Soul is a music genre that combines rhythm and blues and gospel music originating in the late 1950s in the United States.
Rhythm and blues (a combination of blues and jazz) arose in the 1940s as small groups of predominately African-American musicians built upon the blues tradition. Soul music is differentiated from rhythm and blues by its use of gospel-music devices, its greater emphasis on vocalists, and its merging of religious and secular themes.
Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown are considered the earliest pioneers of soul music. Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the style, and his early 1960s recordings 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."
In Memphis, Tennessee, Stax Records produced recordings by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Don Covay (who also recorded in New York City for Atlantic). Joe Tex's 1965 The Love You Save is a classic soul recording. 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; 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 important 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 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, utilizing musicians David Hood, Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins.
Aretha Franklin's 1967 recordings, such as I Never Loved a Man That Way I Love You, Respect (originally sung by Otis Redding), and Do Right Woman-Do Right Man, are considered to be the apogee of the soul music genre, and were among its most commercially successful productions. During this period, 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 important body of work in the soul genre.
By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to expand upon and abstract both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. As Guralnick writes, "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."
Later examples of soul music include recordings by The Staple Singers (such as I'll Take You There), and Al Green's 1970s recordings, done at Willie Mitchell's Royal Recording in Memphis. Mitchell's Hi Records continued the Stax tradition in that decade, releasing many hits by Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay, O. V. Wright and Syl Johnson. Bobby Womack, who recorded with Chips Moman in the late 1960s, continued to produce soul recordings in the 1970s and 1980s.
The city of Detroit produced some important later soul recordings. Producer Don Davis worked with Stax artists such as Johnnie Taylor and The Dramatics. Early-1970s recordings by The Detroit Emeralds, such as Do Me Right, are an important link between soul and the later disco style. Motown Records artists such as Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson contributed to the evolution of soul music, although their recordings were considered more in a pop music vein that those of Redding, Franklin and Carr.
Marvin Gaye on the cover of his classic 1971 album What's Going On.Although stylistically different from classic soul music, recordings by Chicago-based artists such as Jerry Butler and The Chi-Lites are often considered part of the genre.
By the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James Brown led soul towards funk music, which became typified by 1970s bands like Parliament-Funkadelic, The Meters. More versatile groups like War, the Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire became popular around this time. During the 1970s, some slick and commercial blue-eyed soul acts like Philadelphia's Hall & Oates achieved mainstream success, as did a new generation of street-corner harmony or city-soul groups like The Delfonics and Howard University's Unifics.
By the end of the 1970s, disco and funk were dominating the charts. Philly soul and most other soul genres were dominated by disco-inflected tracks. During this period, groups like The O'Jays and The Spinners continued to turn out hits.
After the death of disco in the early 1980s, soul music survived for a short time before going through yet another metamorphisis. With the introduction of influences from electro music and funk, soul music became less raw and more slickly produced, resulting in a newer genre that was called R&B, which sounded very different from the original rhythm and blues style. This new version of R&B was ofen labelled contemporary R&B.
