Neiman – viola Israel Baker – violin Irving Lipschultz – violin Leonard Malarsky – violin Jack Pepper – violin Ralph Schaeffer – violin Sidney Sharp – violin Darrel Terwilliger – violin Tibor Zelig – violin Emmet Sargeant – cello Release Cooke first performed "A Change Is Gonna Come" on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on February 7, 1964. Cooke's new manager, Allen Klein, was infatuated with the song and persuaded Cooke to do away with promoting his most recent single, "Ain't That Good News", and perform "Change" instead, feeling that that was the statement he needed to make before a national audience. Cooke objected, noting that the album's release was a month away and that he had no time to pull together an arrangement within such a short time frame. Klein arranged for RCA to pay for a full string section and Cooke performed the song that Friday on The Tonight Show after performing "Basin Street". An NBC timekeeper logged down the number as "It's a Long Time Coming," but the network did not save the tape of the performance. Klein and Alexander both felt it would become a milestone moment in Cooke's career, but it was overshadowed by the Beatles' performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS just two days later. The song was issued on March 1 as a track on Cooke's album Ain't That Good News. It would not be issued as a single for another nine months. Cooke elected not to perform "A Change Is Gonna Come" again in his lifetime, both because of the complexity of the arrangement and because of the ominous nature of the song. When shown to his protégé Bobby Womack, his response was that it sounds "like death." Cooke responded, "Man, that's kind of how it sounds like to me. That's why I'm never going to play it in public." Womack clarified his thoughts, that it wasn't deathly, but rather "spooky," but Cooke never performed the song again. In December, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was prepared for single release, with the verse and chorus preceding the bridge ("I go to the movies…") deleted for radio airplay. The civil rights movement picked up on "A Change Is Gonna Come" with near immediacy. On December 11, 1964, two weeks before the song was released, Sam Cooke was fatally shot at a Los Angeles motel. Cash Box described the single as