60 Fun Facts About Soul Music

Which duo had a 1967 smash on Stax with "Soul Man", later covered by the Blues Brothers?

Sam & Dave's hit got its title when co-writer Isaac Hayes saw TV news of the 1967 Detroit riots, where writing "soul" on a Black-owned shop was said to spare it from being burned.

Which singer, nicknamed Mr. Excitement, launched his solo career with 1957's "Reet Petite"?

Jackie Wilson suffered a heart attack on stage during a 1975 show and never recovered, remaining semi-comatose until his death in 1984.

Which nickname was given to James Brown?

The Godfather of Soul had real clout: the night after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968, Boston televised his concert live to keep people indoors, and the city stayed largely calm.

Sam Cooke was lead singer of which gospel group before controversially going secular?

The Soul Stirrers had a devout gospel following, so Cooke released his first pop single, "Lovable", under the alias Dale Cook in the hope of not alienating it.

Sam Cooke's 1957 recording of which song launched his pop career?

You Send Me was disliked by the owner of Specialty, the label behind Cooke's gospel records, so it came out on the new Keen label and knocked Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" off number one.

Sam Cooke died in 1964 after being shot by whom?

A motel manager, Bertha Franklin, shot him at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles and said it was self-defence; the killing was ruled justifiable homicide, though what happened that night is still disputed.

Motown was founded in 1959 with a family loan of how much?

$800 came from a savings fund that the founder's whole family paid into, and the label it launched became one of America's most successful Black-owned businesses.

Which record-label founder was a professional boxer before turning to songwriting?

Berry Gordy quit the ring and later worked on a car assembly line, an experience he credited with teaching him how to turn out hit records at Motown.

Motown's original Detroit headquarters and studio, at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, was known as what?

Hitsville U.S.A. survived because the founder's sister Esther stayed in Detroit when Motown left for Los Angeles in 1972; she preserved the house and opened it as the Motown Museum in 1985.

Motown's house band, largely uncredited until a 2002 documentary, was known as what?

The Funk Brothers went uncredited on Motown records until 1971, when Marvin Gaye listed their names on the sleeve of What's Going On; a year later the label left for Los Angeles and the band broke up.

Which Motown songwriting team wrote "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave" and "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)"?

Holland-Dozier-Holland walked out of Motown in 1968 after battling its boss over royalties, then set up their own rival labels, Invictus and Hot Wax, while the two sides sued each other.

Which American group topped the Hot 100 twelve times in the 1960s?

The Supremes went three years at Motown without a hit before "Where Did Our Love Go" began a run of five straight number ones in 1964.

Which group's first four Motown singles all reached number one on the Hot 100?

The Jackson 5 did it in 1970 with songs from "I Want You Back" to "I'll Be There", helped by a publicity story, invented by the label, that Diana Ross had discovered the brothers.

In 1963, 13-year-old Stevie Wonder topped the Hot 100 with which live recording?

Fingertips was taped at a Chicago show, and when he bounded back for an unplanned encore the next act's bass player, already on stage, can be heard asking "What key?"

Which 1976 Stevie Wonder album gave him a third Album of the Year Grammy in four years?

Songs in the Key of Life followed wins for Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale; in the one year between, winner Paul Simon thanked Wonder from the stage for not releasing an album.

Smokey Robinson led which Motown group from its 1955 origins until 1972?

The Miracles got their first Hot 100 number one almost by accident: "The Tears of a Clown" was a three-year-old album track until a British single release topped the UK chart in 1970 and Motown followed suit.

Which family group had 1970s Stax hits with "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There"?

The Staple Singers began as a church gospel act, led by Mavis Staples's guitarist father "Pops", and did not top the pop and R&B charts until "I'll Take You There" in 1972.

Stax took its name from founders Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, who were related how?

Brother and sister: she mortgaged her house so they could buy a tape recorder, and they built the new name from their surnames when another Satellite Records threatened to sue over the old one.

Stax's racially integrated house band, whose 1962 instrumental hit was "Green Onions", was called what?

Booker T. & the M.G.'s cut the tune as a throwaway B-side after a session with another singer fell through and left them jamming in the studio; Booker T. Jones was 17.

Which Stax house-band guitarist co-wrote "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" with the singer who recorded it?

Steve Cropper also mixed the record, dubbing in the seagulls and crashing waves heard behind the vocal from a sound-effects tape.

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" was begun on a houseboat in which California town?

Sausalito is where concert promoter Bill Graham lent the singer a houseboat, and the ships he watched rolling in and out again went straight into the opening lines.

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" made chart history in 1968 as the Hot 100's first what?

Posthumous number one: the single came out a month after its singer died in a plane crash, only three days after he had recorded it.

Who wrote and first recorded "Respect", before Aretha Franklin's 1967 version made it hers?

Otis Redding took it in good humour, saying once he had heard her version that the girl had taken his song away from him.

Aretha Franklin stood in for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti at the 1998 Grammys to sing which aria?

Nessun dorma was not new to her: she had sung it at a gala honouring Pavarotti two nights earlier, so when he pulled out after the show had begun she agreed on the spot to go on.

Which singer-songwriter co-wrote Aretha Franklin's 1967 hit "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"?

Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin wrote it after producer Jerry Wexler called out the title idea from a passing car in New York; they gave him a co-writing credit in thanks.

Aretha Franklin won the first eight Grammys ever awarded in which category?

Best Female R&B Vocal Performance was new in 1968, and nobody but Franklin took it home until Natalie Cole ended the run with "This Will Be"; Franklin's final tally was eleven.

Which British singer had a transatlantic hit with "Son of a Preacher Man", a song written with Aretha Franklin in mind?

Dusty Springfield got there first: Franklin, a preacher's daughter herself, recorded the song only after it had been a hit, and the film Pulp Fiction brought it back in 1994.

Solomon Burke's 1962 soul ballad "Cry to Me" is heard in which 1987 film?

Dirty Dancing revived a record by a man of many trades: a boy preacher who trained as a mortician, Burke also sold popcorn and sandwiches to his audiences and to fellow musicians on tour.

Solomon Burke performed in a crown and cape to match which title?

King of Rock 'n' Soul was a role he played to the hilt: he once hired a little person to hide beneath the cape, so that when he shrugged it off it seemed to leave the stage by itself.

Which 1965 breakthrough hit did Wilson Pickett record at the Stax studio in Memphis?

In the Midnight Hour got its lurching beat when producer Jerry Wexler danced the Jerk around the studio to show the band what he wanted; Pickett had co-written the song at the nearby Lorraine Motel.

Atlantic Records was founded in 1947 by Herb Abramson and which jazz-loving partner?

Ahmet Ertegun raised the money to start the label by borrowing $10,000 from his family's dentist, and went on to co-found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The session musicians who founded Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1969, after leaving FAME, were nicknamed what?

The Swampers were white session men who backed Black soul stars such as Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett through the civil rights era; the nickname dates from sessions for Leon Russell.

Muscle Shoals, home of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound, is in which state?

Alabama drew Aretha Franklin to FAME in 1967, where she cut most of her breakthrough hit before a row between her husband and the studio's owner sent the sessions back to New York.

Which songwriter-producer duo, with Thom Bell, shaped the lush Philadelphia soul sound?

Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff wrote "Me and Mrs. Jones" after watching the same man and woman meet day after day downstairs from their office, and turned the suspected affair into a number one for Billy Paul.

The Philadelphia studio musicians who scored a 1974 hit with "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" recorded under what name?

MFSB stands for Mother, Father, Sister, Brother; their hit was written as the theme for TV's Soul Train, but the show's creator would not let the record carry the show's name, hence the initials in its title.

Which soul star bought a Memphis church in the 1970s, became its pastor, and for years recorded only gospel?

Al Green had made "Let's Stay Together" and his other hits for Hi Records with producer Willie Mitchell; a fall from a stage in 1979 persuaded him to leave pop behind for his pulpit.

Curtis Mayfield first found fame with which Chicago vocal group, writing "People Get Ready" for them in 1965?

The Impressions' hit came out of the pulpit: Mayfield built its train-bound-for-glory lyric from sermons he had heard in church, and the civil rights movement took it up as an anthem.

Curtis Mayfield was paralysed from the neck down in 1990 when what fell on him during a Brooklyn concert?

Lighting equipment was toppled by a sudden gust of wind just as he was being introduced; he never played guitar again, but he went back into the studio and sang lying flat on his back.

Isaac Hayes won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1972 for the theme from which film?

Shaft was a job Hayes took in the hope of playing the detective himself; the part went to Richard Roundtree, and his consolation was the first Oscar won by a Black composer.

Isaac Hayes voiced which character on South Park from 1997 to 2006?

Chef met a grisly end: after Hayes, a Scientologist, left the show over an episode mocking his religion, the writers killed the character off using lines spliced together from old recordings.

Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On is sung from whose point of view?

A Vietnam veteran returning home was a figure close to Gaye: the album drew on the letters and stories of his brother Frankie, who had served in the war.

Marvin Gaye was shot dead on 1 April 1984 by whom?

His father, a minister, shot him after a family argument turned physical, on the eve of the singer's 45th birthday, using a revolver that Gaye himself had given him.

James Brown's 1963 breakthrough album was a live recording made at which venue?

The Apollo Theater recording came out only after a fight: his label saw no profit in a live album with no new songs, and it then reached number two on the album chart.

Ray Charles had a number-one album in 1962 with a set of what kind of songs?

Country and western was a leap for an R&B star, but the album went gold, and "I Can't Stop Loving You", a track nobody had planned to release as a single, went to number one.

Ray Charles lost his sight by the age of seven, most likely because of what condition?

Glaucoma is the likeliest explanation; by seven he was at a Florida school for the deaf and blind, where he learned to read, write and arrange music in Braille.

The syndicated TV show Soul Train, which debuted in 1971, was hosted by which Chicago native?

Don Cornelius, a former Chicago police officer turned radio newsman, ran the show on a local Chicago station for a year before it went national, and closed every episode by wishing viewers "love, peace and soul".

Which British singer recorded her 2006 album with the Dap-Kings, the house band of Brooklyn soul label Daptone?

Amy Winehouse borrowed the band from its regular singer, Sharon Jones; Back to Black earned her five Grammys, and the attention sent a wave of new fans to Jones and the Dap-Kings.

Which 1960s Gloria Jones B-side was revived by Britain's northern soul DJs before becoming a worldwide 1980s hit?

Tainted Love flopped on release, but a British DJ brought a copy back from America in 1973 and made it a floor-filler in the clubs of northern England; Soft Cell's cover went to number one in 1981.

Which term did record executive Kedar Massenburg coin to market 1990s artists such as Erykah Badu and D'Angelo?

Neo soul was, in his own words, coined "for lack of a different term" so that record buyers would know what they were getting; he admitted that a lot of people disliked the term.

Which singer won five Grammys in one night in 1999, including Album of the Year, for her debut solo album?

Lauryn Hill made most of it in Jamaica, at the studio Bob Marley built, with his family around her: the father of her first child was Marley's son Rohan.

The mellow late-night soul style of the late 1970s and 1980s, associated with Smokey Robinson, is known as what?

Quiet storm grew into a late-night radio format: stations built whole shows around slow, intimate records, taking Robinson's own 1975 song "Quiet Storm" as the template.

Songwriter, arranger and producer Allen Toussaint was the principal architect of the soul sound of which city?

New Orleans was also where he produced a number one: Labelle recorded "Lady Marmalade", a song set in the city's night life, at his studio there.

Which 1972 benefit concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum, featuring Isaac Hayes, was filmed for a documentary of the same name?

Wattstax was put on by Stax Records as a benefit marking the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the city's Watts district, with the Memphis label's own stars filling the bill.

Ray Charles is often credited with popularising soul through a run of hits starting with which 1954 single?

I Got a Woman began as a gospel song Charles heard on the radio while touring with his band; he and a bandmate gave it secular words, and in 2005 Kanye West sampled it for "Gold Digger".

Which Ben E. King song returned to the US top ten in 1986, 25 years after it was first a hit?

Stand by Me grew out of a gospel hymn; King offered it to his old group, the Drifters, who turned it down, so he recorded it himself, and a 1986 film of the same name sent it back up the charts.

Which singer got her break in 1960 when the man due to record 'A Fool in Love' dropped out?

Tina Turner, then a singer in Ike Turner's band, said she knew the lead, so he recorded her rather than waste the studio time he had booked; the single became the duo's first hit on the pop charts.

Which New Orleans 'Soul Queen' sang 'Time Is on My Side' before the Rolling Stones?

Irma Thomas lost her home and her nightclub to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, then won her first Grammy for After the Rain, the album she recorded in its wake.

Atlantic Records' co-founder sang backing vocals on which Big Joe Turner hit?

Shake, Rattle and Roll topped the R&B chart for Turner in 1954, but Bill Haley's cover, with the suggestive lines rewritten, was the bigger pop hit.

Which Etta James ballad did Beyoncé sing at Barack Obama's inaugural ball in 2009?

At Last was nearly twenty years old when Etta James recorded it in 1960: it began as a Glenn Miller big-band number written for a 1941 film.

Which Oakland band, famed for its horn section, reached the 1973 pop charts with 'So Very Hard to Go'?

Tower of Power started out as the Motowns, swapping the name for one that would get them booked at Bill Graham's Fillmore in San Francisco.