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12 Responses to “It’s been too hard livin’, but I’m afraid to die.”
Cooke comes most alive toward the end, when he is both realizing his greatest popularity and suffering as he never has following the drowning death of the infant son who, because of (unfounded) doubts of his siring, he held distant in his affections. And it’s those washes of darkness and turmoil that serve Guralnick so well in the account of Cooke’s death suggesting that some sort of recklessness wasn’t out of the question. Cooke was shot to death by Bertha Lee Franklin, the proprietor of a $3 Los Angeles motel. He had gone to the motel with Erica Boyer, a hooker and, more to the point, a roll artist (someone who picked up men, took them to a hotel and, before any sex had taken place, absconded with their money). What happened there will always be a matter of dispute. Boyer claims she was kidnapped by Cooke and escaped with Cooke’s clothes when he went into the bathroom. Cooke, coming out and finding most of his clothes and money gone, started banging on the motel office, demanding Bertha Lee Franklin produce the girl. They got into a rough scuffle during which Franklin fired a shotgun into him.
Haunting. One of my top ten favorites. Makes you feel like you can do just about anything when listening to it; and yeah, dying included. I actually wouldn’t dying so much as long as this were playing while I was doing so.
