That Sweet Soul Music By the end of the 1950s

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That Sweet Soul Music

By the end of the 1950s rock n’ roll’s popularity was fading, but the integrational inroads made by the genre were not lost. Alongside the likes of Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, both of whom crossed into the mainstream market through rock n’ roll, were a handful of black artists who scored popular successes with their own brands of R&B. As the decade came to a close these innovative African American musiciansplus a particularly enterprising record producer from Detroitattempted to capitalize on the crossover hits of the mid to late ’50s. Following in the footsteps of pioneers Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, these artists infused blues, rock, pop and jazz with gospel performance practices and inflection to create a new sound in black music that would dominate the R&B and pop charts in the 1960s. They called it soul.
“Gospel Meets the Blues,” The Washington Post, By Adam Bernstein
As a singer, pianist and composer, Charles broke racial and musical conventionsblending rhythm and blues with gospel music, blues and country, gospel and rock. With his baritone [voice] capable of shifting from unvarnished to poignant, he produced hits ranging from the saucy “What’d I Say?” to the bluesy “Hit the Road, Jack” to the plaintive “Georgia on My Mind” to the impassioned “America the Beautiful.” His appearancethe dark glasses, the immaculate, shiny outfitsbrought him instant recognition worldwide. To many, he was the “Father of Soul Music,” that dynamic blend of rhythm-and-blues, jazz and gospel. Gospel music he heard as a child, combined with the ecstatic, almost evangelical outbursts he learned from his mentors, became part of his own performance.

Ray Charles 1959 hit “What’d I Say” was named to National Public Radio’s top 100 most important American musical works of the twentieth century. Listen below to Ray Charles talk with NPR’s Robert Siegel about his trademark 1959 hit.
Below is a clip of Ray Charles performing “What’d I Say” live in 1963. Notice that the tune follows a 12-bar blues form and uses secular, almost suggestive lyrics, yet features many elements of the gospel tradition including emotive vocal improvisations and a heavy reliance on call and response in a .

“Gospel Meets Pop,” PBS American Masters Series
Sam Cooke put the spirit of the Black church into popular music, creating a new American sound and setting into motion a chain of events that forever altered the course of popular music and race relations in America. With You Send Me in 1957, Cooke became the first African American artist to reach #1 on both the R&B and the pop charts. It was risky for this young gospel performer to alienate his fans by embracing the devils musicbut he proved, with his pop/gospel hybrid, that it was, indeed, possible to win over white teenage listeners and keep his faithful church followers intact.

Cookes career was tragically short, but meteoric at every stage. From early childhood, his silky, soaring voice electrified the congregation at his fathers First Baptist Church in Chicago. By the age of 19, he became lead vocalist for the popular gospel group The Soul Stirrers, heard in churches and jook joints and night clubs all along the Chitlin Circuit, from Chicago through the South to LA and back again. He redefined the genre and became gospels first iconic, and ironically, sexy superstar. Women began to flock to concerts to experience Sam, not Jesus!
Professionally, things continued to come easily to Cooke. You Send Me went gold, selling over a million records, and was followed by Soothe Me, Feel It, Bring It On Home to Me,Wonderful World, Cupid, Twistin the Night Awayall of which hit the charts within a two-year period. In combining two worlds, his constant challenge was to sing meaningful lyrics with the fervor of gospel and the romance of pop. He came closest with Chain Gang, observed and written during the Civil Rights era and with the poignant, biting lyrics and melody of A Change is Gonna Come in 1962, fashioned out of the depth of personal pain and loss.
Motown
In 1959 a prizefighter turned songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed nine hundred dollars to found a record label. Originally named Tamla Records, Gordy’s label released its first single, “Money (That’s What I Want)” co-written by Gordy and performed by Barrett Strong in late 1959. By early 1960, “Money” hit the number two spot on Billboard’s R&B chart and number twenty-three on the pop charts. Spurred on by this success the fledgling label, now mostly working on under the moniker Motown Records, was positioned to become a major player in a market that was primarily dominated by large, powerful record companies. Motown quickly became the place for Detroit talent to record. Gordy wasn’t only looking for talented singers, he also contracted the best songwriters and supporting musicians the town had to offer.

A promotional photo of the Supremes
By the middle of the 1960s, the Motown roster included such major hit-makers Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and Little Stevie Wonder. Of the 535 singles Motown released between 1959 and 1970, 357 of them placed in the pop charts, an unheard of ratio for any record label. Part of the success of Motown artists was attributable to Berry Gordy’s strict and tested formula. Gordy has found a winning approach to landing black artists on the pop charts and insisted that any new talent he worked with adhere to his vision. Using a stable of songwriters and a topflight house band for all Motown records was a huge part of the equation, but Gordy realized there was something more that was necessary for consistent crossover success.
“The Berry Gordy Jr. and the Original ‘Black Label,’” The Freeman, by Larry Schweikart
Gordy realized, however, that blacks constituted only about 12 percent of the population in the United States, and even if he sold a record to every black adult, he could not make as much money as if he sold to only one-quarter of the white population. He therefore embarked on a risky and, in retrospect, brilliant strategy to package black Detroit acts in such a way that white audiences would buy their records. This was no mean feat. It could have backfired with his large black audiences, giving him a reputation for selling out. On the other hand, he faced a substantial hurdle in getting black artists on mainstream radio. Only a few years earlier, a white singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley, had been denied airplay on some radio stations because he sounded black. But Gordy realized that cultural differences had to be bridged from both directions. If whites were to embrace the less rigid structure of black rhythm and blues, the music had to be presented in a polished, sophisticated (and non-threatening) way. In short, Gordys genius was that he presented black music in the entertainment structure that white audiences were familiar, and comfortable, with.
Gordy hired a choreographer, for example, to teach the groups how to move. Motown choreography, which eventually became a caricature of itself, nevertheless in its early years broke new ground in musical presentation. He also realized that his singers, most of whom were from , needed to be able to make a good showing in interviews to better promote their records. He hired elocution instructors and taught the artists “proper” English and social skills. Gordy dressed his acts in suits, tuxedos, or full dresses. If racists were going to complain that black music would pervert the nations youth, they would have a hard time proving it by looking at the Motown stable of groups, whose members were well-dressed, articulate, and polished. This was more than a superficial remake. We dont accept an artist easily, Gordy told a Detroit newspaper. We look for character and integrity as well as talent, and this produces a big family-type organization.
Gordy demanded of his acts hard work, a straight life, and commitment to the system, and in return he recognized that he owed them sound financial advice so they would not squander their money. Setting up a financial-counseling service, Gordy explained in 1962, We try to help artists personally with their investment programs so that they dont wind up broke. We are very much concerned with the artists welfare.
Perhaps Gordys most impressive barrier-breaking move was not his formatted choreography or his packaging of black acts, but his fundamental assault on the construction of black blues itself. Knowing that traditional blues, as played by Muddy Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and B. B. King would be a hard sell to white audiences, Gordy worked with Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland (known as Holland-Dozier-Holland on the record labels) to transform the traditional 12-bar blues and 32-bar ballads into new, short strains that featured a repeated hook, or catch phrase. The innovation can be heard in the Supremes hit Stop, in the Name of Love and others.
Gordys Motown Records cranked out many hits in the early-to-mid-1960s from the Temptations, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, and the Four Tops, always keeping the records within a two- to so that disc jockeys would play them.
Motown’s Early Girl Group Hits
Many of Motown’s earliest hits were by their girl group configurations. It was the girl groups, in fact, that really put the Motor City sound on the mainstream map. Where “Money” was an major R&B hit, it barely cracked the top-25 of the pop charts. It was at the hands of The Marvelettes in 1961 that Motown had its first pop #1 with “Mr. Postman.” Inspired by doo wop of the 1950s and the success of the likes of The Chantels, the Marvelettes hit song was a fitting first statement of the Detroit label’s girl groups and paved the way for numerous pop hits for other members of Motown family, including ten #1 pop hits for the Supremes.
“Please Mr. Postman” – The Marvelettes (1961) Click to view undefined

The Supreme’s first hit, “Where Did our Love Go,” put the trio of Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard at the top of Motown’s hit makers in early 1964; however it was their next single, “Baby Love,” that would solidify their standing as one of the top groups of the 1960s, regardless of record label, style or race. “Baby Love,” composed and produced by one of Motown’s top teams, Holland-Dozier-Holland, features Diana Ross on lead vocal with support from Wilson and Ballard. Unlike the doo wop-inspired girl group records released in years prior, the vocal roles are clearly delineated with the backup singers playing only an ancillary role. “Baby Love” is indicative of the smooth, almost “easy listening” approach to many Motown songs, a quality that would at times put the label at odds with a segment of the black population that believed that Gordy was selling out in order to achieve greater crossover success.
“Baby Love” (1964)

“Heatwave” by Martha and the Vandellas demonstrates a more upbeat version of the Motown girl group sound. The driving beat and supporting horn lickscheck out the baritone saxophone in the introduction!give the tune a propulsive feel over which Martha Reeves delivers a lyric that tell of a love so strong it feels like “burning inside” while back up singers exhort, “go ahead girl!” Particularly notable in the clip below is the choreographed mini-dance at the opening of the performance and the coordinated hand movements and pantomimed exchange the singers midway through the clip. This type of controlled and premeditated delivery was insisted upon by Berry Gordy and contributed in no small part to crossover success of Motown artists.
“Heatwave” (1964)

Southern Soul
The main competitor to Motown for soul music supremacy in the 1960s was Stax Records, based out of Memphis, Tennessee. In many regards Stax was the antithesis of Motown. Though owned and operated by Jim Stewart, a white former banker, Stax was thought to have a “blacker” sound than its black-owned Detroit counterpart. Many of Stax’s artists singing styles were more directly rooted in the rural blues and gospel traditions of the south than their northern, urban counterparts recording under the strict crossover mandates of Motown. Furthermore, Stax recording artists were encouraged to retain the more “unpolished” aspects of their performance practices. Stax featured an all-star roster during the 1960s, but at the core of their success was their house band and hit-makers Booker T and the MGs and their flagship singer, Otis Redding.
A brief documentary about Stax Records and its role in Memphis, TN
Booker T and the MGs (from the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame )
As the house band for the Stax/Volt labels, Booker T. and the MGs helped define the spare, punchy sound of Memphis soul music. By contrast to Motowns orchestrated, pop-soul records, the Stax approach was lean, economical and deeply groove-oriented. Between 1963 and 1968, Booker T. and the MGs appeared on more than 600 Stax/Volt recordings, including classics by such artists as Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and William Bell. As a result of Staxs affiliation with Atlantic Records, the group also worked with Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Albert King. Moreover, Booker T. and the MGs were a successful recording group in their own right, cutting ten albums and fourteen instrumental hits, including Green Onions, Hang Em High, Time Is Tight and Soul-Limbo. [These instrumental records track closely with the sound of many of the soul jazz records of the same era]
The group came together in the early Sixties at Stax Records, a studio and record store on East McLemore Avenue in Memphis. By 1962, guitarist Steve Cropper, organist Booker T. Jones and bassist Lewis Steinberg were established session musicians at Stax. They were joined on a recording date for Billy Lee Riley (of Flying Saucers Rock n Roll fame) by drummer Al Jackson, with whom Steinberg had played in the house band at Memphis Plantation Inn. It was during some down time at the Riley session that this lineup recorded the classic Sixties soul instrumental Green Onions. The definitive version of Booker T. and the MGs (which stood for Memphis Group”) was completed in 1963, when bassist Donald Duck Dunn – a former schoolmate and bandmate of Croppers whod been touring with the Mar-Keys, another Stax backup group – replaced Steinberg. This lineup lent instrumental fire and uncluttered rhythmic support to countless soul classics. Particularly fruitful was their relationship with Staxs biggest star, Otis Redding. In addition to playing on virtually all of his records, the band backed him at his legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (along with the Mar-Kays), and guitarist Cropper co-wrote his best-known number, (Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay. Cropper also shared writing credits on such soul standards as Wilson Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour, Sam and Dave’s Soul Man, Eddie Floyds Knock On Wood and Albert Kings Born Under a Bad Sign.
Booker T. and the MGs perform “Green Onions” on Shindig
Otis Redding
Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purest form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, 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.
-Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction
Lasting only five years, Otis Reddings professional singing and songwriting career was remarkably short. Like Sam Cooke, Redding’s early musical experiences were in the church. By the time he was a teenager Otis had already embraced popular R&B and was involved in amateur contests and performances around his native Georgia. Working as a driver for a friend’s band band on a recording trip to Memphis in late 1962, Redding convinced the studio to record a song of his own. The result was These Arms of Mine, a romantic rhythm and blues ballad that Redding wrote and which became one of his first hits.
“These Arms of Mine” – Otis Redding (1962) Click to view undefined
“These Arms of Mine” represented Redding’s distinct fusion between R&B and gospel practice. Redding’s gravelly, raw vocal tone on this record sounds at once “untutored” and artfully expressive. Furthermore, the accompaniment, based on a triplet piano figure that Redding referred to as “church chords,” evokes both 1950’s rhythm and blues ballads and a traditional worship service. For the next year or so, Redding’s singles would follow this slow, soulful model. Starting in late 1964, he began incorporating more up-tempo, hip-shaking numbers like “Mr. Pitiful” and “Respect.”
In June 1967, at the world-famous Monterey Pop Festival, Redding was booked for the last slot of the Saturday night line-up, even though healong with most black, soul performers of the daywas still not very well known along the West Coast (or among white audiences more generally). Redding made the last-minute decision to perform his sets opening number, Shake, in double time. (Luckily, his band, Booker T. and the M.G.s, was well up to the task.)
Just months after his crossover triumph at Monterey, Redding recorded (Sittin On) the Dock of the Bay. He died two days later, on December 10th, when his plane crashed in a Wisconsin lake. Released after his death, “Dock of the Bay” became his biggest hit; the first and only of of his song’s to reach #1 on the pop and R&B charts.
“Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”

Aretha Franklin
Another major force in the formation of the soul genre in the mid-1960s was the Philadelphia-based label Atlantic Records. Atlantic had established itself as a go-to independent label specializing in R&B in the early 1950s, producing such R&B crossover successes like Ruth Brown’s “5-10-15 Hours” (1952) and Big Joe Turner’s influential “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (1954) as well as Ray Charles’ early, proto-soul experiments. Not content with its role as a progenitor and distributor of the genre, Atlantic looked to sign and produce its own soul artists. Among the singers that would come to be associated with Atlantic’s soul sound, none would have more of an impact than Aretha Franklin.

The daughter of famed Detroit pastor C.L. Franklin, Aretha Franklin was influenced from an early age by her father’s powerful, emotive sermons delivered to his mega-church congregation of more than 4,000 (the elder Franklin also recorded more than 70 albums of these sermons). “Most of what I learned vocally came from him,” she would acknowledge. “He gave me a sense of timing in music and timing is important in everything.” Aretha started her own career within the shadow of the church as a gospel singer and pianist in the mid-1950s. Following the lead of other gospel-turned pop singers like Sam Cooke, she signed with Columbia Records in 1960. A string of moderate R&B successes followed. In January 1967, as her contact with Columbia expired, Franklin joined the Atlantic Records stable of artists and her career would never be the same. The singer placed four songs at the top of the R&B chart that year and an unprecedented five singles in the top 10 of Billboard’s “Hot 100” Chart. In the remaining years of the decade she would sell more records than any other African American artist, earning her the titles “Sister Soul,” and “Lady Soul.” Most popular among these hits was her 1967 version of the Otis Redding composition “Respect.” Below is a brief NPRmusic segment on Franklin’s reworking of the song including excerpts from both Franklin’s and Redding’s recordings.
The original version of “Respect,” from the song’s author Otis Redding, is a mid-tempo plea from a man to his wife/girlfriend to treat him right after returning from a hard day of work. “Hey little girl, your sweeter than honey,” Redding sings, “and I’m about to give you all my money. All I’m asking in return is for a little respect when I come home.” Recording the song two years later, Aretha Franklin inverted this rather typical, patriarchal pop lyric theme by singing it from the woman’s point of view and without reference to the specifics of a romantic relationship. Performed at break-neck speed, Franklin’s version shifts the words from a private appeal to a universal demand for equality. “” quickly became recognized as a feminist and civil rights anthem, ushering in a new era of political engagement through African American popular music. Consequently, black self-determination and African American identity became closely intertwined with soul and, by the early 1970s, funk.

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