I give a great deal of credit to Sam Cooke for being the first soul singer to break through the color line and acheive a great deal of crossover success.
James Brown, Joe Tex, Al Green were all independent label soul singers who had creative control over the recording careers. Most of the roster of Stax and Atlantic artists produced the kind of music they wanted, for better or for worse. Curtis Mayfield started off as a producer for the Okeh black music indie label and Mayfield and had the business know-how negotiate creative control over his music when he moved to the larger white owned Paramount label.
Otis and Aretha at Atlantic Records set the gold standard for soul music. Both artists worked with the brillant in-house production staff who had a keen sensitivty for artisitic control because Atantic Records was originally founded as a record label for black jazz musicians who were quite demanding about having creative control over their music.
Stevie Wonder and Marvin G.'s careers were hampered by the tyrannical Motown owner,Barry Gordy who stifled the creative impulses of his artists by attempting to present them like squeaky clean, tuxedoed cabaret performers with precision choreography and a watered down version of soul music. Gordy engaged in the unethical practice including himself in songwriting credits to steal royalty payments from his artists and keep ownership of his artist's music under his control. Stevie and Marvin rebelled against Gordy's policy of of banning socially relevant music and they won that fight and were able to release their groundbreaking What's Going On and Talking Book albums.
A lot of the contemporay neo-soul sound uses the same old fashioned production techniques as Stax and Atlantic music producers did in their heyday. I like a lot of the newer neo-soul singers like Sharon Jones, Bettye LaVette and Anthony Hamilton.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt
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