R&B artists of the 1950s and 1960s began adopting techniques from gospel music such as melisma, call-and-response vocals between lead singer and chorus members, melisma and bent notes into their repertoire; Gospel harmonies can even be found within soul music.
Berry Gordy’s Motown Records empire produced Detroit soul, an influential rhythmic style heavily influenced by gospel. Other notable centers for soul music included Fame Studios in Florence Alabama (home of Jimmy Hughes and Percy Sledge) as well as New York City.
Origins
Soul music’s roots can be traced back to African American gospel music. Black slaves were not permitted to join white churches during slavery, so they created their own religious services and music, including gospel. Gospel songs feature both secular and spiritual lyrics while emphasizing God as its focus. In the 1950s, church music was taken out of its context to be popularly popularized by artists like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. These musicians secularized aspects of gospel music such as chord changes, song structures, and call-and-response elements of gospel songs. As artists like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett popularized this genre further in the 1960s with recordings that featured emotive sounds such as pleas, wails and moans, it became even more prominent within that decade – popularized even further by artists such as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett; these three singers created what is commonly referred to as R&B – rhythm and blues music genre.
In the 1960s, R&B music dominated American charts and had an enormous influence on later genres such as Funk and Disco. Four independent record labels — Atlantic, Stax, Motown and International — established themselves across New York City, Memphis, Detroit and Philadelphia to provide black artists an outlet to release their work; these labels provided infrastructure to black musicians as they hired and trained session musicians, producers and songwriters that catered to each artist. Furthermore, entrepreneurs of these labels established networks of radio stations to further promote them and their artists.
As R&B became more and more popular, its subgenres began to emerge: Funk is distinguished by an emphasis on drums and bass while disco and psychedelic soul were heavily influenced by other genres like psychedelic rock. Soul music continued its evolution into the 1970s where more contemporary versions emerged of its sound.
Soul music’s popularity began to decrease during the early 1990s as hip hop and other genres gained more traction, but modern R&B and soul still retains many of its core elements such as vocal style and feeling, while evolving into more poppy, smooth styles popularized by artists such as John Legend and Raheem DeVaughn.
Influences
Soul music has come to encompass various styles over time, while its core roots remain African-American gospel and rhythm and blues. Soul’s choral, layered vocal style is filled with passion and call and response; hand clapping rhythms and shouts can often be heard during performances. Soul also draws upon other genres for its unique sound such as rhythm and blues and jazz as well as disco, funk and rock influences; recently Brooklyn’s Daptone label has released records by Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley while Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Nashville studios have worked with Jill Scott among many other notable artists.
Early examples of soul can be heard in recordings by artists like Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke – often produced by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records – that capture the raw energy of Black United States culture. Their recordings feature gritty Gospel vocal styles along with large horn sections which would later come to be known as deep or southern soul.
Other major influences on soul music include psychedelic rock and the social unrest of the 1960s, which saw such artists as Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield use lyrics that expressed emotions ranging from love to social commentary; these songs later inspired an entire generation of artists who moved soul music in a more pop-oriented direction.
Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee pioneered what would later be termed southern soul or deep soul music during the 1970s. Recordings at Fame Studios in Florence Alabama came to be known as Muscle Shoals soul; recordings at this location featured more instrumental passages than backing vocals with Booker T and the MGs featuring Steve Cropper, bassist Wayne Jackson and drummer Duck Dunn providing an especially strong foundation.
Allen Toussaint made another significant contribution to soul music from New Orleans. Through his piano rolling and honking saxophone honking, Allen Toussaint popularized boogie-woogie which would become popular with R&B singers such as Irma Thomas and Lee Dorsey; its upbeat sound would later inspire bands such as George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic who went on to create funk, an indelibly popular form of soul that still thrives today.
Characteristics
Soul music is a form of popular African-American music combining elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel music and church culture. Although its origins lie within church culture, soul music was able to capture the emotions associated with Black civil rights movements in the 50s and 60s as it emerged into other musical genres like rock & roll, disco funk hip hop.
Atlantic Records in New York City, Motown Records in Detroit and Stax/Volt Records in Memphis all played major roles in making soul popular in the 1960s. Each label fostered its own distinctive sound that set them apart from other R&B labels; Motown gave its artists opportunities to write and record original material while dressing professionally and learning good manners as part of choreography to ensure they represented Motown in an ideal light – helping create iconic soul stars like The Supremes and The Temptations.
In the 1970s, psychedelic rock’s popularity and social unrest inspired artists like Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with biting social criticism. Slick blue-eyed soul artists like Philadelphia’s Hall & Oates achieved commercial success alongside more versatile groups like War, the Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire; more organic forms such as James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone also found their place within this genre.
Funk and hip hop music in the 1980s triggered a revival in interest for soul music, led by producers such as Babyface, L.A Reid and James “Jimmy Jam” Lewis producing hits for Janet Jackson, TLC Alexander O’Neal The SOS Band Bobby Brown among others. As such, soul is now an integral part of contemporary music, as its influence continues to exert itself across dance music – taking elements from hip hop and disco into its unique style.
Styles
Soul music originated during the 1950s and was one of the key breakthroughs of the civil rights movement. It combined elements of African-American gospel music with rhythm and blues; its lyrics often focused on love rather than spiritual themes; vocal styles often featured many notes per syllable, along with call-and-response chanting and call-and-response elements; Ray Charles is widely recognized as being its creator; however other musicians like Otis Redding and Solomon Burke also contributed early influences as did jazz, funk and R&B musicians.
Gospel-derived musical idioms continue to have an enormous effect on soul music, including gospel-style harmony and chorus use in many soul recordings. Additionally, vocal styles influenced by gospel music like melisma are used by singers in soul songs to convey emotions like pain or desire; clapping rhythms from religious music such as call-and-response between singers and musicians are also often employed by soul artists.
Additional stylistic influences included the blues’ harmonic language, which was integrated into many soul songs by artists such as Sam Cooke and Al Green. Blues was also the basis for Memphis Soul music created in Memphis by producers like Jerry Wexler of Hi Records Music as well as Booker T and his M.G’s who created a melancholy sound often featuring Hammond organ, bass drum kit, or both instruments simultaneously.
Other influential styles of soul music include the sensuous sounds of New York soul music — pioneered by Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder; Philly soul, which featured more danceable music with heavy emphasis on horn sections; and psychedelic soul, which emerged out of 1960s psychedelic rock genre. By late 1970s, soul began to dissipate from R&B charts into various types such as funk and disco music genres.