Soul

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying." Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The genre also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds.

ORIGINS

Soul music has its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues. The hard gospel vocal quartets of the 1940s and 1950s were big influences on major soul singers of the 1960s. The term "soul music" itself, to describe gospel-style music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961.
Ray Charles is often cited as inventing the soul genre with his string of hits starting with 1954's "I Got a Woman". Charles was open in acknowledging the influence of Pilgrim Travelers vocalist Jesse Whitaker on his singing style. Another view has it that a decade would transpire until Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the soul style; his early 1960s songs "Cry to Me", "Just Out of Reach" and "Down in the Valley" are considered classics of the genre. Little Richard (who was the inspiration for Otis Redding), Fats Domino and James Brown originally called themselves rock and roll performers.However, as rock music moved away from its R&B roots in the 1960s, Brown claimed that he had always really been an R&B singer. Little Richard proclaimed himself the "king of rockin' and rollin', rhythm and blues soulin'", because his music embodied elements of all three, and because he inspired artists in all three genres. Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke are also often acknowledged as soul forefathers.
Aretha Franklin's 1967 recordings, such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "Respect" (originally sung by Otis Redding), and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" (written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn), are considered the apogee of the soul genre, and were among its most commercially successful productions. In the late 1960s, Stax artists such as Redding, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, and Johnnie Taylor made significant contributions to soul music. Howard Tate's recordings in the late 1960s for Verve Records, and later for Atlantic (produced by Jerry Ragovoy) are another notable body of work in the soul genre. By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as artists such as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to incorporate new styles into their music.

GEOGRAPHICAL ORIGINS

Many consider the birthplace of soul music to be northern United States inner cities, particularly Chicago. Other cities, such as New York, Detroit, Memphis and Florence, quickly followed, creating their own soul styles based on their regional gospel roots.
Florence, Alabama, was the home of FAME Studios. Jimmy Hughes, Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander recorded at Fame, and Aretha Franklin recorded in the area later in the 1960s. Fame Studios (often referred to as Muscle Shoals after a nearby town) enjoyed a close relationship with the Memphis label Stax Records, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis contributed to recordings in Alabama. Another notable Memphis label was Goldwax Records, which signed O.V. Wright and James Carr. Carr's "The Dark End of the Street" (written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn) was recorded in 1967 at two other Memphis studios, Royal Recording and American Sound Studios. American Sound Studios owner Chips Moman produced "The Dark End of the Street", and the musicians were his house band of Reggie Young, Bobby Woods, Tommy Cogbill and Gene Chrisman. Carr also recorded songs at Fame Studio with musicians David Hood, Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins.
The Detroit-based Motown Records also contributed to the soul canon in the 1960s, although at the time, the label described itself as a manufacturer of pop music. Music by Motown artists such as Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and the Supremes did much to popularize what became known as the Motown sound.
In Chicago, Curtis Mayfield helped develop the sweet soul sound that later earned him a reputation as the Godfather of northern soul. As a member of The Impressions, Mayfield infused a call and response style of group singing that came out of gospel, and influenced many other groups of the era, notably fellow Chicago artists the Radiants.

1970s AND LATER

Later examples of soul music include recordings by The Staple Singers (such as I'll Take You There), and Al Green's 1970s recordings, done at Willie Mitchell's' Royal Recording in Memphis. Mitchell's Hi Records continued the Stax tradition in that decade, releasing many hits by Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay, O.V. Wright and Syl Johnson. Bobby Womack, who recorded with Chips Moman in the late 1960s, continued to produce soul recordings in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Detroit, producer Don Davis worked with Stax artists such as Johnnie Taylor and The Dramatics. Early 1970s recordings by The Detroit Emeralds, such as Do Me Right, are a link between soul and the later disco style. Motown Records artists such as Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson contributed to the evolution of soul music, although their recordings were considered more in a pop music vein than those of Redding, Franklin and Carr. Although stylistically different from classic soul music, recordings by Chicago-based artists 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 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 like Parliament-Funkadelic and The Meters. More versatile groups like 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 & 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 and Howard University's Unifics.
As disco and funk were dominating the charts in the late 1970s and early 1980s, soul went in the direction of quiet storm. With its relaxed tempos and soft melodies, quiet storm soul took influences from soft rock and adult contemporary. Many funk bands, such as Con Funk Shun, Cameo, and Lakeside would have a few quiet storm tracks on their albums. Among the most successful acts in this era include Smokey Robinson, Teddy Pendergrass, Peabo Bryson, Atlantic Starr, and Larry Graham.
After the decline of disco and funk in the early 1980s, soul music became influenced by electro music. It became less raw and more slickly produced, resulting in a style known as contemporary R&B, which sounded very different from the original rhythm and blues style.
The United States saw the development of neo-soul around 1994. Mainstream record label marketing support for soul genres cooled in the 2000s due to the industry's re-focus on hip hop.

MOTOWN RECORDS
Berry Gordy's successful Tamla/Motown group of labels was notable for being black-owned, unlike most of the earlier independent R&B labels. Notable artists under this label were The Supremes, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Martha and the Vandellas, and The Jackson Five. Hits were make using a quasi-industrial production-line approach. Some considered the sound to be mechanistic but producers and songwriters such as Phil Spector brought artistic judgement to the three minute tunes. Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland were rarely out of the charts for their work as writers and producers for The Supremes, the Four Tops and Martha and the Vandellas. They allowed important elements to shine through the dense musical texture. There was a large emphasis on the rhythm section with handclaps or tambourine. Smokey Robinson was another writer and producer who added lyrics to "The Tracks Of My Tears" which was one of the most important songs of the decade.

STAX RECORDS AND ATLANTIC RECORDS
These independent labels produced high-quality dance records with such singers as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. They tended to have smaller ensembles marked by expressive gospel-tinged vocals. Brass and Saxophones were also used extensively.

DETROIT (MOTOWN) SOUL
Dominated by Berry Gordy's Motown Records empire, Detroit soul is strongly rhythmic and influenced by gospel music. The Motown sound often includes hand clapping, a powerful bass line, violins and bells. Motown Records' house band was The Funk Brothers.

DEEP SOUL AND SOUTHERN SOUL
The terms deep soul and southern soul generally refer to a driving, energetic soul style combining R&B's energy with pulsating southern United States gospel music sounds. Memphis, Tennessee label Stax Records nurtured a distinctive sound, which included putting vocals further back in the mix than most contemporary R&B records, using vibrant horn parts in place of background vocals, and a focus on the low end of the frequency spectrum. The vast majority of Stax releases were backed by house bands Booker T and the MGs (with Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Al Jackson) and the Memphis Horns (the splinter horn section of the Mar-Keys).

MEMPHIS SOUL
Memphis soul is a shimmering, sultry style of soul music produced in the 1960s and 1970s at Stax Records and Hi Records in Memphis, Tennessee. It featured melancholic and melodic horns, organ, bass, and drums, as heard in recordings by Hi's Al Green and Stax's Booker T. & the M.G.'s. The latter group also sometimes played in the harder-edged Southern soul style. The Hi Records house band (Hi Rhythm Section) and producer Willie Mitchell developed a surging soul style heard in the label's 1970s hit recordings. Some Stax recordings fit into this style, but had their own unique sound.

NEW ORLEANS SOUL
The New Orleans soul scene directly came out of the rhythm and blues era, when such artists as Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Huey Piano Smith made a huge impact on the pop and R&B charts and a huge direct influence on the birth of Funk music. The principal architect of Crescent City’s soul was songwriter, arranger, and producer Allen Toussaint. He worked with such artists as Irma Thomas (“the Soul Queen of New Orleans”), Jessie Hill, Kris Kenner, Benny Spellman, and Ernie K. Doe on the Minit/Instant label complex to produced a distinctive New Orleans soul sound generating a passel of national hits. Other notable New Orleans hits came from Robert Parker, Betty Harris, and Aaron Neville. While record labels in New Orleans largely disappeared by the mid-1960s, producers in the city continued to record New Orleans soul artists for other mainly New York and Los Angeles record labels—notably Lee Dorsey for New York–based Amy Records and the Meters for New York–based Josie and then LA-based Reprise.

CHICAGO SOUL
Chicago soul generally had a light gospel-influenced sound, but the large number of record labels based in the city tended to produce a more diverse sound than other cities. Vee Jay Records, which lasted until 1966, produced recordings by Jerry Butler, Betty Everett, Dee Clark, and Gene Chandler. Chess Records, mainly a blues and rock and roll label, produced a number of major soul artists. Curtis Mayfield not only scored many hits with his group, The Impressions, but wrote many hit songs for Chicago artists and produced hits on his own labels for The Fascinations and the Five Stairsteps.

PHILADELPHIA SOUL
Based primarily in the Philadelphia International record label, Philadelphia soul (AKA Philly Soul) had a lush orchestral sound and doo-wop-inspired vocals. Thom Bell, and Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff are considered the founders of Philadelphia soul.

PSYCHEDELIC SOUL
Psychedelic soul was a blend of psychedelic rock and soul music in the late 1960s, which paved the way for the mainstream emergence of funk music a few years later. The Politicians were one example.

BLUE-EYED SOUL
Blue-eyed soul is a term used to describe R&B or soul music performed by white artists. The term does not refer to a distinct style of music, and the meaning of blue-eyed soul has evolved over decades. Originally the term was associated with mid-1960s white artists who performed soul and R&B that was similar to the music released by Motown Records and Stax Records. The term continued to be used in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly by the British media to describe a new generation of singers who adopted elements of the Stax and Motown sounds. To a lesser extent, the term has been applied to singers in other music genres that are influenced by soul music.

BRITISH SOUL
Soul has been a major influence on British popular music since the 1960s including bands of the British Invasion, most significantly The Beatles. There were a handful of significant British Blue-eyed soul acts, including Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones. American soul was extremely popular among some youth sub-cultures like the Northern soul and Modern soul movements, but a clear genre of British soul did not emerge until the 1980s when a number of artists including George Michael, Sade, Simply Red, Lisa Stansfield and Soul II Soul enjoyed commercial success. The popularity of British soul artists in the U.S., most notably Amy Winehouse, Adele, Estelle, Joss Stone, Duffy, Jessie J and Leona Lewis led to talk of a third British Invasion or soul invasion in the 2000s.

NEO SOUL
The term neo soul is a marketing phrase coined by producer and record label executive Kedar Massenburg to describe a musical blend of 1970s soul-style vocals and instrumentation with contemporary R&B sounds, hip hop beats and poetic interludes. The style was developed in the early to mid 1990s. A key element in neo soul is a heavy dose of Fender Rhodes or Wurlitzer electric piano pads over a mellow, grooving interplay between the drums (usually with a rim shot snare sound) and a muted, deep funky bass. The Fender Rhodes piano sound gives the music a warm, organic character.

NORTHERN SOUL AND MODERN SOUL
The phrase northern soul was coined by journalist Dave Godin and popularised in 1970 through his column in Blues and Soul magazine. The term refers to rare soul music that was played by DJs at nightclubs in northern England. The playlists originally consisted of obscure 1960s and early 1970s American soul recordings with an uptempo beat, such as those on Motown Records and more obscure labels such as Okeh Records. Modern soul developed when northern soul DJs began looking in record shops in the United States and United Kingdom for music that was more complex and contemporary. What emerged was a richer sound that was more advanced in terms of Hi-Fi and FM radio technology.

NU JAZZ AND SOULFUL ELECTRONICA
Many artists in various genres of electronic music (such as house, drum n bass, UK garage, and downtempo) are heavily influenced by soul, and have produced many soul-inspired compositions.

Source: Wikipedia.

Booker T & The MG's

Booker T & The MG's

As the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, TN, Booker T. & the MG's may have been the single greatest factor in the lasting value of that label's soul music, not to mention Southern soul as a whole. Their tight, impeccable grooves could be heard on classic hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Albert King, and Sam & Dave, and for that reason alone, they would deserve their subsequent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But in addition to their formidable skills as a house band, on their own they were one of the top instrumental outfits of the rock era, cutting classics like "Green Onions," "Time Is Tight," and "Hang 'em High."
The anchors of the Booker T. sound were Steve Cropper, whose slicing, economic riffs influenced many other guitar players, and Booker T. Jones himself, who provided much of the groove with his floating organ lines. In 1960, Jones started working as a session man for Stax, where he met Cropper. Cropper had been in the Mar-Keys, famous for the 1961 instrumental hit "Last Night," which laid out the prototype for much of the MG's (and indeed Memphis soul's) sound with its organ-sax-guitar combo. With the addition of drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewis Steinberg, they became Booker T. & the MG's. Within a couple years, Steinberg was replaced permanently by Donald "Duck" Dunn, who, like Cropper, had also played with the Mar-Keys.
The band's first and biggest hit, "Green Onions" (a number three single in 1962), came about by accident. Jamming in the studio while fruitlessly waiting for Billy Lee Riley to show up for a session, they came up with a classic minor-key, bluesy soul instrumental, distinguished by its nervous organ bounce and ferocious bursts of guitar. For the next five years, they'd have trouble recapturing its commercial success, though the standard of their records remained fairly high, and Stax's dependence upon them as the house band ensured a decent living.
In the late '60s, the MG's really hit their stride with "Hip Hug-Her," "Groovin'," "Soul-Limbo," "Hang 'em High," and "Time Is Tight," all of which were Top 40 charters between 1967 and 1969. Since the presence of black and white musicians made them a biracial band, the MG's set a somewhat under-appreciated example of both how integrated, self-contained bands could succeed, and how both black and white musicians could play funky soul music. As is the case with most instrumental rock bands, their singles contained their best material, and the band's music is now best appreciated via anthologies. But their albums were far from inconsequential, and occasionally veered into ambitious territory (they did an entire instrumental version of the Beatles' Abbey Road, which they titled McLemore Avenue in honor of the location of Stax's studios).
Though they'd become established stars by the end of the decade, the group began finding it difficult to work together, not so much because of personnel problems, but because of logistical difficulties. Cropper was often playing sessions in Los Angeles, and Jones was often absent from Memphis while he finished his music studies at Indiana University. The band decided to break up in 1971, but were working on a reunion album in 1975 when Al Jackson was tragically shot and killed in his Memphis home by a burglar. The remaining members have been active as recording artists and session musicians since, with Cropper and Dunn joining the Blues Brothers for a stint in the late '70s.
The MG's got back into the spotlight in early 1992, when they were the house band for an extravagant Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden. More significantly, in 1993 they served as the backup band for a Neil Young tour, one which brought both them (and Young) high critical marks. The following year, they released a comeback album, arranged in much the style of their vintage '60s sides, which proved that their instrumental skills were still intact. Like most such efforts, though, it ultimately failed to re-create the spark and spontaneity it so obviously wanted to achieve. Booker T. remained active through the following decades, often lending his instrumental skills to other artists and occasionally issuing his own albums, such as the 2009 solo effort Potato Hole.

Source: All Music.com.

Al Kooper "White chocolate" (2008)

Al Kooper "Black coffee" (2005)

Al Kooper

Al Kooper, by rights, should be regarded as one of the giants of '60s rock, not far behind the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in importance. In addition to co-writing one classic mid-'60s pop-rock song, "This Diamond Ring" (though it was written as an R&B number), he was a very audible sessionman on some of the most important records of mid-decade, including Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." Kooper also joined and led, and then lost two major groups, the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He played on two classic blues-rock albums in conjunction with his friend Mike Bloomfield. As a producer at Columbia, he signed the British invasion act the Zombies just in time for them to complete the best LP in their entire history; and still later, Kooper discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced their best work. Instead, in terms of public recognition, Kooper has been relegated to second-rank status, somewhere midway between John Mayall and Steve Winwood. Apart from the fact that he's made, and continues to make great music, it's the public's loss that he's not better respected outside the ranks of his fellow musicians.
Kooper was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, the son of Sam and Natalie Kooper. As a boy, he enjoyed singing along to the Bessie Smith records that his father played, and they provided his introduction to blues and, by extension, gospel, R&B and soul, all of the sounds that would form the basis for his own music. Equally important, he revealed himself a natural musician -- one day he sat down in front of a piano and started playing one of the then current hits of the early '50s, with no prior training or experience. He learned on his own, and also took up the guitar. Kooper's main interest during the 1950s lay in gospel music. When rock & roll broke, Kooper was drawn to the vocal side of the new music, forming a doo-wop outfit that sang on street corners in his neighborhood in the late '50s. He turned professional in 1959, joining the line-up of the Royal Teens ("Short Shorts," "Believe Me") as a guitarist. By the early '60s, he'd begun writing songs, and among his early efforts was "I Must Be Seeing Things," which was a hit for Gene Pitney.
Kooper's biggest hit as a songwriter came in late 1964, with a song that he co-authored with Bob Brass and Irwin Levine called "This Diamond Ring" -- they'd written it with the Drifters in mind, but the legendary R&B group passed, and it ended up in the hands of Liberty Records producer Snuff Garrett. He made it the first song to be cut by a new group called Gary Lewis & the Playboys. The record entered the charts late in 1964 and spent the early weeks of 1965 in the number one spot. The recording, although not to Kooper's liking compared to what he'd visualized for the Drifters, started a string of almost unbelievably fortuitous events in his life and career. In those days, he was trying to make a big part of his living as a session guitarist, and when a friend, producer Tom Wilson, invited him to observe at a Bob Dylan recording session that spring, he brought his instrument along with him in the hope that something might happen. When they needed a second keyboard player for the organ on "Like a Rolling Stone," Kooper bluffed his way to the spot. Dylan loved the part that Kooper improvised and boosted it in the mix.
Kooper later played as part of the band that backed Dylan when he introduced electric music to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and was on the Blonde on Blonde album as well. That same year, Kooper was invited by Wilson to sit in on keyboards for an audition tape by a newly-formed New York blues-rock outfit called the Blues Project, and was asked to join the group. He eventually became one of the lead singers, and three massively important and critically acclaimed albums coincided with his year-long stay. By the time he'd exited the Blues Project, Kooper was ready to start a band with a jazz and R&B sound that he had in mind -- one with a serious horn section -- and the result was Blood, Sweat & Tears. Signed to Columbia Records in late 1967, they cut a debut album that was made up almost entirely of Al Kooper songs, and which set the music pages and their authors afire with enthusiasm -- The Child Is Father to the Man, as their debut record was titled, was one of the most important and daring albums of the '60s, as essential as any long-player ever cut by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
Unfortunately, Blood, Sweat & Tears generated more press than sales -- although that debut album did ride the low reaches of the charts for almost a year -- and tensions within the group and pressure from the record company, which wanted a more commercial sound that would sell more records, led to Kooper's exit from the band. Now out of his second successful group in two years, Kooper returned to playing sessions and turned up on records by Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and the Rolling Stones ("You Can't Always Get What You Want"). He also got a job at Columbia Records -- a runner-up prize for having been forced out of Blood, Sweat & Tears (which, by then, was making a fortune for the label with a retooled sound and line-up) -- as a producer. He engineered a concert recording by Simon & Garfunkel that could have been their first official live album. More important was a pair of albums that Kooper cut with his longtime friend, guitarist Michael Bloomfield. Those records, Super Session, cut with Stephen Stills, and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper were among Columbia's best-selling LPs of the period; they were the kind of albums that, coupled with The Child Is Father to the Man, helped put Columbia Records on the cutting edge of popular music.
Kooper's other major contribution during his tenure at Columbia was signing the Zombies, a British Invasion-era band that hadn't charted a single in two years, for one album. The group seemed to be on their last legs and were, in fact, about to break up, but Columbia got one classic album (Odessey & Oracle) and a monster hit single ("Time of the Season") from the deal. The least prominent of Kooper's projects during this era, ironically enough, was his solo album I Stand Alone, on which he cut new versions of songs he'd written or been associated with over the previous decade. He spread himself too thin in making the record, and the album failed to sell in serious numbers. A follow up record, Kooper Session, was similarly ignored despite the presence of blues guitar prodigy Shuggie Otis, but Kooper remained one of the most successful names in rock music.
During the early '70s, Kooper had his own label, Sounds of the South, set up through MCA -- his big discovery was Lynyrd Skynyrd. He produced their first three albums, whose sales eventually numbered in the millions. Kooper also produced records by the Tubes, B.B. King, Nils Lofgren, and Joe Ely, among many others, during the '70s, and he found time during that decade to write what remains the best book ever written about rock & roll from an insider's perspective, Backstage Passes. Kooper's recording activity slackened off in the 1980s, although he performed with Dylan, Tom Petty, and Joe Walsh, and did some soundtrack work in television and films. During the 1990s, after a more-than-20-year hiatus, he returned to recording his own sound with ReKooperation, an instrumental album released by the MusicMasters label, a company much more closely associated with jazz and classical than rock.
Equally important were a handful of live gigs by principal members of the original Blood, Sweat & Tears, their first shows in 25 years. These performances led to a series of birthday shows at New York's Bottom Line in 1994, which yielded the double-CD concert recording Soul of a Man. Kooper covered most of his own music history with the key members of the original Blood, Sweat & Tears and the definitive Blues Project line-up (who had gotten back together every so often, beginning in the early '70s). Kooper pulled together a unified sound, built around soul, jazz, and gospel influences, despite the varied personnel involved, in his most accomplished solo project ever. Anyone counting the records on which Al Kooper has played a key role -- as songwriter, singer, keyboardman, guitarist, or producer -- would come up with tens of millions of albums and singles sold, and a lot of radio airtime. His career recalls that of Steve Winwood in some respects, though he's never had a solo hit. Even in the '90s, however, Kooper remains a formidable performing talent, and one of the most inspired and intelligent people in rock music.

Source: All Music.com.

Bobby 'Blue' Bland & B. B. King "Together again... live" (1976)

Bobby 'Blue' Bland "The Millennium collection" (2000)

Bobby 'Blue' Bland "Turn on your love light" (1994)

Bobby 'Blue' Bland "The soulful side of Bobby Bland" (1985)

Bobby 'Blues' Bland "That did it" (1996)

Al Green "Let's stat together" (1972)

Al Green

The title of Al Green’s Lay It Down truly tells it like it is. Conceived as a collaboration between the soul legend and a handful of gifted young admirers from the worlds of contemporary R&B and hip hop, the album is drawn from a series of inspired sessions that yielded the most high-spirited, funky and often lushly romantic songs of Green’s latter-day career. The album is a refreshingly old school jam, with everyone laying down the music together, face to face, heart to heart, soul to soul.

The project features the sophisticated R&B voices of singer-songwriters John Legend, Anthony Hamilton and Corinne Bailey Rae, and it was co-produced with Green by two of hip-hop’s most innovative players, drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson from the Roots and keyboardist James Poyser, the go-to guy for high-profile artists ranging from Erykah Badu to Common. Add in Brooklyn’s celebrated Dap-King Horns (Sharon Jones, Amy Winehouse), guitarist Chalmers “Spanky” Alford (Mighty Clouds of Joy, Joss Stone) and bassist Adam Blackstone (Jill Scott, DJ Jazzy Jeff), among others, and you’ve got a modern soul-music dream team, fronted by the most expressive voice in the business.

“The reason why we are doing this is because we all idolize Al Green,” declares ?uestlove. “Even today, nobody has range like him.”

Green himself envisioned this project as a way to reach out to younger artists, particularly in the hip hop community, to find common musical ground and help spread his healing message of, as he likes to put it, “L-O-V-E.” He gamely plunged into the world of the Roots and their posse, cutting tracks with them in New York City. His youthful collaborators took this as an opportunity to get right into Al’s head, turning the sessions into a master class about how to create that sublime Al Green sound and keep it relevant for today.

As Green explains: ”They didn’t want to get too far out from the foundation that [Hi Records producer] Willie Mitchell and I built—‘Call Me,’ ‘I’m Still In Love With You,’ ‘Let’s Stay Together.” That’s all good, they said, but we want to play what we hear you being about in 2008. We want to keep all of the aura, but we would like to have freedom enough to spread our wings and express ourselves. The Roots, all the guys from Philly who came up to do this stuff with us—they were incredible. I could relax because I knew the people were capable. Everyone was coming up with ideas, everybody was pitching in, everybody was helping.”

It all began in 2006. ?uestlove and Poyser arranged for a get-acquainted session at Electric Lady Studio in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. As Green recalls, “That was such a session. We sketched out eight songs and really started the project. We were just spitting out songs right and left; there’s no possible way I could write them all out. I was writing the verses to this one, the bridge to that one. Everybody contributed and that’s why it feels so good. There were no big ‘I’s and little ‘you’s in there. All of us dreamed it up together.”

That date provided basic tracks for nine out of eleven tunes. Subsequent recording took place over the next two years to accommodate the artists with whom Al wanted to work. Each session replicated the feel of that first one, with the players swapping ideas, grabbing pads and pencils to furiously scribble lyrics, singing out snatches of melodies, passing along riffs. Green himself vocalized many of the parts that the strings and horns would later play. He admits, “That’s the only way I know how to work, that’s what I’ve done all my life. You just write it from here.” He taps his heart. “That’s what we do every Sunday. We never write a sermon now. If you can’t preach out of here”—tapping his chest again—“you have nothing to say anyway. It’s all from the heart, this whole album, from start to finish.”

“It’s an honor to be able to work with Al Green, who I have always loved and respected,” says John Legend. “He has been an important part of black music history, and pop music history for that matter. Al really is a magical singer.”

Legend had come in to sing on one track the band had worked up, but then heard an unfinished version of “Stay With Me (By The Sea),” a song Green had been developing with Bailey Rae. Legend immediately knew that one was meant for him. That song illustrates the cooperative spirit that distinguishes Lay It Down. ”John is singing it, I’m singing it, Corinne and I are singing the background,” Green explains. “We’re all included. It’s personal, about my own life, but still everyone can feel what I’m talking about.”

Green was especially impressed that Bailey Rae flew all the way from London to sing with him. She was just honored to be there: “I was really drawn in by Al's voice; it’s so distinct, and so fluid.” After she arrived, Green recalls, Corinne went straight to work: “She’s a tiny little thing with a big guitar. She’s just playing and singing and the musicians went to sit in, the drummer, the bassist. She wrote a verse, then I wrote a verse and we both worked on the bridge.” In fact, Green insisted that Bailey Rae start it off, performing in her warm, intimate style the verse she’d just written.

Hamilton and Green perform gospel-style testifying over the slow-burning groove of the title track, and the pair engages in fierce call and response on the funky chorus to “You’ve Got the Love I Need.” “It feels good when you listen to him,” Hamilton says of Green, and Green returns the compliment: “On his records, Anthony is always singing about pleasing and satisfying his lady—I want you to be happy, I want us to be together. I’ve been preaching for 30 years and I said, that’s right, the more we need each other, the less difference we see between us. You have to take a chance on love. I know there are some hateful people in the world that would break your heart in an instant. But the big man upstairs is saying you’ve got to take a chance. It’s better to love and be heartbroken than never to have loved at all.”

Looking back on these collaborations, Green decides: ”I couldn’t ask for any more than what Corinne, Anthony and John put into the album, because they came and they sung their heart. And when a person does that, I’m going to give you the best I feel too.” But he offers us even more on the final track, “Standing In the Rain.” The arrangement is an ebullient update of classic Memphis soul and the words convey the sort of message that the Reverend Al would like to leave all of us with, from the young listeners about to discover him to the loyal fans who’ve followed him all these years.

“’Standing in the Rain’—that don’t mean good times,” Green explains. “I’ve got afflictions, I’ve got trials, I’ve experienced all the things that can hold you back. But I refuse to be held back.”

Lay It Down is surely testimony to that. Al Green may occasionally sing about his own tribulations, but mostly he wants to offer the answer to ours: L-O-V-E is all you need.

Source: Al Green.com.

Bobby "Blues" Bland "Dreamer" (1974)

Bobby "Blues" Bland "Blues at midnight"

Bobby "Blue" Bland "Memphis Monday morning" (1998)

Bobby "Blue" Bland "Years of tears" (1993)

Bobby "Blue" Bland "Portrait of the blues" (1991)

Bobby "Blue" Bland "Midnight run" (1989)

Bobby "Blue" Bland "First class blues" (1987)