Sam Cooke’s vocal chords chew into soul’s boundaries, both the genre and the ill-defined boundary of self. It’s as though each “baby,” each “my heart,” is Mr. Cooke’s personal airing of grief and love destroyed and regained, perhaps they turn into my own. This record is Sam sans Hollywood. No strings, no Sinatra bigband—just a preacher pleading not to the choir, but to the devil. There are many more words to be read over the close-grown copse of pains felt so delicately, so joyously, but please listen and write them yourself.