#240 Sam Cooke, 'Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963' (1985)

Considered too raw and gritty to release in 1963, the album was shelved for 22 years. RCA was trying to establish Cooke as an international pop star, and the artist portrayed on this record is anything but a polished popstar. It’s a loud, it’s raucous and dripping with sex appeal. But one more thing – the audience was almost exclusively black. RCA was trying to sell him to a white audience and they were scared that white audiences might be scared off by this fact if they heard this record.