Sam Gooden (September 2, 1934 – August 4, 2022) – Do You Wanna Win (1970)
This powerful Curtis Mayfield-penned message song featured original Impressions member Gooden's distinctive bass vocals at a crucial moment.
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Sam Gooden was one of the founding members of the Impressions whose bass vocals anchored the group's harmonies for decades.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was in his early twenties Gooden formed a doo-wop vocal group called the Roosters with members including brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks. The three friends eventually moved to Chicago, where in 1958 they welcomed new members Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield into the group, and soon changed their name to the Impressions. After Butler left to go solo in 1960, former Roosters member Fred Cash replaced him. The Brooks brothers departed in 1962, leaving the trio of Gooden, Cash, and Mayfield to continue on. They would shortly rise to worldwide fame while helping provide the soundtrack to the emerging Civil Rights Movement through Mayfield’s songs.
See our earlier post on Curtis Mayfield for more on the group’s history.
For their 1970 album Check Out Your Mind!, their twelfth studio album but only third release on Mayfield’s own label Curtom Records, Mayfield wrote the powerful, inspirational message song “Do You Wannna Win.” It featured Gooden’s distinctive bass vocals at a crucial moment, when Mayfield spelled out the song’s meaning:
“Do you wanna win? Then here are the rules. The weapons are love. (Gooden): Without them you lose.”
After Check Out Your Mind was released, Mayfield left the group for his own groundbreaking solo career. But he continued to produce the Impressions, and for their next album Times Have Changed (1972) he wrote and produced the beautiful jam “Our Love Goes On And On.” Gooden, Cash, and Mayfield’s replacement Leroy Hutson memorably traded lines throughout the song.
Sadly, Gooden left us last year at age 87, after suffering a heart attack in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
#soul #Impressions #CurtisMayfield #SamGooden