The room › Artists › Sam Cooke
Where to start with Sam Cooke
Start with (Ain't That) Good News — Ain't That Good News, 1964. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 12 Sam Cooke tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 12 Sam Cooke tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 12 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 11 of the 12 tracks come from Ain't That Good News alone.
The years need a caveat: 12 of 12 dated tracks land in the 1960s and come from 2 records, while the rest come from elsewhere — the mark of a reissue carrying its own date rather than the music's. Read the year column below as the date on the copy in this room, not the date the music arrived in the world.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
(Ain't That) Good News — Ain't That Good News, 1964. Of the 12 Sam Cooke tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the cerebral end
A Change Is Gonna Come — A Change Is Gonna Come, 1964. The lowest head/body reading of any Sam Cooke track in the room (28 out of 100). This is as far towards cerebral as the collection goes.
If you want the groove end
The Riddle Song — Ain't That Good News, 1964. The highest head/body reading here, at 61 out of 100 — a 33-point swing across the collection towards groove.
Where Sam Cooke sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Sam Cooke's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Ain't That Good News | 1964 | 11 |
| A Change Is Gonna Come | 1964 | 1 |
Every Sam Cooke track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| A Change Is Gonna Come | A Change Is Gonna Come | 1964 |
| (Ain't That) Good News | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Another Saturday Night | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Falling In Love | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Good Times | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Home (When Shadows Fall) | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Meet Me At Mary's Place | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Rome (Wasn't Built In A Day) | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Sittin' In The Sun | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| Tennessee Waltz | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| The Riddle Song | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
| There'll Be No Second Time | Ain't That Good News | 1964 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Sam Cooke's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Shuggie Otis — soul, 18 tracks
- Where to start with Gil Scott-Heron — soul, 18 tracks
- Where to start with Stevie Wonder — soul, 16 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Sam Cooke as a solo artist, from Clarksdale, the United States and born in 1931. Its contributors tag the artist vocal, soul, gospel, southern soul and vocal jazz. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Sam Cooke tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 12, across 2 albums. 12 of them carry a date, running from 1964 to 1964. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 12 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 12 of these 12 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.