the soul stirs because he was such a hit with with the highway qc [Music] these soul stars were the group back then they were the number one quartet when they invited him to join them because he was just a teenager he was only 18 and sr crane and arby robinson promised them that they would take care of him and he went on the road with them the rest was history as far as the soul stirs [Music] gospel programs were set up essentially as musical competitions and when he would go to them he would be out sung often the other groups could do a better job of singing but what his fellow soul stirs kept noticing was that the girls and to some degree the teenage boys who admired him would push to the front of the church and he had this ability to win them over in the 50s there was a group of very religious black people and if you would listen to any other music it was the devil's music you couldn't play little richard you couldn't play all this hank ballard in in the midnighters there was just no no way did the two musics come come together so sam cook had to find a way of doing that so he recorded under the name of dale cook for his first record but he also knew that eventually he'd become a star he was going to use his own name that was just a stepping stone to greatness and greatness came immediately to him [Music] he liked the pop and the r b he talked to my grandfather about it they told me papa wasn't very pleased at first but he did give him his blessing and told him you know god gave you a gift to save and what you have to do is use that gift it would be a sin not to use the gift that god gave you so if that's what you want to do do it and do it well and boy if you do it well so as far as i'm concerned the transition from sam cook to from church music to secular music was smooth easy and beautiful also here at dolphins of hollywood you can either lose or get those blues sam cook leaves chicago gospel and the bigoted world of his childhood behind he finds new friends and role models in los angeles sam cook was uh he would actually um babysit my father my father and my uncles when they were when they were kids he would come by the house and he would babysitter my grandfather was actually trying to open a shop in hollywood back in the 1940s but him being black was not allowed to actually open the shop so what he did he went to central avenue which is in south central los angeles a very you know well occupied black community it was very popular back then and the idea behind it was just that if he can't bring south central sounds to hollywood he'll bring hollywood to south central and so he named it dolphins of hollywood put them all together what do you have the super two-for-one record store dolphins of hollywood man alive one with a jive coming to you from 1065. this shop was like a party everyone came there so they came there they listened to music they listened to the radio show with the dj huggy boy i used to go into dolphins of hollywood and and enjoy they had a vast amount of of recordings you know it's quite a a thing to go to dolphins of hollywood back in the 50s so he had a record shot but then he also had a recording studio in the back in which he would do a lot of recordings as well as he had a radio broadcast show in the front and he would do it out the front window one of the uh the djs at the store was a dj that got sam cook's record you know you send me and everyone and when the radio show came on that night basically they played the song over and over over again that whole night and with just tons of requests for it everyone came down to this shop they was looking to buy the record everyone wanted to hear the record they kept replaying it and then sam cook uh made an appearance there at the shop the same day they were first actually you know breaking the record john dolphin and sam cook were friends they became friends in los angeles he did come to his shop and john dolphin being the businessman that he was taught sam about publishing rights and and that's how you're going to make your money one but it's also how you're going to gain and keep your control over your music and at the end of the day it is show business and and artists get so caught up in the art we suck at business and i think that john was able to get sam to understand how important the business side is because if your business fails then you fail no matter how great you are i don't think he recognized it at first sam but i think as he watched how the music that he brought to his shop was just not for black people that it was for all people and sam had that voice that any woman would croon over so why not so um i think it was a smart business friendship that they had together dolphins record store was the only place that blacks at that time could secure black music because white record stores wouldn't carry them interest in black pop music rose rapidly at the end of the 1950s dolphins of hollywood established itself as a meeting place for black and white alike william parker was police chief around that time basically hated to see the integrated scene he wanted he wanted all the races to be separate and dolphins of hollywood was totally against that they was the total opposite of that and my grandfather's problem he became a nuisance to uh to the lapd and they would harass him like constantly at the shop they would shut down his shop they would scare all white people from coming to central avenue i mean they would scare him from coming to um to into his shop i spoke to this one lady who used to come to the shop white lady back in the time when she was a teenager she said she would get stopped every time this white lady and she would get stopped by the police and they would tell her that she was going to get gang raped if she was to go down into the central avenue area and this was they would do this to everyone they would just try to scare all the white teenagers from coming down there police were basically protecting state law so if segregation was the law african americans oftentimes were charged for crimes that went against their own civil rights despite segregation john dolphin's record store was a success the danger lurked elsewhere one of these guys that he recorded his name was percy ivy he was asking for royalties asking for money to be paid but there's he's just a recording that didn't work out like he was a wannabe singer that you really wasn't good enough to put out at the end of the day it was about money and just disappointment and i think that years and years of being said no to was one was it was one last know that that he couldn't take [Music] on february 1st 1958 john dolphin was shot and killed the killer was quickly apprehended presented to the public and convicted it was the failing musician percy ivy so if my grandfather there's there's sam cook i mean it could it could be a lot of different things i just have theories in my head like all these incredible you know uh entrepreneur uh people are you know are dying on these suspicious um circumstances so yeah you can't really say [Music] [Music] when sam was on the road he dealt with a lot of racism he dealt with it in his own way he refused to sing to segregated audiences if there was a show that was segregated sam would either cancel the show or in in one instance in uh little rock arkansas back in 1958 where they had sectioned off the black audience from the white audience sam said okay all right i'll give the show but i'm gonna turn and sing to the black guy you can't tell me which direction to turn so he was always putting on protests in his own way one time they ran out of gas so michael charles walked to get some gas he left sam sitting in the car police came up asked him why was the car sitting there he told him they told sam to get out of the car and push the car over to the side of the road he said man i'm a singer i'm not a pusher you want to put a ticket on it you ticketed now pay for it but i'm not pushing no my name is sam cook i'm an entertainer if you've never heard of me i bet your wife have so when you go home you ask your wife if she's ever heard of sad cook and i bet they know me he went on down the road and left sam alone well it was dangerous for him as well as any other entertainer you probably read up on the famous police beating of miles davis in the 1950s in which you know he simply had parked his car in the street and the police asked him to move it and he refused to do so and he was violently beat and so it wasn't uncommon to be any black who talked back or who stood up for themselves i mean that that was the social protocol of the day in the early 1960s the black civil rights movement is at its peak and even the lives of internationally renowned musicians and politicians are in jeopardy sam cook's family friends and fans doubt the official crime reports [Music] when sam cook was killed 1964 i was i was 26 years old and it was it was very sad it was shocking we did not want to believe the circumstances under which she got killed [Music] i would suspect that his death was under a clouded circumstance the fact that it wasn't investigated completely i think the fact that there was a contrived theory that was presented to the coroner is a likely scenario there are definitely people who over the years have said that sam didn't die there in that room or you know he was beaten close to death elsewhere and shot and dragged there and put there and that was all part of the conspiracy to kill him and you know it doesn't take that much to believe that that line of thinking what exactly happened on the night of december 11 1964 remains a mystery the official version stating that sam cook got shot in self-defense after attacking the manager of a cd motel was established very quickly but to this day sam cook's friends family and fans remain suspicious one of the few living witnesses concerning that night is sam cook's good friend and producer al schmidt we had dinner at martinez my wife and i and sam sam and i talked about meeting later at another club called pjs which was kind of a big hangout so my wife and i left but as we left you know sam got up and he went to the bar at the bar was jim bensey and and a girl an oriental girl sam went up there and he started talking to them as we left that was the last time i saw sam what is suspect is that sam cook had the means and the recognition to go to any hotel in the city okay he didn't have to come south sam would have taken a woman to a hotel but he wouldn't have taken her to a sleazy three dollar a night hookers motel how is he gonna rape her he's in the shower did he say hey [ __ ] get into bed and when i come out i'm gonna rape you i mean it makes no sense again here he is tussling with a 55 year old lady who basically didn't have any marks on sam was shot underneath the armpit that was an execution style that was a very calculated shot [Music] some are saying the the body was moved that it was done someplace else [Music] will we ever know the truth the investigation was concluded swiftly the trial took place a mere five days after the crime i would agree that this hearing was not anywhere near as detailed and probative as it should have been after a while we just for a couple of seconds he had pinned me down on the bed and he pulled me up and um he yanked my he pulled my sweater off and he ripped my dress off neither of these ladies elisa boyer or bertha franklin had an attorney i started shooting and how far was mr cook away from you when you started shooting he wasn't too far he's at close range and how many times did you fire this pistol three times i think the shooting was absolutely unnecessary and let me say that i believe that this was not legally speaking justifiable homicide he had no weapon he had no weapon and she was not in fear of her life that's the bottom line nevertheless bertha franklin the shooter was acquitted on self-defense when have you ever witnessed or saw a witness sit on a on the witness stand with dark glasses on sam cook with sam cook he didn't really need to rape anyone as a lot of people have pointed out he had money to pay her and she was a prostitute so that part we know i think it's pretty safe to say that's fictitious are you going to put down your loaded gun and pick up a broom i don't really see that berta franklin could have done that both his hands were all broken his head was all smashed in and i wasn't done with a broomstick the bullet that came out of sam all that was in police evidence and it's it's lost the other people who testified who were at the hotel nobody heard a gunshot the fact that sam was shot with a 22 caliber pistol well bertha franklin had a registered gun but it was a 32. so the whole story just really doesn't make sense within just a few days of the court hearing sam cook's first funeral was held in chicago they flew the body here to chicago because this is where he was from this is where the majority of the family is there was so many people that they had to literally fight to get us through my grandmother and seeing him yelled out they beat him look what they did to my beautiful baby and they have a few of our family members standing around the casket including my younger sister and in the background there's me babyface jeans standing next to the lamp [Music] muhammad ali herbert mohammed different people all came to view the body mahalia jackson as well as all the family and everybody the staples after the viewing the procession went to um tabernacle church we went down there and staple singers sang they just sang her heart out it was a beautiful service the next day my grandfather and a few others went back to l.a and they had the service at in in los angeles my wife and i went to the funeral as we were walking from our car to the church you people were playing sam cook in their apartments and the windows were open and you could just hear sam cook all the way to the church at the church everybody was there to sing uh ray charles sang it was packed when i got there you couldn't get in there were no seeds nothing i wanted to get in there and the minister was outside even he wasn't going to let me in i said you don't know are you kidding there's no way i beat him up i was pounding him pounding and pounding him so i got in i sat in the second row everybody was crying and goosebumps and and it was just an incredible incredible show and funeral there was so many entertainers it was just a wonderful wonderful tribute and send out to a wonderful guy [Music] [Music] recording sam cook was like fishing in a barrel you know it was so easy everybody wanted to be sam cook's producer because you were going to have hit after hit after hit [Music] i was a staff engineer at rca and rca had just signed sam and i was the engineer on 90 of the records he did for rca [Music] i did twist in the night away i did cupid which we knew was going to be a big hit i did bring it on home with lou rawls he and lou rawls we knew that was going to be a big hit i did another saturday night we knew that was gonna everything he did was gonna be a hit i mean it was just amazing i produced shake and that was a pretty big hit for him um so yeah he everything he did it was like money in the bank you know and he was an incredible writer songwriter he wrote most of his own material and even though we were the producers and we would guide some of the things he was mainly the producer he would tell the musicians how what feel he wanted how he wanted this played what the tempo should be i mean that's why i say it was like fishing in a barrel he was so easy dick clark once said about him sam cook knew the business way before he was supposed to know the business so he researched and he learned and he knew that that's where the money was and he always said that no one is going to get rich off of my blood and sweat but me how many songs have you written dick uh i don't know but i've written just about all i'm saying which is uh several hundred well i can uh estimate this way i've been in the business non-dick for about six years and uh i haven't had a song that wasn't a hit so i was on the charts i think from the time i started until now this is an amazing record now sam most people don't get to do this what's the answer now here's a man whose career so far is about six years old in this field not counting what went on before what's the secret i think the secret is really observation dick what do you mean well if you observe uh what's going on and try to figure out how how people are thinking and determine the the the times of your day i think you can always write something with that the people will understand now you have a you've solidified your own career as far as the singing and the records go what do you hope to do in the future you're doing different things now aren't you now dick i'm working mostly with other young singers you know wait a minute wait a minute what could be the greatest thing in the world that would happen to you if you had your choice the greatest thing to happen to me if all the singers i'm connected with had hits as performer writer and producer sam cook soon became a major force in the music industry in his friend j.w alexander's apartment he laid the foundation for his own business j.w alexander was a gospel singer from chicago a little a little bit older than sam but um they became good friends because they saw each other you know in the same circles in uh in chicago gospel during the 50s j.w alexander had the presence of mind to form his own music company and he didn't have any songs in his music company so sam wanted to piggyback off of that idea to have a company which he can assign his songs to so that he had eventual ownership and royalty so i'm joel kellum and um currently i'm an attorney i work with thompson reuters but as a record collector i also do work with musics and i've worked with the society of singers which is a group that helps to get money for artists of the 50s and 60s who weren't able to support themselves now sam was big into setting up something for himself he wanted his own record label he wanted his own publishing company he wanted his own management company and so in 1962 63 64 he really focused on signing the best artists in the in the world he had signed mel carter he had signed the sims twins he signed johnny morissette he signed a lot of really good talent and he had recorded the talent that he was going to put out his own record label he had derby records and sar records he also had kags music publishing and so the kags music publishing same thing he was ready he was really going to take on the world and he would have been a lot bigger than motown records because he had a really a leg up on motown if you're somebody in the music business at the time you would have been really threatened with that i mean you had been really threatened with his empowerment he wanted success he wanted to be famous he wanted to own a record company you know he wanted to become like a businessman as well and have money a lot of money he did not have a lot of money [Music] the only person in sam's office and businesses that wasn't a leech and who cared about him and didn't think about him as a meal ticket and that was zelda zelda i think you met beautiful lady beautiful lady we had an upright piano and the two desks jwmind and a filing cabinet zelda sans had experience in publishing and became sam cook's most valuable employee there i was i went through all the files of the copyrights and so it progressed until we started making some money i still didn't get a raise or anything but i was so happy there [Music] one of the things that sam was very adept at was recognizing talon early on he recognized bobby womack when he was just a little boy he brought billy preston on he signed billy preston to his record label when he was only 16 years old the pop visionary created studios throughout los angeles the soul stations [Music] seoul stations were an idea of sam's where he could he could have local artists come and they can record music so they were actually recording studios set up around los angeles where musicians could come in and meet one another and and collaborate with one another could use the instruments and use the recording uh equipment it was essentially let's have a little motown records uh two or three places all over la and we'll find local talent and we'll have this great band to back them and the records that come out will be owned by a black guy sam cook and it will benefit everybody will give people jobs it'll you know help him so i think that was the idea behind the soul stations [Music] sam cook's music business was flourishing he bought himself a house in los feliz an affluent neighborhood dominated by whites yeah what a house oh boy that was his castle it was quite an accomplishment you know for for a guy that came from a chicago fourth floor walk up to a home in such an exclusive area [Music] success is a relative proposition and one of the ways that you express success is in your lifestyle and i think that he made enough money to live a certain lifestyle [Music] again if you look at the big picture of africans history in north america he's paralleling the idea that you know people didn't want just to vote or to be manager of the store they wanted to own the store they wanted to be the mayor or the president and sam cook was a model for that going on towards the end of his life i think his switch to alan klein who was the man who at the end of his life was his manager was because alan klein could get him out he thought from under rca to where he controlled the music and the publishing the assertive and charismatic accountant succeeded where many artists of the early pop era failed he collected what the artists were due from the all-powerful record companies sam cook sees him as the perfect partner sam met alan klein in the spring of 63 and alan klein supposedly approached sam and said that i'm an accountant and what i specialize in is finding royalties from uh from the record labels uh that artists weren't aware that they may have been entitled to and eventually he found that rca had had some money that that they owed sam and that's where their relationships start in 1963 alan klein plans to renegotiate the contracts with the record company rca to sam cook's advantage he proposes they establish a new company tracy limited a company with an unclear ownership structure alan klein set up a tax shelter tracy limited for uh sam tracy was one of sam's daughters and uh it was sam's understanding that this was set up as his record label but it it ended up that alan klein actually owned tracy whereas sam didn't and sam was on the impression that he owned it tracy tracy i heard them mention tracy all the time but uh i didn't know what was going on [Music] donald piper a paralegal dedicated his life to sam cook in his free time the president of the sam cook fan club collects and studies all publicly accessible documents about the singer including his business activities as a paralegal i've worked in a law firm for almost 30 years i've done a lot of investigative work and i was just very curious from my background about how that came to be the sam was on rca and they obviously had the rights to his music but as of this time abco had the rights so i endeavored to do a copyright search of the copyright office to discover how that happened [Music] tracy limited is a nevada corporation it was created in 1963 it was presented to sam as a company that would own his produced records the company would own all of the rights to sam's music and there would be a separate agreement between tracy and rca to distribute the music [Music] what's missing from the articles of incorporation that were filed was a statement about the shareholders of the company the articles speak to the directors of the company the board of directors serves under the pleasure of the shareholders well in this particular case there was only one shareholder of tracy limited and that person could change the board of directors could name a different person as president at any time and that person was alan klein the shareholders of tracy limited have never been disclosed and under american law are not required to be [Music] nevertheless from his study of the documents and changes to the board of directors donald piper believes that alan klein was the main shareholder [Music] sam believed everything alan klein told him [Music] he would stand at my desk and say you know we're we're doing this now and klein is going to do this now and you know he was so impressed with klein [Music] i had no respect for him i thought he was a thief i heard nothing but bad things about him my friend florence greenberg owned scepter records and florence couldn't stand alan klein he had been her accountant and she begged sam not to go with him to go with clyde to sign with him he wound up with the publishing all the publishing go this he has now so i don't know how that worked and how that came about but i know that that's that that was not a very good thing and you know i think he he got sam the sign papers that sam shouldn't have signed the first time klein walked into the office is when they were signing he sits down and he said where are the copyrights i said they're in the file he said well would you get them out for me please i said why he said well i want to take them back to new york with me i said i will not and that was the one disagreement i ever ever had with sam afterwards he said why didn't you i said he would take him and put him into his name arnold cline was basically a an accountant but he did work with the stones and even people say he's responsible for breaking up the beatles paul mccartney who i worked with and and spent a lot of time with said that yeah alan klein was one of the reasons that uh they broke up he wanted to manage them and a couple of the guys would said were going that way and a couple didn't want to and i know that had sam not been killed he would have not been happy with him he took advantage of the artists that he dealt with [Music] the rolling stones would also succumb to alan klein's contracts in doing so they lose the exclusive control of their early work in spite of numerous court cases the recordings of the early classics of the rolling stones still belong to abco mick jagger i don't think he has a nice word to say about this guy and he fought for years to get this guy off of his money couldn't do it couldn't get no satisfaction doesn't want to sing any songs from that early period because it puts money in somebody's somebody's hand [Music] back to tracy limited the changes to the board of directors are as striking as the signatures on the documents there's a change over time in the annual statements that are filed with the nevada secretary of state this one was filed october 21st 1963. sam cook is listed as president alan klein secretary on may 5th 1964. alan klein is the secretary and you have to go all the way down here sam cook is chairman of the board officer who is not a director so in other words he's been removed from the board of directors [Music] well look here at who signed this document this is alan klein's signature he also had my grandfather on the board after they finished with their finagling papa was no longer on the board sam was not president sam was an employee now sam was the kind of person if you totally disappointed him you didn't get a second chance he would tell you off tell you why and just that's it and that's obviously what he did with alan a few days before he was killed and if you believe the people around him before he died he was getting ready to get out from under alan klein because ultimately he didn't he essentially wanted to be his own manager it's why he started a record label was that way he was the guy and he had some control [Music] klein said to me when he was talking to me on the phone i know you think i murdered sam cook that shocked me hearing those words coming from his mouth not i think that i was responsible for but i'm murdered sam so a lot of people think there was a conspiracy that maybe sam was targeted to be killed because he wanted to break up with alan klein uh wow that that's pretty sensational i don't know if that's true or not and uh you know alan klein is dead gone so we can't ask him and uh i don't know i i just don't know that's hard for me to believe but who knows anything can happen we travel to pittsburgh dr cyril wecht will review the forensic documents of sam cook's tragic murder is there any evidence that has been overlooked i am a forensic pathologist i'm also an attorney and i work as a forensic pathologist and medical legal consultant i've done about 20 000 autopsies myself i have reviewed supervised or signed off on about 40 000 other autopsies [Music] well um nobody ever contacted me about sam cook the autopsy was done by the deputy medical examiner the office of coroner in los angeles an office with which i am quite familiar the pathologists who did this autopsy we weren't personal friends but i remember him dr cade the autopsy showed a gunshot wound of entrance the bullet entered on the left side and traversed across the chest perforating first the left lung then the heart and then the right lung bleeding massive bleeding into both chest cavities as a result of the damage to the lungs and to the heart you've got people claiming that sam cook had all kinds of other injuries they talk about significant injuries to his knee i think i think somebody talked about fractured knee i think they talk about fractured hands and so on and i would say as you look at this picture there do appear to be what i would call abrasions contusions on the knee however they are not mentioned at all in the autopsy report zero zero then the persons who have made these observations and um allegations claim that the pictures of sam cook in the coffin at the funeral home show deformities of his hands i don't believe that a funeral director in america is going to have somebody's bloodied hands open it's not going to happen i can't tell you about other countries in the world we're big for open casket funerals in america that i do know [Music] somebody has suggested that he was shot elsewhere and brought there you don't get rid of blood that easily if he had bled out elsewhere and so on you're going to have blood patterns going in there on the floor and and so on we don't have any of that to my knowledge you don't just lift up a body and shoot it somewhere and then transport it and dump it somewhere it's not that easy [Music] it is these kinds of negligent acts these kinds of incomplete action that provide the the nidus uh for conspiratorial minded people but i i just you know i it's not for me to disparage or criticize uh other people who have that belief and so on but to make that quantum leap from some kind of business commercial controversy between sam cook and one or more of the people who were involved in his professional career with all of the things that played out that we won't repeat now ultimately ending in his death and continuing on into the autopsy and the inquest and all the people involved no i'm sorry i can't join that parade there is no forensic evidence that would warrant a re-evaluation of sam cook's death but can the witness elisa boyer perhaps cast new light on the case as has often been suspected since the court trial over 50 years ago no one has been able to question her about what happened that night i would like to see an interview with her saying this is what happened he ran out the room naked with the clothes i took the clothes i left if she could substantiate that story i think that you know maybe we're going up the wrong tree that's why if you could get alicia she's the only one who could tell you the [Music] truth [Music] my name is mike mccormick i'm a private investigator i was working with the lapd until 1994 when i retired well uh lisa boyer was the young lady that was with sam cook the night that he died so it took me quite a bit of time to do it but uh by doing some research on the computer based upon her age and name and other names that she used i was able to locate her i believe she's still alive we found the now 76 year old woman but her faculties have diminished when asked about the crime she repeated her testimony from back then almost verbatim elisa boyer ultimately leads nowhere [Music] nevertheless there are people who believe in a connection between sam's demise and his publishing affairs [Music] i definitely think it was a conspiracy i don't know who all the players were in the conspiracy if you really trace the money the key thing to do is go back and look at sam cook's money look where his money went immediately upon his death our next change is the following year this is june 17 1965 which is after sam's six months after sam has passed away and now look who is the president of tracy records limited alan klein is the president and betty cline ellen's wife is the secretary the final link in the chain filed in march of 1970 among other music companies tracy records limited is being merged into abco klein corporation this now explains to you how sam's music was transferred and ended up with abco donald piper not only believes that alan klein cleverly disguised his ownership but he also doubts the legality of the notarial authentication of the certificate of incorporation contrary to the legal requirement the signatories were apparently not even present at the time of signing [Music] according to the articles of incorporation of tracy limited this document was signed by sam cook j.w alexander r crane on september 27 1963 in new york according to this advertisement in a new orleans newspaper sam cook was a headliner at a show in new orleans on thursday night september 26 1963. so it's highly unlikely that all three gentlemen went from new orleans on thursday night and flew up to new york to sign this document it made no sense to do that since alan klein and his lawyer were in new orleans the night of the 26th but this notorious certificate on this document states that these three gentlemen personally appeared in new york city on september 27th it brings up a question of when and where and how was this document really signed it's totally possible that the notary wrote in this date here and these three gentlemen signed the document undated and it was notarized later so there is a question about this document about its authenticity as to signature when and how it is also notable that the notary who certified these and other abco contracts was also alan klein's longtime secretary adrian teresa zangi goldfarb [Music] although it's not conclusively proven that alan klein was the sole shareholder of tracy limited the facts speak for themselves even before sam cook's death alan klein gradually expanded his control of tracy limited he then quickly took complete control and tracy limited eventually merged with other companies to form abco based on the tracy limited contract the music label abco collects highly lucrative royalties to this day our interview requests for this film were not answered nobody ever studies entertainers in american society from the business side the aspect that is probably most unpublicized about sam cook is the ownership of his music he understood that that was how those in the record industry were beating other artists and he refused to allow himself to be beat that way it became more encouraging for another black artist to start his own company they never thought of it in those days that's how he changed it and he left us with his music his sound a lot of people tried to imitate rod stewart's favorite singer is sam he tries to sound like him if you go down a list of singers that are around today how many of them imitate sam and and sam's way of phrasing and and sam's style uh i miss him still you know i miss that smile he had an incredible smile um yeah he was a great guy sam cook meant more to us he was a symbol of direction we we if we work hard and we went to school and did the right thing we could prevail whether it was segregation or anything that nothing could really hold us back if we really tried

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 1,810,949

Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, sam cooke, sam cooke (singer), a change is gonna come, true crime, true crime documentary, murder mystery, sam cooke death, civil rights, conspiracy theories, rnb, blues, blues music, music documentary, what happened to sam cooke, what a wonderful world, chain gang, history

Id: n6FEFy30o3o

Length: 74min 21sec (4461 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020