Soul’s mission is salvation. Singer Solomon Burke said of a song he sang called "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love": "I believe if everyone sang this If you sing, the whole world will be saved." James Brown openly declared in his famous live version of "Lost Someone": "I'm not just singing this for myself now. Song, I'm singing this song for you too." When this kind of spiritual music, which is derived from gospel music, church music and rhythm and blues, sounds, the mood and message give people a calm revelation.
James Brown, a transcendent singer known as "The Number One Soul Brother," lurches backstage, wears a noble cloak, and performs the drama of personal redemption on stage each night ; Wilson Pickett, an ardent admirer of Archbishop Julius Cheeks, who electrified the audience with his hoarse cries, piercing screams and clumsy sacred dances; Sam Cooke ( Sam Cooke preached to secular churchgoers with the achingly sweet harmonies and polite demeanor of his famous Soul Raiders; Otis Redding used his polished The suits and striking halting diction maintain a radiant dignity; while Joe Tex, the singer who was surprisingly ordained a Muslim deacon even after his popularity faded, is a slave-era A symbol of black mythology since. Of course, there is also the aforementioned Solomon Burke, who was once a licensed undertaker and became the little pastor of his family since he was 12 years old, delivering the Lord's blessings like a bishop. It seems that this is a serious business in the hearts of soul singers.
It was a particularly kind of good-hearted, optimistic music, and it was no accident that its reputation spread far and wide in the early 1960s. In that era, black self-esteem was awakened, and the civil rights movement and progress in racial concepts seemed more real than phantoms. The broad-minded "kindness" in spiritual songs has had a huge impact on this music. The music itself is inspired by the deepest reaches of African American history. Black people showed such resourcefulness in this experience because they not only adapted to foreign cultures and environments but also created a rich language of their own, which has continued from any white society to this day. That is to say that this language is the basis of spirituals, and spirituals in this sense must be recognized and experienced as a conscious anachronism. One way to trace oneself back to its roots is to subvert the assimilation shock of the old century. , refusing to enter a society known as mainstream white society.
In this feeling, you will understand why spiritual music - which uses its insistence on a unified and pure style to approach the spiritual home - is destined to die out early. For example, just like the development of Chicago blues in the late 1940s and mountain rock born in Memphis in the 1950s, the musical style was too single to adapt to changes in trends. Moreover, almost all artists in this genre have developed under the umbrella of a relatively single record company. Chicago blues belongs to the Chess record company; mountain rock belongs to the Sun record company; and soul music is associated with the name of the Atlantic record company. Atlantic's vice president Jerry Wexler is a director, while Solomon, Otis, Wilson, Joe, etc. are all major actors. They are complex and fascinating stories that can only be briefly described in the limited space.
In a sense, the birth of spiritual music should be due to the success of Solomon Burke's song "Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)" in 1961. Of course, Ray Charles has achieved great success with Atlantic, and James Brown and Sam Cooke have also had pop qualities.
Each of these singers was viewed by onlookers as an independent phenomenon, as only the rise of Solomon and Atlantic could be considered the beginning of a movement.
Solomon Burke recorded a large number of music works on Apollo Records in his early years, including both gospel songs and secular songs, until he released his second album on "Atlantic" Only then achieved real success. Oddly enough, that song turned out to be a country song, which isn't surprising from Jerry's point of view. "This change, this structure, the whole feeling is about gospel and country music." This feeling was later adopted by Ray Charles when he recorded for ABC a few months later. In any case, Solomon enjoyed success in 1961 and 1962, and his style was fixed and became strictly spiritual after the release of his fifth album.
"One day," Jerry Wexler recalled: "An eight-song demo from Detroit caught my attention, one of which was called 'If You Need Me' '(If You Need Me) was the only song that moved me. The singer who sang on the demo tape was Wilson Pickett." What happened next is both interesting and historic. "If You Need Me" became a classic in the soul genre, with its fervent emotion, heartfelt tune and rigorous gospel inflections. Atlantic immediately bought the publishing rights to the song but somehow forgot to buy the rights to the demo tape. When they finished recording Solomon's passionate rendition and were preparing to publish it, they found that the market was already flooded with Wilson's original song sung by Lloyd Price and Harold Logan. The angry Jerry had to go back to the studio to redo the record. Later, the song became Solomon's hit song and eventually brought Wilson Pickett into the door of "Atlantic". "Two years later, Wilson himself came into my office with a tape in his hand. I said, 'Man, doesn't it hurt?' He said, 'That's in the past.'" Jerry said.
This Wilson, this "badass" Wilson, is a more explosive singer than Solomon, with more palpable emotion and perhaps more visceral excitement in his use of voice and dramatic effect. Played out of character. Jerry took him to the Stax Records studio in Memphis. In the first half of 1965, this company had already recorded songs such as "My Love Is So Strong", "Poor Mister", "I've Loved You Too Long", "Respect", etc. These songs were all written by an unknown singer at the time. Singer Otis Redding (one-time Little Richard impersonator) sang. "Atlantic" and "Stax" have had a sales agreement since 1960, which means that Booker T and MGS, R T and Carla Thomas, Willion Bell and later Sam & Dave are all indirectly gathered under the "Atlantic" banner. As part of that deal, Otis Redding's debut album was published by a subsidiary of Atlantic. For Jerry, the hard sound style unique to Stax suited Wilson's taste. He was proven right. The hit spiritual song "In the Midnight Hour" came about when Wilson sat down with guitarist Steve Cropper to devise a rhythm.
Ironically, either due to the success of Wilson's single or a more complicated business dispute, Stax shut out all Atlantic artists. The result was a deal with Jerry, a recording studio in Florence, Alabama called Fame, which already had some gospel singers with strong Southern roots like Joe Tex.
Joe Tex is a musical traveler. When he came to Fame Recording Studio, he had been wandering in the music circle for 10 years and had sung works of every style, but none of them were successful. Only in "Fame" did he find his own mold, neither as sober as Solomon nor as indulgent as Wilson.
Some of his songs, like "Hold on to What You've Got," are like moving sermons, laced with sly asides and epigrammatic wit.
His success in "Fame" was matched only by Wilson after 1966. In Fame Recording Studio, an unknown singer, Percy Sledge, recorded a song that later became extremely famous, "When A Man Loves A Woman". The vocals and compositions that imitate the feeling of a church atmosphere are exquisite masterpieces of spiritual music.
In February 1967, Jerry signed a new female singer and released his first record under the "Atlantic" label. This is an artist that everyone predicted would become a star, even after she started recording commercial work 7 years ago. Although she had always been in the commercial environment of recording, she spent almost her entire life never realizing her full potential. The artist is Aretha Franklin. She has published many works on Columbia Records, but none of them had a great response. But this time it was different. An epoch-making masterpiece - "I Never Loved A Man (the Way I Love You)" [I Never Loved A Man (the Way I Love You)] went straight to the top of the soul charts and entered the pop charts. Top ten on the list, sales exceeding one million mark.
In some ways that was the end of the spiritual era. Of course, that kind of end will not disappear as quickly as a burst of smoke. Some artists are still maintaining their reputations amid the resurgence of their careers, but more artists have disappeared. Solomon left Atlantic in 1969, followed by Wilson and Joe in 1973. As early as 1968, "Stax" ended its cooperative relationship with "Atlantic", which was shortly after Otis died in a plane crash in December 1967. In fact, there may be one more obvious reason why people say that the era of spiritual music ended in a painful and disturbing way: that is the assassination of black leader Martin Luther King in April 1968. Many of the good faith in spiritual songs were shattered by ruthless facts, and soon more hymns and music with a fighting spirit appeared.
However, spiritual songs still continue today, although the era no longer belongs to spiritual songs. But after all, it has reached an artistic height with its own unique style. When you listen to spiritual songs, it's like attending a church sermon. This kind of music transcends class and age, and every listener seems to be a member of the family, with good manners, good manners, and hard work. For an outside white audience, the only reaction is to unconsciously follow them on a spiritual journey and some self-comfort.