Sam Cooke's "For Sentimental Reasons"

I've been making my way through a three-disc set of Sam Cooke (titled You Send Me), and yester-day when I listened to the second disc, I noticed something about "For Sentimental Reasons," specifically the line "I dream of you every every every every night."  Those "every"s are sung with three syllables each (rather than the two they're usually pronounced with), and between that pronunciation and the repetition there, the frequency of "dream[ing] of you" is illustrated.

Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang"

This morning I listened to a compilation album of Sam Cooke titled Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, and I noticed something small about "Chain Gang."  There's a melisma for "down" in the line "Till the sun is goin' down" in the bridge.  Instead of a single syllable, it's sung to two (the notes are A and G), so there's a musical representation of the sun's descent.

Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" and "Summertime"

For each of the past three days, I listened to a disc of a three-CD compilation of Sam Cooke titled You Send Me.  I found some interesting things in two of the songs.

"You Send Me" has some interesting articulation.  The "in-" in "infatuation" is stressed instead of the "fa," but I think that's just to make the meter of the line work.  In the same part, the "so" in the line "But, ooh, it’s lasted so long" is drawn out to three syllables, to sort of show how long it's lasted.  And when Cooke sings "marry you," the rest of the instrumentation drops out so that he sings the line almost a cappella, which could represent the seriousness or finality of marriage.

I also found some interesting stuff in his version of Gershwin's "Summertime."  Apparently Cooke recorded more than one version; "Summertime" is included on an-other Sam Cooke compilation album I have, but it's a different recording (the You Send Me set also contains a different take of "Win Your Love for Me," which is distinct in that there are no backing vocals and the bass is more prominent in the mix).  In any case, in the version of "Summertime" in the You Send Me set, Cooke takes some of the phrases from the first two verses and combines them in some phrases that he sticks between the second and third verses.  He takes "don't cry" from the end of the first verse and combines it with "they're standin' by" from the end of the second to get:

They’re standin’ by so don’t cry
They’re standin’ by; don’t cry

Not only does it tie the song together by strengthening the connection between those two verses, but it also points out the rhyme scheme used in the song.

Sam Cooke's "Little Red Rooster"

I'm listening to a compilation album of Sam Cooke titled Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964.  I'm fairly familiar with most of these songs, yet - until now - I'd failed to noticed the program music aspects in "Little Red Rooster."  The various organ parts in the song illustrate the animals that are mentioned in the lyrics.  For example, the song starts out with (what I think is) an octave jump in the organ part (it's also present in the first and final verses), which represents the crowing of the rooster.  Later, there are swipes up the keyboard to represent the lyric "dogs begin to bark," and there's an-other organ sound I don't even know how to describe to reflect the line "the hounds begin to howl."