A Change Is Gonna Come

"A Change Is Gonna Come" was recorded by Sam Cooke, the American singer and songwriter. The track first appeared on his album Ain't That Good News, which RCA Victor put out in mid-February 1964. A slightly trimmed version of that recording hit stores as a single on December 22, 1964, with Hugo & Luigi producing and René Hall handling the arrangement and conducting. It was the B-side to "Shake." The song grew out of several moments in Cooke’s life.

Legacy

Most notably, he and his group were refused service at a whites-only motel in Louisiana. That experience pushed Cooke to write something that captured his own struggle and the struggle of those around him, tying into the Civil Rights Movement and the experience of African Americans. Compared to his earlier singles, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was only a modest hit, but it’s now seen as one of his most important and influential works. Various publications have ranked it among the greatest songs ever recorded.

In 2007, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Recording Registry, calling it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Rolling Stone placed it at number 3 on its 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," and in 2025, the magazine ranked it number 1 on its list of "The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time." On October 8, 1963, while traveling to Shreveport, Louisiana, Cooke called ahead to the Holiday Inn North to book a room for himself and his wife, Barbara. When they arrived, the desk clerk looked uneasy and said there were no vacancies. Cooke’s brother Charles argued, but Sam was furious—he demanded to see the manager and refused to leave without an answer. His wife tried to calm him, warning, "They'll kill you." Cooke shot back, "They ain't gonna kill me, because I'm Sam Cooke." Eventually, they persuaded him to leave, and the group drove off shouting insults and honking their horns.

Background

When they reached the Castle Motel on Sprague Street downtown, police were waiting and arrested them for disturbing the peace. The next day, The New York Times ran a UPI report headlined "Negro Band Leader Held in Shreveport." African-Americans were outraged. In 2019, Shreveport’s then-mayor Adrian Perkins apologized to Cooke’s family and posthumously gave Cooke the key to the city. Cooke was also deeply moved when he heard Bob Dylan’s "Blowin' in the Wind" in 1963.

He was struck that such a powerful song about racism in America could come from someone who wasn’t Black, and he felt ashamed that he hadn’t written something like it himself. His image and fear of losing his large white fan base had held him back. He loved Dylan’s song so much that he added it to his own performances. Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech at the civil rights march on Washington that year also influenced him.

Toward the end of 1963, Cooke said the composition for "Change" came to him in a dream. Research by Ian Mance shows that Cooke was in Durham, North Carolina, during sit-ins by students from North Carolina College at Durham, and that he wrote the first draft of the song on a Durham bus. Photographic evidence and a personal conversation with Cooke by Cecil J. Williams, a former Jet magazine photographer, suggest that Cooke’s earliest inspiration for the lyrics came from an incident in February 1961—two years earlier than other references.

Williams, who is from Orangeburg, South Carolina, was backstage with Cooke before a performance at the Columbia Township Auditorium. As a big fan, he asked what Cooke’s next song would be. Cooke replied, "With st like this happening, things have got to change. I think I'm going to sing something about, 'a long time coming, but change is gonna come...Change gotta come.'" He was referring to a heated argument with venue management and a plainclothes officer about segregated seating—white spectators were to be accommodated in special seating upstairs.

Recording and production

Williams’ photos of Cooke and his wife, as well as close-ups of Cooke performing, back up this account. After Christmas 1963, Cooke invited J. W. Alexander to his home to hear a new song he had just written. Cooke was excited about it. When Alexander arrived, Cooke played the song on his guitar twice, going over it line by line the second time.

Both were eager to record it. Alexander saw it as more personal and political than anything Cooke had tried before. He warned Cooke that the song might not make as much money as his lighter, poppier hits, but Cooke didn’t care. He told Alexander he hoped the song would make his father proud.

Biographer Peter Guralnick said, "It was less work than any song he'd ever written. It almost scared him that the song—it was almost as if the song were intended for somebody else. He grabbed it out of the air and it came to him whole, despite the fact that in many ways it's probably the most complex song that he wrote. It was both singular—in the sense that you started out, 'I was born by the river'—but it also told the story both of a generation and of a people." Cooke handed the song to his arranger René Hall with no specific instructions, only to give it "the kind of instrumentation and orchestration that it demanded." The two had worked together before.