Sony

[caption id="attachment_200705" align="aligncenter" width="286"] Sam Cooke with neighbor friend Aretha Franklin[/caption]On this site, I have written about SO many music celebrities and industry deaths I've lost count. For some reason, Aretha Franklin's death was the hardest hitting. She was not only the Queen of Soul she was an American institution. While doing some reading on her, I discovered there was also once a "King of Soul," Sam Cooke.Cooke died tragically on December 11, 1964, at the age of 33. Cooke rescued himself from what he considered to be financial insolvency by leaving the Gospel industry, an industry that even in 2018 is still reputed to be outrageously frugal, for the more generous and profitable secular music industry. He admitted to Dick Clark when posed with the question, "Why did you leave Gospel?" responding "For financi