RCA Victor, at the time, viewed the album as too gritty and raw and possibly damaging to his pop image, and quietly kept the recordings in their archive.

The Harlem Square Club was a small downtown nightspot in Miami's historically African-American neighborhood of Overtown, and was packed with the singer's most devoted fans from his days singing gospel.

[5] RCA found the results too loud, raw and raucous – not the Cooke the label was trying to break as an international pop star – and shelved the recordings for over two decades.

A new mix created for the 2000 box set, The Man Who Invented Soul, turns the audience elements down, cleaning up Cooke's vocals as well as the music.

[11][12] Steve Leggett for AllMusic feels that "Not only is this one of the greatest live soul albums ever released, it also reveals a rougher, rawer, and more immediate side to Sam Cooke that his singles only hinted at, good as they were [...] the crucial key is and was always Cooke's vocals, and while he was a marvelously smooth, versatile, and urbane singer on his official pop recordings, here he explodes into one of the finest sets of raw secular gospel ever captured on tape.

[13][14][15] "Cooke was elegance personified, but he works this Florida club until it's hotter than hell, while sounding like he never breaks a sweat [...] when the crowd sings along with him, it's magic," said Rolling Stone.