Solomon Burke, among a handful of others sucha as Aretha, have also done beautiful covers. Also, Bettye sang the "lost verse."

High horses, this morning, man. Yours and mine.

Arlo Guthrie was the one who had me snivelling in the car...Old guy singing "and up above me I saw a skyway" while the crowd sang along. I sang along.

Did I say this?

Check this woman out. She kicks Beyonce's ass kinda like Coltrane kicks Kenny G's.

I've heard Solomon Burke's cover, and Otis Redding's. I don't like either version--though I love both artists. Some things are better left untouched.

First time I heard Sinnerman: Second season of "Scrubs"

I did not hear the stuff on yesterday but do know Cooke's " A Change is Going to Come" and Simone's Sinnerman, and I do not recall anyone having recorded or performed they respective music very well( Maybe Valarie Simpson and/or Otis Redding with a couple of songs.). Simone's range and ability excludes most as does Cooke's clear voice; I have the malady of hearing them in the day. As with most classics few can match or expand on the original as in Ray Charles' America and Geogria.

Some songs are sacred, to be sure, and no one will ever come close to the Sam Cooke version given his incredible voice and the fact that he was singing a song that he wrote. The man delivered that one straight from his soul.

No one on this blog ever mentions Robert Cray. If I could have picked anyone to sing "A Change is Gonna Come" it would have been him, although I haven't heard him sing recently.

Cray was inspired by Cooke which is probably why there is a little similarity.

The song is out of Bon Jovi's emotional range but, then again, so is "Wooly Bully".

As a side note - the same cannot be said for movies. I do not think remakes ever work to improve a great movie (see, e.g., Psycho, Inherit the Wind, Willy Wonka).

And then Bon Jovi came in...........

All things considered, he surprised me. He wasn't terrible. However, it would have been MUCH better w/ just Bettye.

Also, while I wouldn't call it the highlight - although it was probably geared perfectly if you were there live more than for watching it on TV - I was also impressed by Garth Brooks, another guy who is totally off may radar. He had an energy that was terrific with the kids' choir, and his genre-bending blend of material totally worked. It's funny how ubiquitous American Pie was for folks "of a certain age" - both adult Obamas clearly knew the words.

Think about "Ohio" by CSN&Y.

With "A Change is Gonna Come" a singer is up against one of the most beautiful voices of all time singing what is essentially an autobiographical song. In addition, there is the tragic death of Sam Cooke and the fact that the song was released post humously.

When I listen to "A Change is Gonna Come" I am affected not only by what the song is saying but also by the death of Sam Cooke. We lost one of the most talented singer/songwriters of all time and he had so much more in him that we will never know.

And that, my young friends, is why no one is ever going to touch Sam Cooke. Not ever.

That was pete Seeger, arlo isn't that old:-)

But it wasn't just personal autobiography - it was the "autobiography of a people." That's why - while I'd challenge anyone as a bigger fan of Sam Cooke's than myself - the song still lives as an anthem and NEEDS to be sung.

Link to Garth Brooks. Because I can't figure out how to link to the original video this is embedded in a call for Garth Brooks to be Commerce Secretary, not the worst idea out there.

By "untouchable" I meant that the original version cannot be surpassed by any new performance.

Still, a song is a story told with music. What story can he tell unless it's in 3rd person , e.g., Dylan writing "Blowin' in the Wind?" Dylan doesn't sing, "How many roads do I walk down..."
Sure, sure, maybe ol Sam is up there in heaven, (and if there is scotch on the rocks, he's having one) laughing, enjoying the homage that began with Spike Lee's Malcolm X, and has included covers by Aretha (so far the only person who did it justice), and numerous others,none of whom, even Ms. LaVette (who came close because she was has lived the lyrics) could capture what Sam Cooke captured.
Sam had said the song "scared him." He never performed it for money, rarely if ever,in fact.
It was all to pay tribute to Dr. King, and to assuage his guilt that "a white boy like Dylan" had written "Blowin in the Wind" while he was singing "Cupid." (Yeah, but even that song has to be the official Valentine's Day Song.)
Sam could make up songs on the spot and just tell a story with soul, hitting every note. He made every note tell his story. The line between where Sam ended the song began seems blurry in every one of his songs. He was the song...
Listen to "Meet me at Mary's Place," and you want to go there. "Sad Mood" makes you want to cry about everyone who ever left you lonely. "Havin a Party" could be your basement rec room in the 60s.

Songs are always better when sung by the writers.The Tokens in 1960 butchered the Weavers Wemoweh, but the government labeled the Weavers Communists so this was the version white America heard. Trini Lopez vs Peter Paul and Mary vs Pete Seeger singing Pete's "If I had a Hammer?" Three different songs. Elvis, in fact, destroyed "Hound Dog," compared with Big Mama Thornton's blues original.(She died broke, incidentally. Big surprise.)

Still, I don't fault anyone for singing 'Change.' A dear friend of mine watched that rendition yesterday and wrote me that it recalled his being shipped off to Vietnam in 1965, a poor black kid from South LA, with limited options at the time. He sang that song over and over as if to reassure himself.
Performing it? Not so much.

Those folks were great and none of the choral groups, except the military one Tiger announced, got an introduction or even a lower third chyron during the performances. I think they were identified in the credit roll, but they helped make the day and elevated the scruffy white guys' performances considerably.

I hate to nitpick anymore, but it would have been nice to have more Latino and Asian-American representation. Los Lobos would have been cool, and at the very least some Asian-American actors reading parts of the script. (Also thought the "Lincoln Portrait" motif throughout of "So-and-so said..." was neat. Lots of great history along with the music.) Also, in the annals of symbolic cultural representation, too bad that the gay bishops's invocation wasn't on HBO's broadcast.

For me personally old Pete doing the forgotten commie verses for "This Land is your Land" was the spiritual highlight though.

Like Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond...

And Billie Holliday's classic "Strange Fruit" about lynchings was written by a Jewish HS teacher.

Coates and all Obama supporters need to pull out all the stops for the next 4 years because Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Joe Scarborough and their feeble minded wing nut followers will do everything humanly possible to prevent the change that Sam Cooke sang about from becoming reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWDgk2oBJRY

En Vogue was not able to save it.

There are just so many emotions circulating. There's obviously the history of the moment, and the enormity of it given our past...and present. There's that hope thing, which we so desperately need at this time. (I keep coming back to Cornel West's line about being a "prisoner of hope.") And there's the emotional relief--and release--of finally sending Bush away, of being able to let go, just a bit, of the shame and pain this administration has caused.

And, there's the fact that music just moves me.

Didn't Teddy Pendergrast die a couple years ago?

2. Summertime should be sung by anyone with great vocal range who can elicit heat. It is not a civil rights anthem like Change is, nor a religious holiday song. Faulty parallelism here, maybe?

3, Pete Seeger, as mentioned, was blacklisted for 20 years for his role with the Weavers, that group of Commies who sang evil songs of freedom (sic)to Americans. If I Had a Hammer, et al. To sign a petition awarding Pete the Nobel Peace Prize--I mean, the man is 89 and picks up the guitar like it's a damn sandwich--go to: www.NobelPrize4Pete.com. The guy could've gone bitter and retired to Montana, but he just started a whole rebirth of folk, and I think did some short jail stays for his singing protests during the civil rights era.

It's hard to choose between two of the greatest voices ever put on wax, but the Stax instrumentation gives Otis the slight edge.

Seriously, what a great song.

Not only an amazing song, but the jump off for two amazing hip hop statements in one year. Both Talib Kweli's anthem "Get By" and Brother Ali's Picket Fence" use the song to stunning effect. Kweli uses it to talk about the things we as humans do "just to get by," while Ali reflects on his growth and the people who helped him gain self-confidence as a young albino child.