Product Description
GINA SICILIA - BRING IT ON HOME : A TRIBUTE TO SAM COOKE
RELEASE DATE JUNE 06, 2025. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!
GINA SICILIA
Bring It On Home: A Tribute to Sam Cooke
Blue Élan Records
Of all the awful exits that have come to famous musicians, the demise of Sam Cooke is one of the saddest. He was gunned down by a hot-sheets motel manager in a dispute over a woman who had run out on Cooke and taken his clothes. It is not a fitting conclusion to the life of a man who made his mark first as a gifted gospel singer and then became the father of what we now call soul music.
But I tend to think it’s necessary to separate the lives of artists from the art they create. Ernest Hemingway was surely a drunk and a terrible husband to the four women he married, but he wrote great novels that earned him a Nobel. The Sun Also Rises reads well today a hundred years after its publication. And Sam Cooke’s songs and recordings still sound terrific 61 years after his death.
Now blues singer Gina Sicilia has put out a ten-song album, Bring It On Home: A Tribute To Sam Cooke. Other than a little short for a compact disc at 34 minutes, the recording is a terrific homage. The album opens with Sicilia performing “Shake,” a song Cooke recorded during his last studio session that became a world-wide hit when released posthumously. As an anthem, it’s been covered by artists ranging from Eric Burdon’s Animals and the Small Faces to Ike & Tina Turner and the great Otis Redding (backed by Booker T. & the MGs on the Monterey Pop soundtrack). Sicilia’s version compares well.
She also turns in rock-solid performances on “Bring It On Home To Me” and the up-tempo-ed “Another Saturday Night,” “That’s Where It’s At,” and “Twisting The Night Away” – the last a song that has lasted 60 years longer than the dance craze it celebrates. Sicilia’s vocal range easily handles these tunes as well as the blues-tinged “Lost And Lookin’” and jazz-leaning “Lonely Island.”
Sicilia finishes the tribute with the two important songs that define Cooke’s role as a spokesman for racial equality: Bob Dylan’s “Blowing In The Wind,” a song he featured in his final live shows (available on the superb posthumous Sam Cooke at the Copa), and his own answering declaration, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Both songs remain as relevant today as they were 60 years ago. Life is short, but art is long.
– Bill Wasserzieher