What Is Soul?

[Andyj]

With the recent topics relating to pop records and Peggy March etc, I want to ask the question 'What is Soul'? I don't mean Northern especially but soul as a music genre. Let's remember that the massive rare soul sounds we love were released in order for the artist to 'break' the pop charts and make some wonga for said artist(s) I originally felt that soul music had to be sung by Black Americans but when you hear Micheal Macdonald, Dean Parrish etc that view becomes flawed!

[Dekka]

Eyes of Blue - Supermarket full of cans

 

Welsh blue eyed soul/RnB of the highest order

[Dekka]

Rob and Dean Douglas - Phone me

 

Deram magic.

 

Soul music is unique to you, it's all about having an introduction

[Garethx]

I expect loads of history to be rewritten here but the essence of soul is Rhythm & Blues written and sung with a Gospel flavour in the harmonic structure and the style of delivery. Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, The Impressions, The Valentinos, Ben E. King, The Drifters, The Falcons, The Miracles, Joe Tex.

 

These are the building blocks. The building blocks were not white artists unless you're willing to delve deeper into the whole history of American popular music and include the influence of artists like Bing Crosby or Johnny Ray or Peggy Lee on all singers regardless of ethnicity.

 

There may have been important white figures on the business or technical side: Jerry Wexler, Rick Hall, Jim Stewart, The Chess brothers, Bert Berns, but to say that Soul music had no racial dimension is a crass denial of history.

 

Obviously soul was for a time a hugely popular and influential musical movement in the US and there were loads of regional offshoots among black and eventually white artists: the white artists infected with the soul virus for that time included: the blue-eyed soul of The Righteous Brothers in LA; the beach bands of the Carolinas; the self-contained white soul bands of Long Island which spawned artists like The Rascals and Billy Joel; the western Pennsylvania scene which begat The Temptones, Jaggerz and Magnificent Men; the Muscle Shoals scene of Dan Penn, Eddie Hinton, George Soule etc.

 

Of course there was a British dimension as well, Georgie Fame, The Spencer Davis Group, Alan Brown Set etc.

 

Lots of these branched out pretty quickly to become something else: Southern Rock, Soft Rock, singer-songwriter pop and so on and so on. Soul was the acme of musical fashion for a moment in time. The offshoot white music was still capable of being aesthetically 'soulful' (Evie Sands, Hall & Oates, Laura Nyro etc.) but was it strictly 'Soul' in form and content? I'd argue not. Stevie Winwood in Britain is a very good example. His music always had that soul flavour somewhere because of his singing style but it went off in myriad other directions too over the course of his career.

 

For white artists Soul was a fashion to be grafted on to their music in order to give it hipness or currency; that isn't to say these artists didn't love the original soul music deeply, as they clearly did. But from a perspective of strict content once the fashion moved on, so did they.

 

Soul continued to be made and arguably taken to new aesthetic heights by OV Wright, Al Green, The Soul Children, Candi Staton and many other artists, but this was very much music made for a Black audience once again. If these records and artists crossed-over to a white demographic it was a very welcome by-product, but it's interesting to me that by the mid-1970s there were very few (if any) white artists trying to copy for example Al Green, in the same way Dan Penn had tried to model his style on Ray Charles or Bobby Bland ten years earlier.

 

Obviously that's not the whole story of Soul, but to me it's a helpful way of looking at the phenomenon of 'white soul'.

[MotownDave]

not wishing to start or get involved in an agrument, but when at least 2 black soul singers and 1 very influential producer described dusty springfield as a soul singer they where wrong ? and one of the singers said soul has nothing to do with colour , that was wrong too ?

[Patto]

not wishing to start or get involved in an agrument, but when at least 2 black soul singers and 1 very influential producer described dusty springfield as a soul singer they where wrong ? and one of the singers said soul has nothing to do with colour , that was wrong too ?

 

I think that there are many examples of good White Soul singers,but the very best soul is in my opinion delivered by a Black voice.But its a real minefield with many differing opinions.At the end of the day if the artist makes that emotional connection with the listener that tears your heart strings or makes you want to dance then he or she has conveyed SOUL to you regardless of their creed.

[Dekka]

not wishing to start or get involved in an agrument, but when at least 2 black soul singers and 1 very influential producer described dusty springfield as a soul singer they where wrong ? and one of the singers said soul has nothing to do with colour , that was wrong too ?

 

Why have you turned this into an X factor style sing off between Black and White

 

If you think people like Georgie fame ain't got soul then you are seriously missing the point

[Garethx]

I personally think Dusty Springfield was a great stylist who made some fabulous records but when you read detailed accounts of the making of "Dusty In Memphis" you have to wonder if her carefully spliced together phrase-by-phrase recording style was not the diametric opposite of the emotional release of soul music.

 

But I've got to repeat my assertion above: if you think there was no racial dimension to the history of soul music you are in denial. The politics of race in America are the very ferment of what became soul music. Nothing happens in a vacuum and the political and social context in which the music happened and developed is everything in this case. 

 

Being touched emotionally by a piece of music and therefore finding it 'soulful' in a broad sense is a different matter to it being Soul with a capital letter.

 

Karen Carpenter's voice can move me on occasions but was she generically and specifically a Soul Singer?

[Guest drewid]

Why have you turned this into an X factor style sing off between Black and White

If you think people like Georgie fame ain't got soul then you are seriously missing the point

georgie fame soul singer sorry no in my house

[Guest drewid]

Why have you turned this into an X factor style sing off between Black and White

If you think people like Georgie fame ain't got soul then you are seriously missing the point

georgie fame soul singer sorry no in my house, Eddie Hinton yessss!!!

[Guest drewid]

I personally think Dusty Springfield was a great stylist who made some fabulous records but when you read detailed accounts of the making of "Dusty In Memphis" you have to wonder if her carefully spliced together phrase-by-phrase recording style was not the diametric opposite of the emotional release of soul music.

But I've got to repeat my assertion above: if you think there was no racial dimension to the history of soul music you are in denial. The politics of race in America are the very ferment of what became soul music. Nothing happens in a vacuum and the political and social context in which the music happened and developed is everything in this case.

Being touched emotionally by a piece of music and therefore finding it 'soulful' in a broad sense is a different matter to it being Soul with a capital letter.

Karen Carpenter's voice can move me on occasions but was she generically and specifically a Soul Singer?

bob on

[Dekka]

I personally think Dusty Springfield was a great stylist who made some fabulous records but when you read detailed accounts of the making of "Dusty In Memphis" you have to wonder if her carefully spliced together phrase-by-phrase recording style was not the diametric opposite of the emotional release of soul music.

 

But I've got to repeat my assertion above: if you think there was no racial dimension to the history of soul music you are in denial. The politics of race in America are the very ferment of what became soul music. Nothing happens in a vacuum and the political and social context in which the music happened and developed is everything in this case. 

 

Being touched emotionally by a piece of music and therefore finding it 'soulful' in a broad sense is a different matter to it being Soul with a capital letter.

 

Karen Carpenter's voice can move me on occasions but was she generically and specifically a Soul Singer?

 

Lost intersest half way through, bloody twaddle,

 

karen carpenter? whats all that about, repeat all you want, your disertation is boring.

 

Georgie Fame was the only British artist on the motown revue tour,

 

now ain't that saying something, black american soul artists paying homage and tribute to a white brit. FFS

Edited March 17, 2013 by dekka

[Garethx]

Who would have booked Georgie Fame on that tour? British promoters worried about ticket sales, that's who.

 

Do you seriously think Smokey Robinson or David Ruffin or whoever booked him to "pay homage and tribute"? 

 

If you don't get the point about Karen Carpenter I'm afraid I can't spell it out any clearer for you.

[Dekka]

Who would have booked Georgie Fame on that tour? British promoters worried about ticket sales, that's who.

 

Do you seriously think Smokey Robinson or David Ruffin or whoever booked him to "pay homage and tribute"? 

 

If you don't get the point about Karen Carpenter I'm afraid I can't spell it out any clearer for you.

Did you even know he was on the tour until I told you, I doubt it

[Dekka]

Who would have booked Georgie Fame on that tour? British promoters worried about ticket sales, that's who.

 

Do you seriously think Smokey Robinson or David Ruffin or whoever booked him to "pay homage and tribute"? 

 

If you don't get the point about Karen Carpenter I'm afraid I can't spell it out any clearer for you.

 

To be honest

 

If you believe all those 3 sentenances then you know absolutely nothing,

 

in fact it's quite disgracefull the disrespect you are showing

[Garethx]

Why are you making this personal? It's not important to me (or anyone else presumably) whether you agree with me or not. I was the first person to mention Georgie Fame in this topic and nowhere did I make a point about him not being a soul artist or not having soul.

 

My earlier posts weren't a direct answer to anything you posted. When you chose to quote my post calling it twaddle I responded. It's not being disrespectful. It's having an opinion. To suggest I know nothing about the early Motown tours of the British Isles is incorrect.

Edited March 17, 2013 by garethx

[Dekka]

Perhaps this is one of the songs the original poster was alluding to

 

The Underdogs - Mo Jo Hanna - VIP (Flip to Loves gone bad)

 

Utube clip does not do this song justice, played on my system at home it is awesome

 

Detroit blue eyed soul, amazing