Lola Rodrigues's Blog

Soul music is a music genre that combines rhythm and blues and gospel music, originating in the United States. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying."

The performance is very emotional, and the melody is decorated with improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and plastic body moves, are an important feature. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound.

Soul music has some of its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues.Many consider soul music to be a genre of music created by African Americans in northern United States inner cities, particularly Chicago.[citation needed] Other areas, such as Detroit and Memphis, Tennessee quickly followed and created their own regional soul music style, due to their gospel roots. Some of the elements from Chicago and other parts of the United States, such as the south, brought some raw unpolished funky talent to heavily-populated inner cities, where soul became polished and perfected.

Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James were early popular stars of the music genre, and other soul forerunners include: Mahalia Jackson, Louis Jordan, and Big Joe Turner. Some of the earliest soul artists included Ray Charles, Little Richard, Fats Domino and James Brown, although all were happy to call themselves rock and roll performers at the time. During the 1960s Beatles boom, both Charles and Brown claimed that they had always really been R&B singers. Little Richard proclaimed himself the "king of rockin' and rollin', rhythm and blues soulin'", because his music embodied elements of all three, and because he inspired artists in all three genres. Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the soul style, and his early 1960s songs "Cry to Me", "Just Out of Reach" and "Down in the Valley" are considered classics of the genre. Peter Guralnick writes, "it was only with the coming together of Burke and Atlantic Records that you could see anything resembling a movement.

An important center of soul music recording was Florence, Alabama, where the Fame Studios operated. Jimmy Hughes, Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander recorded at Fame, and Aretha Franklin recorded in the area later in the 1960s. Fame Studios, often referred to as Muscle Shoals (after a town neighboring Florence), enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis contributed to recordings done in Alabama.

Another notable Memphis label was Goldwax Records, owned by Quinton Claunch. Goldwax signed O.V. Wright and James Carr, who went on to make several records that are considered essentials of the genre. Carr's "The Dark End of the Street" (written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn) was recorded at two other important Memphis studios, Royal Recording and American Sound Studios, in 1967. American Studios owner Chips Moman produced "The Dark End of the Street", and the musicians were his house band of Reggie Young, Bobby Woods, Tommy Cogbill and Gene Chrisman. Carr also made recordings at Fame Studios, utilizing musicians David Hood, Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins.

Aretha Franklin's 1967 recordings, such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "Respect" (originally sung by Otis Redding), and "Do Right Woman-Do Right Man", are considered the apogee of the soul music genre, and were among its most commercially successful productions. During the late 1960s, Stax artists such as Eddie Floyd and Johnnie Taylor made significant contributions to soul music. Howard Tate's recordings in the late 1960s for Verve Records, and later for Atlantic (produced by Jerry Ragovoy) are another notable body of work in the soul genre.

Motown Records also contributed to the soul canon, although at the time, the Detroit-based label described itself as a manufacturer of pop music. Music by Motown artists such as Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Marvin Gaye did much to popularise the style, and the overall Motown sound did much to define what later became known as northern soul. In Chicago, Curtis Mayfield created the sweet soul sound that later earned him a reputation as the Godfather of northern soul. As a member of The Impressions, Mayfield infused a call and response style of group singing that resembled the gospel style, and influenced many other groups of the era.

By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to evolve both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. Guralnick argues that, "More than anything else, though, what seems to me to have brought the era of soul to a grinding, unsettling halt was the death of Martin Luther King in April of 1968.

The terms deep soul and southern soul generally refer to a driving, energetic soul style combining R&B's energy with pulsating southern United States gospel music sounds. Memphis, Tennessee label Stax Records nurtured a distinctive sound, which included putting vocals further back in the mix than most contemporary R&B records, using vibrant horn parts in place of background vocals, and a focus on the low end of the frequency spectrum. The vast majority of Stax releases were backed by house bands Booker T and the MGs (with Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Al Jackson) and the Memphis Horns (the splinter horn section of the Mar-Keys). The label counted Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, William Bell, and Eddie Floyd among its stars.

Psychedelic soul

Psychedelic soul was a blend of psychedelic rock and soul music in the late 1960s, which paved the way for the mainstream emergence of funk music a few years later. Principal figures included multicultural band Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, The Fifth Dimension, and (with producer Norman Whitfield) The Temptations and The Undisputed Truth.

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Lola