• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • 634-5789
  • Wilson Pickett
  • 2:55
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Soul Man
  • Sam and Dave
  • 2:38
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • Don't Play That Song
  • Aretha Franklin
  • 2:59
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Knock On Wood
  • Eddie Floyd
  • 3:03
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Tired Of Being Alone
  • Al Green
  • 2:50
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Who's Making Love
  • Johnnie Taylor
  • 2:49
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Got To Get You Off My Mind
  • Solomon Burke
  • 1:59
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Mr. Big Stuff
  • Jean Knight
  • 2:30
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Soul Finger
  • The Bar-Kays
  • 2:19
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • Try A Little Tenderness
  • Otis Redding
  • 3:48
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Love Makes A Woman
  • Barbara Acklin
  • 2:57
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Back Stabbers
  • The O'Jays
  • 3:09
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Just One Look
  • Doris Troy
  • 2:30
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • The Chokin' Kind
  • Joe Simon
  • 2:43
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Baby, I'm Yours
  • Barbara Lewis
  • 2:31
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • What'd I Say
  • Ray Charles
  • 5::08
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman
  • Aretha Franklin
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • A Fool In Love
  • Ike and Tina Turner
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Spanish Harlem
  • Ben E. King
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • That's How Strong My Love Is
  • Otis Redding
  • 2:24
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Open The Door To Your Heart
  • Darrell Banks
  • 2:38
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • I Found A Love
  • Wilson Pickett
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • He Will Break Your Heart
  • Jerry Butler
  • 2:49
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Walk On By
  • Dionne Warwick
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • Choice Of Colors
  • The Impressions
  • 3:19
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Cool Jerk
  • The Capitols
  • 2:42
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Hypnotized
  • Linda Jones
  • 2:38
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Love Makes The World Go 'Round
  • Deon Jackson
  • 2:29
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes)
  • Carla Thomas
  • 2:22
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Last Night
  • The Mar-Keys
  • 2:38
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Hold On, I'm Comin'
  • Sam and Dave
  • 2:30
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You
  • Wilson Pickett
  • 2:49
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • Respect
  • Aretha Franklin
  • 2:26
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)
  • Otis Redding
  • 2:55
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Green Onions
  • Booker T. and the MG's
  • 2:51
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Slip Away
  • Clarence Carter
  • 2:34
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • I'll Take You There
  • The Staple Singers
  • 3:01
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Sweet Soul Music
  • Arthur Conley
  • 2:20
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Ain't No Sunshine
  • Bill Withers
  • 2:06
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • But It's Alright
  • J. J. Jackson
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Stand By Me
  • Ben E. King
  • 3:00
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Clean Up Woman
  • Betty Wright
  • 2:48
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • For Your Precious Love
  • Jerry Butler and the Impressions
  • 2:45
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • Tighten Up
  • Archie Bell and the Drells
  • 3:10
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • When A Man Loves A Woman
  • Percy Sledge
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • In The Midnight Hour
  • Wilson Pickett
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • I've Got a Woman
  • Ray Charles
  • 2:54
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
  • Aretha Franklin
  • 2:51
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • These Arms of Mine
  • Otis Redding
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Hello Stranger
  • Barbara Lewis
  • 2:42
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • If You Need Me
  • Solomon Burke
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Lonely Teardrops
  • Jackie Wilson
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • La La Means I Love You
  • The Delfonics
  • 3:18
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Love Is A Hurtin' Thing
  • Lou Rawls
  • 2:14
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • Be Thankful For What You Got
  • William DeVaughn
  • 3:22
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Every Beat Of My Heart
  • Gladys Knight and the Pips
  • 2:04
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Get On Up
  • The Esquires
  • 2:23
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Cry To Me
  • Betty Harris
  • 3:13
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • I'll Come Running Back To You
  • Sam Cooke
  • 2:14
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • When Something Is Wrong With My Baby
  • Sam and Dave
  • 3:16
  • 
  
  

The 20 turbulent years encapsulated here begin in 1954, the year that Ray Charles recorded I've Got a Woman and the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal. They end in 1974, the year that William DeVaughn topped the R&B charts with Be Thankful for What You Got and court-ordered busing provoked riots and protests in many cities. In the years between, rhythm and blues became soul, and soul became a movement that went beyond music to encompass fashion, food and politics.

In the early '50s, rhythm and blues went largely unheard outside the African-American community, although the pop singers of the day combed through the R&B charts in search of songs to cover. Once rock 'n' roll erupted, it wasn't long before R&B singers realized that all bets were off. The old rules governing pop airplay were changing, and black music could reach a broader audience if the sound were sweetened a little. Sam Cooke's I'll Come Running Back to You was an R&B record with the pop charts in its sights, and fulfilled its potential in cracking the pop top 20. Listening to I'll Come Running Back to You, you'd never know that Cooke was once a hard gospel singer. But then a change slowly overtook rhythm and blues. It rediscovered its soul. It rediscovered the church.

As always, there were prophets. I've Got a Woman was written to the chords of a gospel song, and over the next few years Ray Charles became the first to rechurchify black music. He took some heat for it, but his hard life had taught him nothing if not to believe in himself and go his own way. Something about secularized gospel or gospelized R&B felt right to him, so he stayed with it. Jerry Butler's For Your Precious Love and Ben E. King's Stand by Me were gospel in all but name. The Pips, featuring teenager Gladys Knight, brought the harmonies of the gospel quartets to Every Beat of My Heart. Jackie Wilson's 1958 hit Lonely Teardrops was sung with a searing intensity that owed everything to the church and, coincidentally, gave songwriter Berry Gordy some of the funds to start Tamla-Motown Records a year or so later. These were the first murmurings of soul music.

If there was a key transitional figure bridging R&B and soul, it was Solomon Burke. When he tells you that he invented soul music, you almost believe him. This is, after all, "Solomon the Boy Wonder Preacher," who had his own radio ministry at age nine and his own church, Solomon's Temple: The House of God for All People, before that. The line between sacred and secular couldn't be more direct. In 1963 he covered If You Need Me, written and first recorded by then unknown Wilson Pickett. Within a couple of years Wilson would top the charts with In the Midnight Hour. How many sermons had Wilson heard that went, "I'm gonna meet sweet Jesus in the midnight hour. You don't know when He's gonna come. He could come at any given time"?

The tide had turned. Rhythm and blues had become soul, but soul was more than music. Soul celebrated blackness. These songs became the soundtrack to a social movement. They played as civil rights workers were found murdered; they played as churches burned; they played as cities burned. Through it all, soul music promised Respect. Talking later, Aretha Franklin said, "Respect was the need of the nation. The inherent right of all human beings." And soul music promised I'll Take You There.

If there was darkness, there was also hope. Memphis was where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, but the site of his death, the Lorraine Motel, was close to Stax Records, where black and white musicians learned from each other and collaborated on some of the era's defining records. Black organist Booker T. Jones and white guitarist Steve Cropper led the house band and scored several hits in their own right, Green Onions among them. Theirs was music of brilliant economy. Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and the Staple Singers recorded for Stax. The staff songwriters included Isaac Hayes, who co-wrote Sam and Dave's When Something Is Wrong with My Baby and Hold On, I'm Comin'. At Stax, simple grooves were overlaid with Cropper's elegant guitar and the horns swaying in the lazy Southern way... just slightly behind the beat. Sublime then, sublime now. That was the side of Memphis, indeed of the South, that the world needed to appreciate. For a while Stax seemed like a vision of what was possible in America, and when it foundered a dream died with it.

Soul music didn't come exclusively from Memphis or nearby Muscle Shoals. Sam Cooke's former protégé Lou Rawls recorded in Los Angeles, and soul music thrived in Chicago, Detroit and up and down the East Coast from New York to Miami—but in the South it was tied to the dream of freedom. It was the soundtrack to the "whites only" signs coming down, and it seemed to herald the better day that gospel music had been promising since the time of slavery.

Just as rhythm and blues had given way to soul, so soul gave way to funk. If soul was the rechurchifying of black music, funk was the re-Africanizing of black music. In soul music the singer was up front with the rhythm section in support; in funk, as in African music, everyone took their cue from the percussion and the rhythm. The beginning of funk can be heard in records like Archie Bell and the Drells' Tighten Up. Ironically, the Drells were a vocal group and weren't heard at all on the record; instead we heard Archie rapping over the proto-funk of the TSU Tornados.

For much of its life, rhythm and blues was little heard outside African-American communities, but within the 20 years captured here, black music became the gravitational center of popular music, pulling all of pop music along in its wake. Even today its influence is inestimable. Sometimes you can hear it obliquely in the sampled grooves of current urban music; sometimes the influence is plain to see, as in Betty Wright (Clean Up Woman)'s production of teenage British soul chanteuse Joss Stone. And the fact that a teenage British singer in the 21st century would relate so readily to this music attests to its enduring power and beauty. Much of its world has gone, and much of it deserved to go. We're left with the music that moved us then and moves us still.

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Rescue Me
  • Fontella Bass
  • 2:51
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Please, Please, Please
  • James Brown and the Famous Flames
  • 2:45
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • (I Know) I'm Losing You
  • The Temptations
  • 2:28
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Your Precious Love
  • Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
  • 3:00
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Let's Stay Together
  • Al Green
  • 3:18
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Something's Got A Hold On Me
  • Etta James
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)
  • Jr. Walker and the All Stars
  • 2:29
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • You've Really Got A Hold On Me
  • The Miracles
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)
  • The Isley Brothers
  • 2:53
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • It's All Right
  • The Impressions
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Only The Strong Survive
  • Jerry Butler
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
  • Jimmy Ruffin
  • 2:58
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • We're Gonna Make It
  • Little Milton
  • 2:38
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • Jimmy Mack
  • Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
  • 2:50
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Hey There Lonely Girl
  • Eddie Holman
  • 3:35
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Get Ready
  • The Temptations
  • 2:39
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Turn On Your Love Light
  • Bobby "Blue" Bland
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • It's A Man's Man's Man's World
  • James Brown
  • 2:49
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • I'll Be Doggone
  • Marvin Gaye
  • 2:52
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • I Second That Emotion
  • Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
  • 2:46
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • War
  • Edwin Starr
  • 3:23
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Sunny
  • Bobby Hebb
  • 2:42
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Smiling Faces Sometimes
  • The Undisputed Truth
  • 3:14
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • I'm Gonna Make You Love Me
  • Diana Ross & the Supremes
  • 3:08
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)
  • David Ruffin
  • 3:29
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Someday We'll Be Together
  • Diana Ross and the Supremes
  • 3:29
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Bernadette
  • The Four Tops
  • 3:01
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Hurt So Bad
  • Little Anthony and the Imperials
  • 2:18
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • You're So Fine
  • The Falcons
  • 2:28
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • I Do Love You
  • Billy Stewart
  • 3:02
  • 
  
  

Founded by Berry Gordy in Detroit in 1959, Motown Records was undeniably soul's greatest success story—not just a black label, but, as the slogan on its '60s singles read, "The Sound of Young America." Growing with and paralleling the integrationist wing of the civil rights movement, Motown artists routinely crossed over to the pop charts. Gordy's strategy of pairing hard-edged black voices (and yes, a few smoothies) with teen-themed songs and sophisticated pop orchestrations and arrangements led some to dismiss Motown as soul lite—and certainly Motown (like many other labels) was sometimes guilty as charged. But these critics have yet to reconcile their view with some obvious points. Namely, that those hard-edged voices, from Martha Reeves (of the Vandellas) to Levi Stubbs (of the Four Tops) could generate as much excitement as any of the competition. And that some of America's greatest musicians and arrangers, who went about their jobs with unparalleled skill as well as soul, were breaking new ground with many of those orchestrations and arrangements.

Smokey Robinson, a brilliant writer and producer and the honey-voiced lead singer of the Miracles, was one of Gordy's earliest allies. The Miracles first cracked the pop top 10 in 1961 with Shop Around, but it was the 1963 hit You've Really Got a Hold on Me (No. 1 R&B, No. 8 pop) that first suggested the extent of Robinson's genius for lyrics. "I don't like you/But I love you," the song began, and any lovestruck kid could immediately recognize that tangled-up emotion. Robinson also co-wrote and produced I'll Be Doggone for Marvin Gaye, the label's most versatile artist, who until then had written his own songs. Miracles guitarist Marv Tarplin created insistent lines to help put across the message of both these songs. Until his introspective breakthroughs in the '70s, Gaye was also Motown's top duet artist, and Tammi Terrell was his best match as a partner; Your Precious Love showcases the tender interplay between their voices.

The Isley Brothers were hit artists before coming to Motown, and they felt hampered by the tight control the company maintained over its product. This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You) was their only significant hit there before they moved on. But the Temptations, who became the most successful male vocal act in black music history, had no such issues. In the beginning Robinson wrote for and produced them, too. Eddie Kendricks sang the macho lead in the uptempo Get Ready, which Robinson created to take advantage of the duck dance craze. A spooked David Ruffin took the lead (with very little of the group's trademark harmonies behind him) on (I Know) I'm Losing You. Though Norman Whitfield had by then taken over Robinson's role as producer and co-writer, the song became the Tempts' fourth No. 1 soul single of 1966.

David's brother Jimmy Ruffin scored his biggest hit with What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, a bad dream of a lyric that was nothing less than Motown's equivalent of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row. Under the Holland- Dozier-Holland writing-producing team the Four Tops had their third straight hit with Bernadette after Reach Out I'll Be There and Standing in the Shadows of Love, cast in the same doomy, claustrophobic mold. But lead singer Levi Stubbs's delivery, as nuanced as it was powerful, made each song stand on its own. Martha and the Vandellas cut the touching Jimmy Mack, Lamont Dozier's love song inspired by the death of songwriter Ronnie Mack, two years before it was released and three before it became a hit.

I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, a collaboration between the Supremes and the Temptations, could well have been the theme song of Diana Ross, lead singer of the Supremes as well as Berry Gordy's girlfriend and pet project. But it was Someday We'll Be Together—billed as Ross's last single with the group, though hers was the only voice on the record— that became her anthem. It had been written and recorded with little success two years earlier by Johnny (Bristol) and Jackie (Beavers) before they became Motown staffers. When they dusted it off for Ross, Gordy joined them in the studio to make sure the farewell single came off just right. My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) was David Ruffin's first single after going solo.

Urgent, imploring sax man Jr. Walker was the only true star instrumentalist on the label, but his solos were mellowing and his vocals getting more prominent by the time he cut What Does It Take (To Win Your Love). Edwin Starr's War was one of the label's turn-of-the-decade forays into psychedelic sounds and socially conscious lyrics, followed shortly by the Undisputed Truth's bitter Smiling Faces Sometimes.

James Brown became an institution all by himself. King Records boss Syd Nathan reportedly hated Please, Please, Please, a repetitive gospel-based incantation that took its title phrase from the Orioles' hit Baby Please Don't Go. But producer Ralph Bass talked Nathan into releasing the record anyhow, and it became the first hit of Brown's storied career. Professional dancer Betty Newsome had the idea, based on biblical scripture, for It's a Man's Man's Man's World. James cut it in 1964 with a simple rhythm section, but it was the more elaborate version he did two years later, with Sammy Lowe arranging, that became the hit.

Though best known for the pioneering rock 'n' roll of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and the down-home electric blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Chess Records of Chicago also had a good run of soul hits in the '60s. It started when Billy Davis became the label's A&R chief. Carl Smith and Raynard Miner wrote Rescue Me, originally titled Take Me with You, for Fontella Bass, and co-produced it with Davis. Louis Satterfield's aggressive bass line was a hook in itself, while it was Davis's idea for the session musicians to drop out one at a time at the end, until just the bass was left. Prior to going solo, Fontella had worked with Little Milton, a journeyman singer-guitarist who finally came into his own at Chess. The same team of Smith, Miner and Davis was responsible for Milton's smash We're Gonna Make It, the title phrase of which resonated throughout the civil rights era. Billy Stewart wrote his own I Do Love You, bringing it to life with his stuttering, repetitive vocals—a singular R&B variant on jazz scatting—but Davis was his producer. Davis was also responsible for reviving the career of Etta James, though she herself wrote Something's Got a Hold on Me, based on her favorite gospel tune from childhood.

Al Green was the last of the classic soul singers, a dominant artist on the R&B charts at a time when funk and disco were becoming the dominant genres. Though he didn't think much of Let's Stay Together, producer Willie Mitchell talked him into trying it anyhow. His silky vocals and Mitchell's jazzy production recast the song firmly in the Green groove, and the single became his sole No. 1 pop hit.

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • I Got You (I Feel Good)
  • James Brown
  • 2:48
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • I Heard It Through the Grapevine
  • Gladys Knight and the Pips
  • 2:45
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)
  • Marvin Gaye
  • 3:00
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • At Last
  • Etta James
  • 3:00
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Baby, Baby Don't Cry
  • Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
  • 2:27
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • I Wish It Would Rain
  • The Temptations
  • 2:52
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Tell It Like It Is
  • Aaron Neville
  • 2:41
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • The "In" Crowd
  • Ramsey Lewis Trio
  • 3:16
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • People Get Ready
  • The Impressions
  • 2:41
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher
  • Jackie Wilson
  • 2:52
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • The Bells
  • The Originals
  • 3:03
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • Money (That's What I Want)
  • Barrett Strong
  • 2:37
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Stay In My Corner
  • The Dells
  • 6:08
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • Shop Around
  • The Miracles
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Grazing In The Grass
  • Hugh Masekela
  • 2:36
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • It Takes Two
  • Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston
  • 2:59
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Try Me
  • James Brown and the Famous Flames
  • 2:32
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • The Thrill Is Gone
  • B. B. King
  • 5:26
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
  • The Temptations
  • 2:23
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • Ooo Baby Baby
  • Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Love Is Here And Now You're Gone
  • Diana Ross and the Supremes
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Mercy, Mercy, Mercy
  • Cannonball Adderley
  • 3:08
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Two Lovers
  • Mary Wells
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • What Kind Of Fool (Do You Think I Am)
  • The Tams
  • 2:02
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • What's Going On
  • Marvin Gaye
  • 3:53
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Every Little Bit Hurts
  • Brenda Holloway
  • 2:51
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave
  • Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
  • 2:44
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Funny (How Time Slips Away)
  • Joe Hinton
  • 3:05
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • Soulful Strut
  • Young-Holt Unlimited
  • 2:55
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Love Letters
  • Ketty Lester
  • 2:35
  • 
  
  

The influence of this music is ongoing and growing. In Liverpool, England, in 1961, an unknown group called the Beatles got the crowds onto the dance floor with Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I Want) and hoped to write songs half as good someday. In newly independent Jamaica in 1965, Bob Marley heard the Impressions' People Get Ready and adapted it into a reggae spiritual, One Love. In 1989, Brooklyn hip-hop duo Gang Starr's Gotch U sampled James Brown's I Got You (I Feel Good). J. B.'s screams at the beginning and end of that classic have found their way onto hundreds more records, and his beats have been sampled by hip-hop and urban artists on both sides of the Atlantic. When current soul diva Alicia Keys appeared on MTV's Unplugged, she performed Brenda Holloway's Every Little Bit Hurts. Sometimes the influence is more oblique. When today's pop and soul singers change notes within a syllable, few realize that they're doing something pioneered by Jackie Wilson back in the '50s. This music made a difference.

Soul music drew its strength from its diverse heritage. True to the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, "E pluribus unum," it was one music created out of many. Certainly the gospel influence predominated, but not to the extent that the history books tell you. Sometimes the songs themselves came from pop and country composers. Etta James's At Last proved the transformative power of soul music over a pop standard. Etta turned the song (originally written for a 1942 Glenn Miller movie) inside out to the point where it seemed to be about longing rather than fulfillment. Love Letters was another World War II pop song. It titled a Joseph Cotten movie and then languished until Ketty Lester made an early soul classic out of it. Funny (How Time Slips Away) was a Willie Nelson country song until the former lead singer of the Spirit of Memphis Quartet, Joe Hinton, reinterpreted it. Today, everyone who sings Funny does it the way Hinton did it.

And jazz influenced soul music, just as soul influenced jazz. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy was the biggest hit that saxophonist Cannonball Adderley ever had. He had worked with Miles Davis and other jazz giants, but we barely hear him on this classic. Austrian pianist Joe Zawinul composed the tune and took the lead. And although the record was billed as a "live" performance, it was recorded at Capitol's studios with applause added later. Cannonball was trying for the in-person atmosphere of Ramsey Lewis's hits, chiefly The "In" Crowd. Ramsey and his backing duo were dyed-in-the-wool jazzmen, and they had never heard of The "In" Crowd when a waitress suggested that they try it. Success led the backing duo, Eldee Young and Red Holt, to go out on their own as Young-Holt Unlimited, and in 1969 they scored a hit with Soulful Strut. The same year, South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela topped the pop and R&B charts with Grazing in the Grass. With these recordings, jazz and soul combined to create an international currency.

Something else influenced soul music, and that was pop radio. Soul was African- American music, but many of those behind the scenes had their sights set on the pop charts. The president of Tamla-Motown Records, Berry Gordy, coined a slogan for his labels, "The Sound of Young America," because he wanted the widest possible audience for his music. Gordy had written and produced songs for Jackie Wilson before launching Tamla-Motown, and his labels were just getting off the ground when he wrote Money. Then, ironically, Gordy ran out of that very thing and was forced to lease Barrett Strong's record to another company in 1960. That wouldn't happen again. The following year, the Miracles' Shop Around appeared on Tamla and stayed on Tamla as it rose to No. 2 on the pop charts and No. 1 on the R&B.

The Miracles' leader, Smokey Robinson, became Gordy's friend, producer, songwriter and talent scout. He also helped foster the family atmosphere that made Tamla-Motown the first enduringly successful black-owned record company. Smokey's high, beseeching voice seemed an embodiment of Gordy's dream of making music for all America. He echoed teenage anxiety in a guileless and completely innocent way that crossed racial divides. No wonder Bob Dylan called him America's "greatest living poet." In his other roles, Smokey wrote Mary Wells's No. 1 R&B hit Two Lovers and brought his neighbor Diana Ross to Motown together with her group, the Supremes (represented here by Love Is Here and Now You're Gone).

Money became the only major hit that Strong would ever see—as a singer, at least. As Tamla-Motown prospered he became a songwriter and co-wrote one of the label's most enduring hits, I Heard It Through the Grapevine. "I'd heard people say that so much, but no one had ever written a song about it," Strong commented later. Several artists, including the Miracles and Marvin Gaye, recorded the song before Knight and the Pips had a hit with it. Marvin's version scored later, as would versions by King Curtis, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Roger Troutman and the California Raisins. Less than one month after Knight's Grapevine exited the top spot on the R&B charts, another Strong song, I Wish It Would Rain, topped the charts for the Temptations.

For a while, at least, Motown seemed the embodiment of hope. From a small building in Detroit's bleak inner city, Gordy had created a presence on the national and international stage. The magic seemed to rub off on all who worked there. Martha Reeves was an assistant to one of the producers and sang backup on sessions until she achieved her own breakthrough with (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave in 1964. Thinking back to her grandmother's house on Van Dyke Street in Detroit and to her favorite singer, Della Reese, she named her group the Vandellas. The Originals were also Motown backup singers and songwriters before finding success on their own with such hits as The Bells.

Some commentators suggest that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a turning point in music history. The goal of making music for "Young America" seemed to take a back seat to that of making music that spoke directly to the condition of people of African descent in America. Curtis Mayfield was the prophet. His 1965 recording People Get Ready was a subtle call to action, couched in the language of black gospel. The sentiments had hardened by the time Marvin Gaye released his epochal What's Going On in 1971. Inner city turmoil, Vietnam, civil rights and the white backlash had made an angry and despairing man out of Gaye, and, against Berry Gordy's advice, he wrote a song and an accompanying LP that gave voice to those feelings. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) had been the sound for 1965; What's Going On was the sound for 1971.

Many changes have overtaken African - American music since these recordings were made, but there's still a place for classic soul among those who were there at the time and among those who are only now discovering it. Some of these songs were innocent, perhaps even naively so, but the sentiments are as timeless as the grooves are imperishable.

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Can I Change My Mind
  • Tyrone Davis
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • It's Your Thing
  • The Isley Brothers
  • 2:48
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • Going In Circles
  • The Friends of Distinction
  • 4:14
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Backfield In Motion
  • Mel and Tim
  • 2:33
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • You'll Lose A Good Thing
  • Barbara Lynn
  • 2:21
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Want Ads
  • The Honey Cone
  • 2:45
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • Cry Baby
  • Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters
  • 3:26
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Working In The Coal Mine
  • Lee Dorsey
  • 2:48
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Cowboys to Girls
  • The Intruders
  • 2:37
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • Fever
  • Little Willie John
  • 2:42
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Hey! Love
  • The Delfonics
  • 3:17
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • The Horse
  • Cliff Nobles
  • 2:40
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Close Your Eyes
  • Peaches and Herb
  • 2:36
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • I Need Your Loving
  • Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford
  • 2:52
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Oh, Happy Day
  • Edwin Hawkins Singers
  • 5:11
  • 
  
  

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Shout (Parts 1 and 2)
  • The Isley Brothers
  • 4:28
  • 
  
  
• • 2
  • Doggin' Around
  • Jackie Wilson
  • 2:50
  • 
  
  
• • 3
  • Any Day Now (My Wild Beautiful Bird)
  • Chuck Jackson
  • 3:18
  • 
  
  
• • 4
  • Piece Of My Heart
  • Erma Franklin
  • 2:34
  • 
  
  
• • 5
  • I'm Your Puppet
  • James and Bobby Purify
  • 3:01
  • 
  
  
• • 6
  • Yes, I'm Ready
  • Barbara Mason
  • 3:04
  • 
  
  
• • 7
  • The Monkey Time
  • Major Lance
  • 2:47
  • 
  
  
• • 8
  • Hold What You've Got
  • Joe Tex
  • 3:10
  • 
  
  
• • 9
  • Snap Your Fingers
  • Joe Henderson
  • 3:01
  • 
  
  
• • 10
  • Dry Your Eyes
  • Brenda and the Tabulations
  • 2:51
  • 
  
  
• • 11
  • Are You Lonely For Me Baby
  • Freddie Scott
  • 3:12
  • 
  
  
• • 12
  • The Love Of My Man
  • Theola Kilgore
  • 3:15
  • 
  
  
• • 13
  • Part Time Love
  • Little Johnny Taylor
  • 3:48
  • 
  
  
• • 14
  • All In My Mind
  • Maxine Brown
  • 2:35
  • 
  
  
• • 15
  • Little Green Apples
  • O. C. Smith
  • 3:56
  •