Brian Owens: Sam Cooke Live at the Copa
Brian Owens
Sam Cooke Live at the Copa
The Gaslight Theater, St. Louis, MO, March 5, 2015
Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi for Cabaret Scenes
Brian Owens’s cabaret debut, which opened the spring edition of the Gaslight Cabaret Festival, was really two shows in one.
The first and longer of the two was a faithful re-creation of the titular 1964 LP. The second show—the one with the real emotional punch—came towards the end, when Owens interrupted the LP and took a few minutes to tell us what Cooke’s music meant to him and why, complete with short a cappella versions of Cooke’s hits “Cupid,” “(What a) Wonderful World,” and “Chain Gang.”
He then went back for the last three numbers from Cooke’s original set, after which he brought his father up on stage for a powerful duet rendition of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” originally recorded by Cooke in January of 1964 but not released until after his murder in December of that year. It would go on to become an anthem for the civil rights movement.
The first show was a solid nightclub act, polished and entertaining. The second—especially that powerful closer—was real cabaret, with a compelling personal story and a strong emotional core. Both went over very well with the sold-out house.
Recorded in July 8, 1964, during a two-week engagement at the Copacabana nightclub in New York, Sam Cooke Live at the Copa is typical of the sort of thing black artists did back then when they played venues where the audience was mostly white. The set list mixed Great American Songbook standards with Cooke’s hits and a couple of songs from what was then a hot trend: protest folk music. Cooke’s own band was augmented with Joe Mele’s 16-piece Copacabana Band, producing a sound somewhere between classic R&B and big band styles. Cooke’s unique voice and personality tied it all together.
Owens used a smaller band (nine pieces), but otherwise stuck closely to the material on the LP, right down to the between-song patter. He even sounded a bit like the later Cooke, especially in his head voice and falsetto registers. What he didn’t do, though, was settle for a straight celebrity impersonation. He brought his own personality to it all, so the result was more an homage than anything else.
The real Brian Owens came across most clearly, though, in that “second show” monologue and especially in “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Joining with his father in close harmony, Owens poured his heart into that performance in a way that demolished the “fourth wall” the Cooke tribute show had (unavoidably) created. Towards the end, he asked the audience to sing the refrain while, one at a time, the band members stopped playing and left the stage. Finally, there was only Owens, his father, and all of us singing “I know a change is gonna come.”
That, to me, was real magic.
Sam Cook Live at the Copa was part of the spring 2015 edition of the Gaslight Cabaret Festival, produced by The Presenters Dolan at the Gaslight Theater in St. Louis’s Central West End. For more information: gaslightcabaretfestival.com.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, Regional, St. Louis, St. Louis Cabaret Reviews
