A musical genre that combines rhythm and blues and gospel music, originating in the late 1950s in the US.
Forerunners of soul include 1940s artists such as Mahalia Jackson and Big Joe Turner. Some of the earliest soul artists included Ray Charles, Little Richard, Sam Cooke and James Brown, although all were happy to call themselves rock and roll performers at the time and later claimed that they had always really been R&B singers.
Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the soul style, and his early 1960s songs are considered classics of the genre.
In Memphis in the early to mid-1960s, Stax Records produced key soul recordings by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Don Covay and Joe Tex.
Another important centre of soul music recording was Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama, where Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander recorded and later also Aretha Franklin. Fame Studios, often referred to as Muscle Shoals (after a town neighbouring Florence), enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis contributed to recordings done in Alabama.
Aretha Franklin's 1967 recordings 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 also made significant contributions to soul music. Howard Tate's recordings in the late 1960s for Verve Records, and later for Atlantic, are another important body of work in the soul genre.
Much has been made of Tamla Motown's contributions to the soul genre, although the Detroit-based label proudly thought of itself as a manufacturer of pop music. Certainly the music of Motown artists such as Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, the Supremes and Marvin Gaye did much to popularise the style, and the overall Motown sound did much to define the fork in the soul music style known as Northern soul.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, Curtis Mayfield was creating the 'sweet soul' sound that would render him the undisputed leader of Northern soul, heavily influenced by Sam Cooke. As a member of the Impressions, Mayfield created a call and answer style of group singing that harked right back to gospel but nevertheless influenced scores of other groups of the era.
By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone began to expand upon and abstract both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. Later examples of soul music in the 1970s and 1980s include recordings by the Staple Singers, Al Green, Otis Clay and Bobby Womack, who recorded with Chips Moman in the late 1960s.
The city of Detroit produced some important later soul recordings in the early 1970s by artists such as the Detroit Emeralds, who provided an important link between soul and the later disco style. Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson also contributed to the evolution of soul music, although their recordings were considered more in a pop music vein. Although stylistically different from classic soul music, recordings by Chicago-based artists such as 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 Marvin 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 such as Parliament-Funkadelic and the Meters. More versatile groups such as 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 and Oates and Oakland's Tower of Power achieved mainstream success, as did a new generation of street-corner harmony or city-soul groups like the Delfonics.
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 metamorphosis. 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, but which sounded very different from the original rhythm and blues style.