ABKCO Records & HDTracks Celebrate The Music of Sam Cooke…

ABKCO RECORDS AND HDTRACKS CELEBRATE THE MUSIC OF

SAM COOKE ON THE 80^TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH

Sam Cooke is
rightly credited with creating and defining “soul music,” — no one did
it better. Had he lived, Cooke would have turned 80 on January 22,
2011. While Cooke’s untimely death
at the age of 33 was tragic and deprived successive generations of new
music, his influence and legacy is of such magnitude that his artistry
is still enjoyed by fans the world over to this day. ABKCO Records and Hdtracks are thrilled to make available, for the first time ever, in high resolution digital audio four of Cooke’s core albums – Sam Cooke at the Copa, Keep Movin’ On, Ain’t That Good News and the career-encompassing compilation Portrait Of A Legend 1951 – 1964. These seminal works are finally available for download in 88.2kHz/24bit audio.

To
bring the listener closer than ever before to the full artistry of Sam
Cooke’s music, ABKCO Records and HDtracks employed the most advanced
analog-to-digital transfer and mastering technologies. Extensive
analysis of the first generation analog master tapes, retrieved from
vaults in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles,
involved painstaking research to determine the best mastering sources.
The sound quality now available on the ABKCO Records and HDtracks
high-resolution 88.2-kHz/24-bit downloads is precisely what Sam Cooke
and his fellow musicians heard when the engineer pressed the “playback”
button in the studio. The music has never sounded better than it does
now.

“Sam Cooke is somebody other singers have to measure themselves against, and most of them go back to pumping gas!” — Keith Richards

ABKCO Records and HDtracks proudly present four Sam Cooke albums in high-resolution 88.2-kHz/24-bit audio for the first time anywhere:

Sam Cooke: Sam Cooke at the Copa was
recorded on July 7th and 8th, 1964, and it was one of the finest live
soul performances ever captured on tape. In 1964 the times were changing
fast, so Cooke performed a rousing rendition of Bob Dylan’s then newly
written “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Sam Cooke at the Copa captures
Cooke at the peak of his powers. Producer and 17-time Grammy winner Al
Schmitt said of this record, “This is one of my all-time favorite
albums.”

Sam Cooke: Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 includes music from his teenage debut
as a fully-fledged member of the legendary Soul Stirrers in 1951,
through his long streak of Top 10 Billboard Pop Chart hits that, of
course, began with “You Send Me” and continued through “Chain Gang,” “Twistin’ The Night Away,” “Another Saturday Night” and “Shake.” Portrait Of A Legend 1951- 1964 includes thirty Cooke classics

Sam Cooke: Keep Movin’ On is a spectacular collection of singles, album tracks and unreleased gems by the father of soul music. The
hits, like “(Ain’t That) Good News” and “Good Times,” sound great next
to lesser-known tunes like “Yeah Man” and “Falling in Love” and the
title track that had been unreleased for almost 40 years.

Sam Cooke: Ain’t That Good News is
the album that provided the context in which Cooke’s most historically
resonant song “A Change Is Gonna Come” was originally presented, along
with eleven other masterful classics.

“We
wanted to create a digital music site with high quality recordings that
music lovers would enjoy. With HDtracks you truly get the same level of
quality that you receive when buying a CD or DVD-Audio from a
traditional record store,” – HDtracks.